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Five Smooth Stones · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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  Two armies are camped on two hillsides with a valley between them, and for forty
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  days a champion has come out, morning and evening, to defy Israel.
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  Then a young man who was only sent to bring his brothers some bread says he will
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  go.
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  Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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  Our reading is from the first book of Samuel, chapter seventeen, verses
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  thirty-two to fifty, in the World English Bible, British Edition.
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  David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him.
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  Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”
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  Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with
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  him; for you are but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.”
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  David said to Saul, “Your servant was keeping his father’s sheep; and when a
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  lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after him, struck
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  him, and rescued it out of his mouth. When he arose against me, I caught him by his
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  beard, struck him, and killed him. Your servant struck both the lion and the bear.
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  This uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, since he has defied the
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  armies of the living God.” David said, “The LORD, who delivered me out of the paw
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  of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me out of the hand of
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  this Philistine.”
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  Saul said to David, “Go! The LORD will be with you.”
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  Saul dressed David with his clothing. He put a helmet of bronze on his head, and he
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  clad him with a coat of mail. David strapped his sword on his clothing and he
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  tried to move, for he had not tested it. David said to Saul, “I can’t go with
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  these, for I have not tested them.” Then David took them off.
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  He took his staff in his hand, and chose for himself five smooth stones out of the
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  brook, and put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag which he had.
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  His sling was in his hand; and he came near to the Philistine.
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  The Philistine walked and came near to David; and the man who bore the shield
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  went before him. When the Philistine looked around and saw David, he disdained
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  him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and had a good looking face.
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  The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?”
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  The Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, “Come to me,
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  and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and to the animals of the field.”
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  Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and
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  with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of Armies, the God of the
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  armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today, the LORD will deliver you into my
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  hand. I will strike you and take your head from off you.
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  I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines today to the birds of the
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  sky and to the wild animals of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is
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  a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD doesn’t
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  save with sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into
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  our hand.”
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  When the Philistine arose, and walked and came near to meet David, David hurried and
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  ran towards the army to meet the Philistine. David put his hand in his bag,
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  took a stone and slung it, and struck the Philistine in his forehead.
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  The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.
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  So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck
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  the Philistine and killed him; but there was no sword in David’s hand.
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  So that's the scene most of us met as children. Let's walk back to how it
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  starts, look closely at what the chapter actually says about the fight, and then at
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  a few places where the old manuscripts don't quite agree with each other.
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  First, the map. The chapter opens with the Philistine army camped between two towns
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  called Socoh and Azekah, and Saul's army in the valley of Elah.
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  Elah is usually translated as terebinth, a kind of tree, so this is the valley of the
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  terebinth: a long, shallow valley in the low hills of the Shephelah.
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  The writer gives us the layout in one plain sentence.
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  The Philistines on a mountain on one side, Israel on a mountain on the other, and a
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  valley between them.
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  The Philistines are Israel's great rivals through these books.
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  They held a group of five cities, and Goliath comes from one of them, Gath.
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  Archaeologists identify Gath with a large site called Tell es-Safi, and it has
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  been excavated for many seasons. We'll come back to it at the end.
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  Now the champion. Goliath of Gath comes out and stands between the lines, and the
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  writer lingers on his equipment. A bronze helmet. A coat of mail weighing five
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  thousand shekels, which the translation's own footnote puts at about fifty
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  kilograms. Bronze armour on his legs, a javelin across his shoulders, and a spear
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  with a shaft like a weaver's beam and an iron head of six hundred shekels, about
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  six kilograms. Then he makes his offer. Choose one man to come down and fight me.
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  If he kills me, we'll be your servants. If I kill him, you'll be ours.
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  And when Saul and all Israel heard those words, the text says, they were dismayed
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  and greatly afraid. This goes on morning and evening for forty days.
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  How tall was he? Here the manuscripts disagree, and it's worth knowing why.
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  The standard Hebrew text, the one behind most English Bibles, gives six cubits and
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  a span. A cubit is roughly the length of a forearm, about forty-six centimetres, so
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  that comes to about nine feet nine, close to three metres.
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  But a copy of Samuel found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, from the late first century
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  before Christ, gives four cubits and a span. So do the ancient Greek translation
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  known as the Septuagint, and the first-century Jewish historian Josephus.
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  That's about six feet nine, a little over two metres.
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  Still a very big man in any army, but not a giant from a fairy tale.
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  Many scholars think the smaller number is the earlier one and the bigger number grew
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  as the text was copied, though not all agree.
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  Into this comes David. He's the youngest of Jesse's eight sons, from Bethlehem, and
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  he hasn't come to fight. His father sends him down with an ephah of parched grain
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  and ten loaves for his brothers, ten cheeses for their commander, and orders to
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  bring back news. He arrives just as the army is shouting for battle, hears the
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  challenge for himself, and starts asking what will be done for the man who kills
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  this Philistine, and who this man is, to defy the armies of the living God.
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  His oldest brother Eliab hears him and is furious.
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  Why have you come down here, he asks, and who did you leave those few sheep with?
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  Then comes the scene in our reading. David tells Saul he has fought off a lion and a
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  bear to protect his father's flock, and he sums up his case in one line: the LORD who
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  delivered him from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver him from
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  this Philistine. Saul tries to dress him in his own armour and helmet, and David
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  tries to move in it. He hasn't tested it, he says, and he takes it all off.
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  He goes down with his staff, his sling, and five smooth stones from the brook.
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  It's easy to picture a boy with a toy against a soldier.
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  In fact, shepherds used the sling to keep animals off a flock, and armies used it in
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  war. The book of Judges, describing the army of the tribe of Benjamin, mentions
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  seven hundred chosen left-handed men, every one of whom "could sling a stone at
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  a hair and not miss." So when David chooses the sling over Saul's armour, he
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  isn't choosing to go unarmed. Goliath doesn't see it that way.
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  He sees a ruddy, good-looking youth carrying a staff, and asks if he's a dog,
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  to be met with sticks.
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  What David says back is the centre of the chapter as the writer tells it.
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  He doesn't boast about his aim. He says Goliath comes with sword, spear and
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  javelin, but he comes in the name of the LORD of Armies, so that all the earth may
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  know there is a God in Israel, and so that everyone gathered there may know the LORD
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  doesn't save with sword and spear. Then it's over very quickly.
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  One stone, to the forehead, and Goliath falls on his face.
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  The writer adds a detail you might miss: there was no sword in David's hand.
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  In the very next verse, David runs up, draws Goliath's own sword, and finishes
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  the fight with it.
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  Some readers also notice who isn't fighting. Earlier in the same book, Saul
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  is described as standing head and shoulders above everyone in Israel.
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  If anyone was the obvious match for a giant, it was the king.
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  Many scholars read the whole chapter as part of a larger argument running through
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  these books, that Saul is failing as king and David is rising to replace him.
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  The Philistines run, Israel chases them as far as Gath and Ekron, and David keeps
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  Goliath's head and armour. Later in the book, when David is running from Saul, a
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  priest at a place called Nob hands him a sword wrapped in a cloth, "the sword of
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  Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah."
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  And when the army comes home from this battle, the women come out singing, "Saul
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  has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands."
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  Saul is very angry. From that day, the text says, he watched David.
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  Now the untidy parts, because they're in the text and it's fair to say so.
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  The first is in the closing verses of the chapter.
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  After the fight, Saul asks his commander Abner, "whose son is this youth?"
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  and Abner says he can't tell. But in the chapter before, David has already come
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  into Saul's service, playing the harp for him and becoming his armour bearer, and
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  Saul loved him greatly. One verse in our chapter says David went back and forth
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  between Saul and his father's sheep, which some read as smoothing the two together.
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  Many scholars think two accounts of how David came to Saul have been woven into
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  one. And the manuscripts add a clue. The Septuagint has a noticeably shorter form
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  of this chapter, without David bringing food to his brothers and without Saul
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  asking who he is. Scholars differ on whether that shorter version is older,
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  with material added later, or whether the Greek translators trimmed a longer
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  original.
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  The second is a single verse in the second book of Samuel, chapter twenty-one, verse
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  nineteen, in a short list of later battles against the Philistines.
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  In the standard Hebrew text, it says that Elhanan, a man from Bethlehem, killed
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  Goliath the Gittite, whose spear shaft was like a weaver's beam.
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  Our translation reads that verse as Goliath's brother.
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  The first book of Chronicles, telling the same episode, says Elhanan killed Lahmi,
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  the brother of Goliath. So who killed Goliath? Some scholars think one of the
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  two verses was damaged in copying, and many readers follow Chronicles and see two
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  different men. Some have suggested Elhanan was another name for David.
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  Many scholars think Elhanan's victory is the older tradition and that, over time,
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  it came to be told of the more famous David. The text doesn't settle it, and I
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  won't settle it for you.
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  And the third is in the ground at Gath. In 2005, the excavators at Tell es-Safi
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  found a small piece of pottery with seven letters on it, read as two words.
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  It was first suggested that they looked similar to the name Goliath, and that got
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  a lot of attention. It isn't a mention of the Goliath of this chapter, and it
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  doesn't prove anything about him. What it does give us is early writing from the
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  very city this story names as his home.
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  So the height depends on which manuscript you open, the order of events depends on
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  which version you read, and even the name of the man who killed Goliath has more
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  than one answer in the Bible itself. What both forms of the chapter keep is the
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  exchange in the valley: a well-armed man, and a shepherd who says out loud that the
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  battle is the LORD's.
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  So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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  When have you been handed someone else's armour, help that looked right but didn't
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  fit you, and what did you do with it?
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  Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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  World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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  Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.