1 Samuel 17 — Read & Listen Online

Goliath Defies the Ranks of Israel

Chapter 17.

Now the Philistines gathered their forces for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah and camped at Ephes-dammim, between Socoh and Azekah. Saul and the men of Israel assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah, and they drew up their battle line to face the Philistines. The Philistines held the hill on one side and Israel the hill on the other, with the valley between them.

A champion came out from the Philistine camp. His name was Goliath, from Gath, and he stood about nine feet nine inches tall. He wore a bronze helmet and a coat of scale armor weighing about one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Bronze guards covered his legs, and a bronze javelin hung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and its iron head weighed about fifteen pounds. His shield-bearer marched ahead of him.

He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, "Why have you come out to line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and you the servants of Saul? Choose a man and send him down to me." "If he can fight me and kill me, we will become your servants; but if I overpower him and kill him, then you will be our servants and serve us." Then the Philistine said, "I defy the ranks of Israel today! Give me a man, and let us fight each other."

When Saul and all Israel heard the Philistine's words, they were dismayed and terrified.

David Arrives and Answers the Challenge

Now David was the son of a man named Jesse, an Ephrathite from Bethlehem in Judah who had eight sons. By Saul's time Jesse was getting on in years. Jesse's three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: Eliab the firstborn, Abinadab the second, and Shammah the third. David was the youngest. The three oldest had followed Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's sheep at Bethlehem.

For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.

Jesse said to his son David, "Take your brothers this large supply of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread, and hurry them to your brothers at the camp." "And take these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are, and bring back news of them." Now Saul and David's brothers and all the men of Israel were in the Valley of Elah, fighting against the Philistines.

Early in the morning David left the flock with a keeper, loaded up, and set out as Jesse had directed him. He reached the camp just as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. Israel and the Philistines drew up their lines facing each other.

David left his supplies with the keeper of the baggage, ran to the battle line, and greeted his brothers. As he was talking with them, the champion named Goliath, the Philistine from Gath, stepped out from the Philistine ranks and shouted his usual challenge, and David heard it.

When the men of Israel saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.

The men of Israel were saying, "Have you seen this man who keeps coming out? He comes to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him; he will give him his daughter and exempt his father's family from service in Israel."

David asked the men standing near him, "What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living Father?"

The people repeated to him what would be done for the man who killed him.

When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at David. "Why have you come down here?" he demanded. "And who did you leave those few sheep with in the wilderness? I know your pride and the wickedness of your heart. You came down only to watch the battle."

"What have I done now?" said David. "It was only a question." He turned from him to someone else and asked the same question, and the people answered him as before.

David's words were overheard and reported to Saul, who sent for him.

David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart over this Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him."

Saul replied, "You cannot go out against this Philistine to fight him. You are only a boy, and he has been a warrior since his youth."

But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. Whenever a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock," "I went after it, struck it down, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its mane, struck it, and killed it." "Your servant has killed both lion and bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living Father."

David added, "Our Father, who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine." Saul said to David, "Go, and may our Father be with you."

David Strikes Down the Philistine

Then Saul dressed David in his own armor. He put a bronze helmet on his head and dressed him in a coat of armor. David strapped on the sword over the armor and tried to walk, but he was not used to it. "I cannot go in these," he told Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off.

Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the streambed, and put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag. With his sling in his hand, he approached the Philistine.

Meanwhile the Philistine, with his shield-bearer ahead of him, kept coming closer to David. When the Philistine looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, he despised him. He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. "Come here," he said, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field."

David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Father of heaven's armies, the Father of the ranks of Israel, whom you have defied." "Today our Father will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the corpses of the Philistine army to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth, and all the earth will know that there is our Father in Israel. "And everyone gathered here will know that our Father saves not with sword and spear; for the battle belongs to our Father, and he will give all of you into our hands."

As the Philistine moved to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag, David took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.

So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand, he struck the Philistine down and killed him.

David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine's sword, drew it from its sheath, and killed him, cutting off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they fled.

Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath and the gates of Ekron. The Philistine dead lay strewn along the Shaaraim road all the way to Gath and Ekron. When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp. David took the Philistine's head and brought it to Jerusalem, and he put Goliath's weapons in his own tent.

When Saul had watched David go out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, the commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is this young man?" "As surely as you live, my king, I do not know," Abner replied.

"Find out whose son this young man is," the king said.

As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the Philistine's head still in his hand.

"Whose son are you, young man?" Saul asked him. David answered, "I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem."

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