The Shepherd and the Giant

“How can I go?” said Samuel. “If Saul hears about it, he will kill me.”

“Take a young cow along,” the Lord said, “and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ Ask Jesse to come to the sacrifice. Then I will show you what to do, and you will anoint for me the one I name.”

Samuel did what the Lord told him and went to Bethlehem. The town’s elders came out to meet him, trembling. “Do you come in peace?” they asked.

“In peace,” he said. “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Make yourselves holy, and come with me to the sacrifice.” He made Jesse and his sons holy, and he invited them to the sacrifice.

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t go by his looks or by how tall he is, because I have rejected him. I don’t see the way man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him walk past Samuel. “The Lord hasn’t chosen this one either,” said Samuel.

Next Jesse had Shammah walk past. “The Lord hasn’t chosen this one either,” said Samuel.

Jesse had seven of his sons walk past Samuel, and Samuel said to him, “The Lord hasn’t chosen these.”

“Are all your children here?” Samuel asked Jesse.

“There is still the youngest,” said Jesse. “He’s out looking after the sheep.”

“Send for him and bring him here,” said Samuel. “We won’t sit down until he comes.”

So Jesse sent for him and brought him in. He was ruddy, with a handsome face and fine looks. And the Lord said, “Get up and anoint him. He is the one.”

Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him there, in the middle of his brothers. From that day forward, the Spirit of the Lord came on David in power. Then Samuel got up and went to Ramah.

Saul’s servants said to him, “You see, an evil spirit from God is troubling you. Give us the order, my lord, and we will look for a man who plays the harp well. Then when the evil spirit from God is on you, he will play, and you will be well.”

“Then find me a man who can play well,” Saul told his servants, “and bring him to me.”

One of the young men spoke up. “Look, I’ve seen one of the sons of Jesse of Bethlehem, and he plays well. He’s a strong, brave man and a fighter. He speaks wisely, and he’s good-looking. And the Lord is with him.”

So Saul sent messengers to Jesse. “Send me your son David,” he said, “the one who is with the sheep.”

Jesse loaded a donkey with bread, a container of wine and a young goat, and he sent them to Saul with his son David.

David came to Saul and served him. He loved him very much, and he became his armor-bearer.

Saul sent word to Jesse: “Please let David stay and serve me, because I’m pleased with him.”

After that, any time the spirit from God was on Saul, David took the harp and played it. Saul would be refreshed and well again, and the evil spirit would leave him.

Saul and the men of Israel gathered too. They camped in the Valley of Elah and lined up for battle to face the Philistines.

The Philistines stood on the mountain on one side, Israel on the mountain on the other, and the valley lay between them.

A champion came out of the Philistine camp. His name was Goliath, and he came from Gath. He was six cubits and a span tall: about nine feet nine inches.

On his head was a bronze helmet, and he wore a bronze coat of armor that weighed five thousand shekels, about 110 pounds. He had bronze guards on his shins. Between his shoulders hung a bronze javelin, a light spear for throwing. His spear had a shaft like a weaver’s beam, the heavy wooden bar of a loom. Its iron head weighed six hundred shekels, about thirteen pounds. A man carrying his shield walked in front of him.

He stood there and shouted to the armies of Israel, “Why have you come out and lined up for battle? Aren’t I a Philistine, and aren’t you Saul’s servants? Pick a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. If he can fight me and kill me, we will become your servants. But if I get the better of him and kill him, you will become our servants and serve us.”

“I defy the armies of Israel today!” the Philistine said. “Give me a man, and we will fight each other!”

When Saul and all Israel heard what the Philistine said, they were shaken and terribly afraid.

His three oldest sons had gone with Saul to the battle. Eliab was the firstborn, Abinadab the second and Shammah the third. David was the youngest. While the three oldest followed Saul, David went back and forth from Saul to Bethlehem to look after his father’s sheep.

The Philistine came near every morning and every evening, and he showed himself there for forty days.

Jesse said to his son David, “Take your brothers an ephah of this roasted grain, about two-thirds of a bushel, along with these ten loaves. Hurry to the camp with them. And take these ten cheeses to the captain in charge of their thousand men. See how your brothers are doing, and bring back news.”

Saul, David’s brothers and all the men of Israel were in the Valley of Elah, fighting the Philistines.

David was up early in the morning. He left the sheep with someone to look after them, took the food, and set off as Jesse had told him. He reached the place where the wagons stood just as the army was going out to the fight, shouting for battle.

Israel and the Philistines lined up for battle, army against army.

David left his things with the man who looked after the baggage, ran to the battle line, and greeted his brothers.

When the men of Israel saw the man, every one of them ran from him in terror.

“Have you seen this man coming up?” the men of Israel said. “He’s surely come to defy Israel. The king will give great riches to the man who kills him. He will give that man his daughter as a wife, and that man’s family will pay no taxes in Israel.”

David said to the men standing around him, “What will be given to the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the shame from Israel? And who is this uncircumcised Philistine, to defy the armies of the living God?”

The people gave him the same answer: “That’s what the man who kills him will get.”

Eliab, his oldest brother, heard him talking with the men, and he was furious with David. “Why have you come down here?” he said. “And who did you leave those few sheep with, out in the wilderness? I know your pride and the evil in your heart. You’ve come down here to watch the battle.”

“What have I done now?” said David. “Isn’t there a reason?”

He turned away from Eliab to someone else and asked the same thing, and the people answered him the same way again.

People who heard what David said repeated it to Saul, and Saul sent for him.

“You can’t go out and fight this Philistine,” Saul said to David. “You’re only a youth, and he has been a fighter ever since he was a young man.”

But David said to Saul, “I was looking after my father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after it, hit it, and pulled the lamb from its mouth. When it came at me, I caught it by its beard, struck it, and killed it. I have struck down both the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will go the same way, since he has defied the armies of the living God.”

“The Lord saved me from the lion’s paw and the bear’s paw,” David said, “and he will save me from this Philistine’s hand.”

“Go,” Saul said to David. “The Lord will be with you.”

Saul dressed David in his own clothes. He set a bronze helmet on David’s head and put a coat of armor on him. David strapped his sword on over the clothes and tried to move, because he had not tested any of it.

“I can’t go in these,” David told Saul, “because I haven’t tested them.” So David took them off.

He took his staff in his hand. He picked out five smooth stones from the brook and dropped them into the pouch of his shepherd’s bag. With his sling in his hand, he went toward the Philistine.

When the Philistine caught sight of David, he looked down on him, because David was only a youth, ruddy, with a handsome face.

“Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” the Philistine said to David. Then he cursed David by his gods.

“Come to me,” the Philistine said to David, “and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and to the wild animals.”

David answered the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear and a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of Armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the Lord will put you in my hands. I will strike you and cut your head off.

“And today I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines to the birds of the sky and to the wild animals of the earth. Then all the earth will know that there is a God in Israel. Every one of these people will know, too, that the Lord doesn’t save with sword and spear. The battle is the Lord’s, and he will put you in our hands.”

David put his hand into his bag, took out a stone, and slung it. It hit the Philistine in his forehead. The stone sank in, and he fell face first to the ground.

So David got the better of the Philistine with a sling and a stone. He struck him down and killed him, and there was no sword in David’s hand.

Then David ran and stood over him. He took the Philistine’s sword, drew it out of its sheath, killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

The men of Israel and of Judah got up and shouted, and they chased the Philistines as far as Gai and the gates of Ekron. Wounded Philistines fell all along the road to Shaaraim, as far as Gath and Ekron.

The Israelites turned back from the chase and looted the Philistine camp.

David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put the Philistine’s armor in his tent.

“I swear by your life, my king,” said Abner, “I don’t know.”

“Find out whose son the young man is,” said the king.

When David came back from killing the Philistine, Abner brought him before Saul. David had the Philistine’s head in his hand.

“Young man,” Saul said to him, “whose son are you?”

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