1 Samuel 17:1–58

Original Meaning

Battle Lines at the Valley of Elah (17:1–3)

THE TRIBES OF Israel under Joshua’s leadership had settled in the central highlands while the Philistines lived in five capital cities of the coastal plains in the southwest. In the intervening years of the judges period, the Philistines had been Israel’s greatest military threat. Defeating them had been their principal reason for requesting a king (9:16). Saul’s initial victory over them drove the Philistines out of Israel’s central highlands and made this battle in the foothills between Israelite and Philistine territory inevitable (chs. 13–14). Much is at stake in the conflict, so much so that the peace and prosperity of Israel’s future can be said to hang in the balances.6

The battleground between Socoh and Azekah places this event in the western foothills of Judah. The Valley of Elah (Valley of the Terebinth) separates the opposing armies, presumably with the Philistine troops on the southern slopes of the valley and the Israelite forces on the northern slopes.7

Description of Goliath and His Challenge (17:4–11)

Bridging Contexts

THUS FAR IN OUR WALK THROUGH 1 SAMUEL, we have learned that God’s first and best plan was to rule Israel himself as its only king, just as God had done in Israel’s early history. Because of the nation’s military and political needs and its selfish demands, the Lord agreed to rule Israel through human anointed ones (“messiahs”). The first of these failed because he refused to accept Yahweh’s authority (King Saul). In the previous chapter, David was anointed as Saul’s successor. This military victory over Goliath and the Philistines validates David’s anointing, just as Saul’s victory over the Ammonites (11:1–15) validated his anointing (9:1–10:27).

Unlike Saul, David proves to be a king who embraces Yahweh’s authority enthusiastically. Indeed, he demonstrates that he is a man after Yahweh’s own heart (13:14), a description that emphasizes David as the Lord’s choice for king and also implies a like-mindedness between God and king. Though David’s victory over Goliath is merely the beginning of his rise to the throne, the die is cast. He has been anointed by the Lord’s prophet and has now demonstrated his ability to lead Israel. The rest of 1 Samuel is devoted to tension caused by having two anointed ones in Israel’s royal court.

Most readers today have little difficulty building a bridge between this text about David and Goliath and our contemporary culture in the early twenty-first century. This is perhaps the world’s most beloved story illustrating God’s ability to provide victory in the face of overwhelming odds. Many believers today identify immediately with David and take this text as a promise of victory against whatever problems seem overwhelming at the moment.

But we should ask if this is really the right bridge (or the only bridge). The task of bridging the distance between the biblical historian’s account of victory over Goliath and our own times is in reality complicated precisely by the fact that this is probably the best-known story in the books of Samuel, and certainly a narrative that has a permanent place in world literature and art.30 This familiarity helps with our task simply because the details of the episode are so well known. But it is also true that familiarity can actually hinder our ability to bridge the contexts, because we tend to prejudge the original meaning of the text and what its significance is for modern readers.

1 Samuel 16 and 17. We should begin by examining more closely the function of this famous story in the overall structure of the books of Samuel. The selection of David and his anointing as the next king of Israel (ch. 16) and his replacement of Saul form the backbone of the narrative from 1 Samuel 16 to the beginning of 2 Samuel.31 As David’s fortunes are rising, Saul’s are declining—at times gradually, at times precipitously.32

One of the most important observations about the role and function of 1 Samuel 17 is its relationship with 1 Samuel 16. This is perhaps because of the chronological inconsistencies between the two units (see discussion above). But regardless of the diachronic development of these texts, we must learn to let the previous unit inform and shape our understanding of chapter 17. Together they tell us that David has been designated by God as Saul’s replacement, that the Spirit of Yahweh has come upon David and departed from Saul, and that David has entered the royal service of the king and demonstrated his courage as a military leader capable of inspiring the Israelite troops. These two chapters complement each other in characterizing both David and Saul and preparing the reader for the rest of 1 Samuel.

Beyond this important role of chapters 16 and 17 as programmatic for the rest of the book, I believe there is a sort of conversation taking place between them in order to characterize David further. In chapter 16, we learn that spiritual reality is a matter of the heart, not the eyes. Yahweh does not consider things mortals see. Mortals look at the outward appearance, but Yahweh sees the heart (16:7, see comments). Spiritual reality has an internal dimension that can be easily overlooked or missed because of physical impressions. Human perception often misses truth because of an inability or unwillingness to penetrate beyond the externals to discern the truth. But God perceives and understands what cannot be discerned by the human eye.

Chapter 16 also tells us immediately that the Spirit of Yahweh came upon David (16:13). This is the nature of the narrative in chapter 16 as a stylized, “vertical” narrative that moves “from God above to the world below,” in which God instigates all the action and even speaks to Samuel in order to reveal his intentions.33 Chapter 17, by contrast, is a detailed “horizontal” view, in which David himself takes the initiative and delivers the most penetrating speeches.

In light of the way the narratives work together to characterize David, I believe it is especially striking that David sees and hears things that other characters do not. The Israelite troops, for example, see and hear an intimidating infantryman from the Philistine camp, who looks and sounds invincible. David, however, hears and sees only blasphemous defiance of the armies of the living God. Others see reasons for fear and hesitation, but David sees only reasons for taking immediate action. Others see despair, where David sees an opportunity for national vindication against the Philistines and personal advancement in the service of the king.

In other words, reading chapters 16 and 17 together suggests that David has learned (or is learning) not to be overly impressed with external physical appearances. He has learned the lesson taught to Samuel in 16:7: God sees beyond the superficial appearances to the realities of the heart. Thus, David sees beyond the hopelessness of the Valley of Elah. Rather than an uncertain situation in which others are frozen by fear, David sees clearly that Yahweh has given victory against such an enemy as this defiant Philistine, Goliath. Such a close reading of this text in light of the context of 1 Samuel (esp. ch. 16) helps us overcome our familiarity with the David and Goliath account.

Military language. Many readers today have another problem when it comes to bridging the context between this text and our own day. Some have difficulty learning the lessons we need to learn from the Old Testament in general because those lessons are so often couched in military terms. The significance of the conflict between Goliath (and his god) versus David (and Yahweh) can get lost in our contemporary aversion to militarism. We tend to forget that God has human enemies who oppose him. We tend to see them as ignorant and pitiable, whereas the Bible understands them as malevolent.

In order to grasp fully the significance of David’s victory over Goliath, we must remember that ancient Near Eastern philosophy equated military strength with a nation’s deity. Most polytheists in antiquity assumed any nation that conquered another nation did so because of a superior god. The famous Enuma Elish goes to great lengths to demonstrate exactly why Marduk, the god of Babylon, was superior to all other deities.34

Closer to home, Israel’s enemies assumed that Yahweh was only a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys (1 Kings 20:23–28). They thought they could defeat Israel if they fought them in the valley, where their deity would be superior. As today’s Christians reading the Old Testament, one of the most difficult adjustments we have to make is to learn to rejoice with national Israel when they witness Yahweh’s salvation accomplished through military strength. This is especially meaningful when the military victory is won miraculously. Thus, for example, the sight of Egyptian corpses lying on the shore of the Red Sea symbolized Yahweh’s gracious deliverance of a defenseless Israel against the greatest military power of that day (Ex. 14:30). The sight of dead Egyptian soldiers strengthened their faith (14:31) and led to worshipful singing and praise (15:1–21). Indeed, Yahweh’s defeat of the Egyptian army became the concrete sign of his salvation and new life for Israel throughout the Old Testament.

So too in the account of David and Goliath, the narrator intends us to rejoice at the sight of the decapitated Philistine, lying motionless in the Valley of Elah (1 Sam. 17:51) or at the news that the Philistine dead are strewn along the road from Gath to Ekron after the great Israelite victory (17:52). Admittedly, these are not images we normally evoke when we are seeking to build Christian faith today. But this is part of the challenge of bridging the contexts between ancient Israelite narrative and modern application.

Especially is this true in the present narrative since the conflict has been carefully framed in theological images. Repeatedly we are told Goliath defies the ranks of Israel, which David interprets as defiance of “the armies of the living God” (17:26, 36). David’s speech makes the point forcefully. Goliath relies on his military power (“sword and spear and javelin”), whereas David relies solely on the name of Yahweh (17:45). The episode demonstrates that Yahweh’s salvation—though military in its effect—is not accomplished through military power but rather through simple trust and reliance on him (17:47). David was Yahweh’s instrument of salvation with a sling and stone, “without a sword in his hand” (17:50).35

As I emphasized in the introduction, Old Testament narratives can have different levels of interpretation: universal, national, and individual.36 Every individual narrative also plays some role in the greater national narrative of Israel’s history and therefore also contributes to the ultimate narrative of God’s redemptive plan in history. This remarkable passage is important on a number of levels, since it contributes to the collection of Davidic narratives that characterize him so precisely in 1 and 2 Samuel. Beyond this individual level, the present passage eventually came to be understood on the national level because of its contribution, along with other Old Testament texts, to the messianism of early Judaism.

Thus, we may speak in terms of the general and specific significance of this narrative in our attempt to bring this passage to our own day. Generally speaking, the narrative teaches about personal faith and the desire of God to accomplish mighty things through the simple faith and actions of his servant. But more specifically, the narrative also portrays David as the ideal shepherd leader for Israel; as such, it contributes to the larger body of texts that subsequently feed into the concept of the Messiah.

The development of messianism. The books of Samuel contain in germinal form the basic concepts that contributed to the development of messianism. There can be no doubt that the portrayal of David in these texts contributed several themes by which the New Testament authors attempted to define Jesus. In particular, the books of Samuel emphasize four main themes that contributed to the concept of the messiah, themes which run throughout both books.37 (1) The anointed one is God’s appointed ruler. (2) He trusts in God and is protected by him. (3) The anointed one of Yahweh leads Israel victoriously in battle against the nation’s enemies. (4) The anointed one is a just ruler.

In light of these emphases, 1 Samuel 17 stands as a programmatic text at the center of the book. The previous chapter portrays David as Yahweh’s appointed ruler (the first of these themes); now the present text quickly confirms and establishes David as the military savior of his people, as the anointed one of Yahweh, who leads God’s people in battle (the third theme).38 This is especially apparent in David’s speech (17:45–47), where he becomes the “Yahweh confessor”—also a typical role for the messiah. As Yahweh confessor, the messiah represents Israel in fighting for the nation and is confirmed through Yahweh’s victory over her enemies.39

The power of faith. Beyond this specific contribution to the concept of messianism, this text speaks more generally to every generation of believers about the miraculous way in which God uses the faith of weak but determined servants to defeat overwhelming obstacles. What a striking picture of God’s great salvation! The young David, undeterred by the fierceness of Goliath’s appearance or taunting threats, boldly witnesses to his faith in God to deliver and then acts upon that faith. One eminent scholar of the books of Samuel observes that two factors make David’s heroism possible: his zeal for the reputation of Israel’s God (“the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel,” v. 46) and his utter trust in God’s ability to save him against all odds (vv. 37, 45–47).40 David’s energetic zeal and childlike faith as portrayed here are exemplary for all believers. We should all feel so deeply and act so boldly as David does.

Furthermore, as readers, we understand his zeal and faith better because the text has portrayed David as the man of God’s own choosing (i.e., he is a man after God’s own heart, 13:14) and as someone who has adopted God’s own perception of reality (i.e., he now sees beyond superficial externals and is able to see Goliath’s defiance for what it really is). The specific terms used to describe Goliath’s defiance imply that the Philistine is arrogantly crowing about his own strength and virtue.41 But because of David’s zeal and faith, he understands the irony of the Philistine warrior scorning the armies of the God who is alive as opposed to Dagon, the lifeless Philistine deity. This is in fact what drives the passage forward to its inevitable conclusion. David’s conviction that Yahweh is a living God means that Goliath deserves to die.

Finally, the general interpretation of this passage for all believers also emphasizes the way God uses the unlikely and unexpected to confound and defeat the more powerful enemies of his purposes. Certainly this becomes an important theme in many Israelite contexts, so that late in Old Testament history the great prophet Zechariah could teach that God’s purposes are not achieved by might nor by power but by the Spirit of Yahweh (Zech. 4:6). Likewise, when the apostle Paul described the qualifications of the early believers in Corinth, he stated that God had chosen “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” and “the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).

Contemporary Significance

INTERPRETATION AND APPLICATION of this great story will suffer if we leap too quickly to “victory over our Goliaths” as a metaphor for whatever wistful ailments or emotional frailties we encounter in our regular, everyday experiences. Such applications will be anemic and will miss the grand and powerful themes of this text. But if we keep the issues that rise from the exegetical study before us, the metaphor becomes a useful one: David is an example of the faithful and brave servant of Yahweh, and through his faith and action God wins victory over his blasphemous enemies. In this sense, all of us benefit by learning from this text that God grants victory over his Goliaths and that our faith and action are keys to the battle.

Facing enemies. Christians should not be surprised when they encounter opposition to what God has called them to do. The Bible teaches in a variety of ways that there will often be challenges to God’s sovereign rule in the world. Whether it is Amalekites attacking Israel’s rearguard as they depart Egypt (Ex. 17:8–16), Amorite coalitions uniting against Joshua in the Promised Land (Josh. 9:1–2), imposing-looking Philistines screaming offensive challenges at Saul’s troops, or enemies of Jesus plotting his destruction (Mark 3:6), the world has never lacked for enemies of God’s people.

Beginning with the book of Judges, the entire Philistine-Israelite conflict provided historical opportunities for the Israelites to learn spiritual truths (e.g., review the ark narrative and the Ebenezer passages; see comments on 4:1–7:17). When they sinned and turned their backs on God, the Philistines defeated them militarily. When they repented and returned to God, he gave them victory over their enemies. In this text, the Philistines once again appear as the quintessential enemies of God. The newly anointed leader of Israel, who will eventually become the ideal messianic king, is confronted for the first time with the rebellious opposition of the world. The Philistine warrior’s defiance of Yahweh offers all of us an opportunity to reflect on the nature and extent of opposition to Christian ideals and causes in our own setting.

Church history presents many examples of Christians who failed to interact redemptively with hostile surrounding cultures.42 For example, the Christian community in Germany unfortunately responded to the rise of nationalism and fascism in varied and often disingenuous ways. It is true that many members of the German Evangelical Church formed a Confessing Church movement that openly opposed Nazi racism and brutality, and its leaders were imprisoned, exiled, or executed (as in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer). But for the majority of the church in Germany, it was easier simply to look the other direction.

Nazi Germany is far removed from most contemporary Christians’ context. For Christians living in North America, the act of professing Christian faith has not typically meant the believer needs to worry about blatantly aggressive opposition from the culture. Anti-Christian messages throughout the history of the United States have normally taken subtler forms. But that may be changing. The horrific school shootings plaguing the United States since 1998 have sometimes been laced with troubling anti-Christian rhetoric, which came to a tragic culmination with the death of Cassie Bernall, called by many a modern-day Christian martyr.43 If such decidedly anti-Christian sentiments continue to grow in this country, the prevailing question for the church in coming years will be how we respond.

The German church failed to reject radical nationalism and to oppose vigorously the growth of Nazism in the early twentieth century. The church essentially failed to function as a transforming element of the culture.44 The way in which today’s Christians in North America respond to postmodernism and the growing possibility of anti-Christian sentiment may pose a discomfiting parallel. In the face of clear opposition to biblical truth, David’s speech and courageous service in 1 Samuel 17 offer an example for today’s church to emulate.45

Messianism and Jesus Christ. In keeping with our discussion in the preceding Bridging Contexts section, I would argue that 1 Samuel 17 must be applied to our day in two ways. First, the chapter’s contributions to the intertestamental understanding of messianism should enable us to understand the nature and mission of Jesus Christ as the Messiah. David’s victory over Goliath confirms him as the anointed one of God, as the Yahweh confessor, and as the one who seals victory for God’s people. The New Testament affirms that Jesus was born of Abrahamic and Davidic lineage (Matt. 1:2–16; Luke 2:4–15). Such claims demonstrate that the coming of Jesus fulfilled the promises of both the ancestral covenant and the Davidic covenant, the latter of which contained a promise to provide a son of David to rule Israel (2 Sam. 7).

Thus, Jesus was the anointed one of God, the man of God’s own choosing, as David had been centuries before. Jesus was also a “Yahweh confessor,” as David had been. Just as the speech of David in 1 Samuel 17:42–47 represented the truth to the Philistines and the Israelites, so the sermons of Jesus were accepted by the disciples and the early church as the prophetic word of God (Matt. 7:29). And just as David’s courageous actions won victory for his people, so the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus provide victory for those who love him and are identified with him in faith (1 Cor. 15:54–57; 1 John 5:4).

This brief survey hints at only a few of the many ways in which the New Testament defines the role of the Messiah and frames the significance of Jesus in light of these Old Testament themes. Our purpose here is to highlight the way 1 Samuel 17 contributes to our Christology. In the New Testament, Jesus is presented as the ultimate fulfillment of the promises concerning great King David’s greater Son (2 Sam. 7). But he also fulfills other aspects of the Old Testament’s longing for an ideal Davidide, including important aspects of the David-Goliath episode. So our text is part of a continuous trajectory throughout the Old Testament (and esp. so in the books of Samuel). This trajectory gradually and irrevocably points our attention to the work and majesty of Jesus of Nazareth. He is God’s own Anointed, the Speaker of God’s word, and the Victor over sin and death.

A second application of this text for today’s church flows from the emphasis here on individual faith and responsibility in the face of opposition to God’s work. In the Bridging Contexts section above, I highlighted three aspects of David’s victory over Goliath that I believe contribute to our understanding of contemporary Christian faith. (1) David had divinely guided insight that others lacked. Because of the Spirit of God working within him, he saw things others did not see (16:13). His perception of Goliath was dominated by what he saw with his heart, not his eyes. This internal dimension was lacking in Saul and the Israelite army.

(2) David was motivated by his zeal for God and his faith in God’s character. He was alone in his confidence that Goliath could be defeated, since apparently the entire Israelite army believed otherwise. His conviction that God would defeat the Philistine aggressor made it possible for him to stand alone in the face of overwhelming odds.

(3) David was aware of the means by which the victory would be accomplished. He understood that faith in Yahweh was the determining factor, and he was not dissuaded by the staggering power at the disposal of his enemy. David was not fooled by the majority opinion that “might makes right.”

A woman who has become an American cultural icon in the closing years of the twentieth century provides an interesting parallel. One day in 1955, a forty-two-year-old African American seamstress riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, violated segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. The enemy Rosa Parks faced must have looked like an invincible warrior. The governmental laws and cultural norms were all aligned against her, and she was arrested for her refusal to conform. But she perceived things that others did not see, and she was confident in the righteousness of her cause.

It is no accident that this simple act of an unassuming but disenfranchised woman became the spark igniting a movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He and others in Montgomery organized African Americans in a boycott of the bus system, which eventually led to the desegregation of the buses in December 1956. This celebrated incident was only the beginning of a long struggle involving the entire nation. Regarding her role in the civil rights movement and her decision to refuse to give up her seat, Mrs. Parks would later say, “Knowing what must be done does away with fear…. It was time for someone to stand up—or in my case, to sit down.”46 Her perception, strength in weakness, and confidence are not unlike David’s and his similar complaint (17:26): “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

So Rosa Parks can serve as a modern illustration of the principles at work in David’s defeat of Goliath, explained most eloquently by the apostle Paul, who reminds us that God chooses “the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27). David versus Goliath remains a vivid portrait of God’s miraculous victories and should serve as an example for us of individual faith and responsibility in the face of strong opposition. Note what Wesley wrote on this text: “A little shepherd, come but this morning from keeping sheep, has more courage than all the mighty men of Israel! Thus does God often do great things for his people by the weak things of the world.”47 With such biblical and contemporary examples of courage and resolve, Christians can move forward with confidence to face the challenges of our era.

Original Meaning

Description of Goliath and His Challenge (17:4–11)

PECULIAR TO THIS Israelite-Philistine battle is the appearance of a single infantryman who challenges Israel to match him in representative combat. In this way the issue of the war between the two nations might be settled in single combat: “Choose a man and have him come down to me” (17:8). Man-to-man combat as a substitute for full-fledged battle between opposing armies was possible in the ancient world as a means of settling disputes without recourse to extensive bloodshed.8 Though examples are sometimes in dispute, it is possible to see the famous Babylonian creation account, known as the Enuma Elish, as such an example among the gods. The great Babylonian divine hero, Marduk, represented most of the deities against the terrifying Tiamat.9 But in most of these examples, representative individual combat seldom succeeded as a means of limiting warfare. As in our text, the warring parties often continued with the battle after the contest between the designated representatives was over (17:52–54; cf. 2 Sam. 2:12–17).

The first item in the narrator’s elaborate description of Goliath is the NIV’s “champion” (ʾiš-habbenayim in 17:4; lit., “the man-in-between”; also in 17:23). The designation occurs only here in the Old Testament, but its plural appears frequently in the so-called War Scroll from ancient Qumran as “infantrymen.”10 It is possible that such representative contests were not known to the Israelites and that the term connotes “one who enters into single combat between two armies.”11 This may be supported by the observation that it is always the Philistine champion who challenges Israel to representative combat, so that the practice may have been a Western custom imported by the Philistines, perhaps from their Aegean homeland.12

Goliath is not designated a “giant,” as we might imagine from children’s stories like “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Rather, he is portrayed as an exceedingly tall warrior whose very height strikes terror in the hearts of his potential foes. The NIV’s “over nine feet tall” represents the Hebrew text. A Greek translation preserves a reading that Goliath was six feet nine inches tall.13 Regardless of the precise details, the narrative’s description of Goliath’s impressive stature reminds the reader of another impressive leader described as “head and shoulders above the rest” (10:23). In other words, Saul is the best match for Goliath. Indeed, there is an implicit condemnation of Saul in Goliath’s description, since King Saul would be expected not only to motivate his troops but to lead them forth against the Philistines. But on hearing Goliath’s words, “Saul and all the Israelites” are paralyzed with fear (17:11). How unlike the Saul of chapter 11.

Description of David (17:12–16)