David and Goliath

The Philistines gathered their armies for war. They came together at Socoh, a town that belonged to Judah, and made their camp between Socoh and Azekah, at a place called Ephes Dammim.

King Saul gathered the men of Israel, too. They camped by the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle lines to face the Philistines. The Philistines stood on a hill on one side, the Israelites stood on a hill on the other side, and the valley lay between them.

Out of the Philistine camp came a champion named Goliath, from the city of Gath. He was six cubits and a span tall. (A cubit is about the length of a man’s forearm, and a span is the width of a spread hand.) He wore a bronze helmet on his head and a coat of scale armor, and the coat alone weighed five thousand shekels of bronze. Bronze guards covered his shins, and a bronze javelin hung across his back. The shaft of his spear was as thick as a weaver’s beam, and its iron point by itself weighed six hundred shekels. In front of him walked a soldier carrying his shield.

Goliath stood still and shouted across the valley to the ranks of Israel.

“Why have you come out and lined up for battle?” he called. “Am I not a Philistine, and aren’t you Saul’s servants? Choose one man and send him down to me. If he can fight me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I beat him and kill him, then you will be our servants and serve us.”

Then he said, “Today I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man, and let the two of us fight it out.”

When Saul and all the Israelites heard what Goliath said, they lost heart and were terribly afraid.

Now there was a man in Bethlehem named Jesse, from the clan of Ephrath. By Saul’s time he was already an old man, and he had eight sons. His three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: Eliab, the firstborn, then Abinadab, and the third, Shammah. David was the youngest. He went back and forth between Saul’s camp and Bethlehem, where he looked after his father’s sheep.

Meanwhile Goliath came forward every morning and every evening and took his stand before the army of Israel. He did it for forty days.

One day Jesse said to his son David, “Take a full ephah of this roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread, and hurry to the camp to your brothers. Take these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand men, too. See how your brothers are getting along, and bring me back some token from them to show they’re well.”

Saul, the three brothers, and all the men of Israel were in the Valley of Elah at that time, at war with the Philistines.

David got up early the next morning, left the sheep with someone to watch them, loaded up the food, and set off as Jesse had told him. He reached the edge of the camp just as the army was marching out to its battle lines, shouting the war cry. Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines, army facing army.

David left his load with the man who kept the supplies, ran to the battle lines, and greeted his brothers. While he was still talking with them, the Philistine champion, Goliath of Gath, stepped out of the ranks and shouted the same words as before. David heard every one of them.

When the Israelites saw the giant, they all ran from him, terrified.

“Have you seen this man who keeps coming out?” they said to one another. “He comes out to defy Israel. The king will make whoever kills him very rich. He will give that man his own daughter to marry, and his father’s family will never have to pay taxes in Israel again.”

David turned to the men standing near him. “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away Israel’s disgrace?” he asked. “Who is this Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

The men told him the same thing again. “That is what will be done for the man who kills him,” they said.

Eliab, his eldest brother, heard David talking with the men, and he grew angry with him.

“Why have you come down here?” Eliab said. “And who did you leave those few sheep with, out in the wilderness? I know how proud you are, and how wicked your heart is. You only came down to watch the battle.”

“What have I done now?” said David. “Can’t I even ask a question?”

He turned away from his brother to someone else and asked the same thing, and the men gave him the same answer as before.

What David had said did not stay among the soldiers. It was repeated to Saul, and the king sent for David.

“Your Majesty,” David said to Saul, “no one should lose heart because of this man. I, your servant, will go out and fight this Philistine.”

“You can’t go out against this Philistine and fight him,” Saul answered. “You’re only a boy, and he has been a warrior since he was a boy himself.”

But David said, “Your Majesty, I have been keeping my father’s sheep. Once a lion came, and once a bear, and carried off a lamb from the flock. Each time I went after the beast, struck it, and pulled the lamb out of its mouth. When it turned on me, I grabbed it by its beard, struck it, and killed it. I have killed both the lion and the bear, and this Philistine will end up like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.” He went on, “God saved me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, and he will save me from the hand of this Philistine.”

“Go,” said Saul, “and may God be with you.”

Then Saul dressed David in his own armor. He set a bronze helmet on David’s head and fastened a coat of mail around him. David strapped the king’s sword over the armor and tried to walk, but he had never worn armor before.

“I can’t go out in these,” he told Saul. “I’m not used to them.”

So David took them all off again.

He took his shepherd’s staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the stream. He dropped them into his shepherd’s bag, the pouch he always carried, and with his sling in his hand he went down toward Goliath.

Goliath came on, closer and closer to David, with his shield-bearer walking in front of him. He looked around, caught sight of David, and sneered at what he saw: a youth with a ruddy, handsome face.

“Do you take me for a dog,” Goliath said, “coming at me with sticks?” And he cursed David by his gods. “Come over here,” he said, “and I will feed your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”

David answered him, “You come against me with a sword, a spear, and a shield. But I come against you in the name of God, the God of the armies of Israel, the God you have defied. Today God will hand you over to me. I will strike you down and cut off your head, and this very day I will give the bodies of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, so that the whole world will know there is a God in Israel. And everyone gathered here will know that God does not save by sword or spear. The battle is God’s, and he will hand all of you over to us.”

As Goliath moved in to attack, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. He reached into his bag and took out a stone. He set it in the leather pouch of his sling, whirled it over his head, and let it fly. The stone struck Goliath in the forehead and sank deep into it, and the giant fell face down on the ground.

So David beat the Philistine champion with a sling and a stone. He struck him down, and there was no sword in David’s hand.

David ran over and stood on the fallen giant. He took hold of Goliath’s own sword, drew it out of its sheath, and killed him with it. Then he cut off Goliath’s head.

When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they turned and fled. The men of Israel and of Judah rose up with a great shout and chased them all the way to the valley and to the gates of Ekron. Wounded and dead Philistines lay all along the road to Shaaraim, as far as Gath and Ekron. When the Israelites came back from the chase, they plundered the Philistine camp.

David took Goliath’s head, and later he brought it to Jerusalem, but he kept Goliath’s armor in his own tent.

Earlier that day, as Saul watched David going out to meet Goliath, he had turned to Abner, the commander of his army.

“Abner,” the king asked, “whose son is this young man?”

“As surely as you live, Your Majesty, I don’t know,” Abner answered.

“Then find out whose son the boy is,” said Saul.

So as soon as David came back from killing Goliath, Abner took him and brought him before Saul. David was still holding Goliath’s head in his hand.

“Whose son are you, young man?” Saul asked him.

“I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem,” David answered.