Bible Commentaries
1 Samuel 17

Verses 1-5

David and Goliath (17:1-18:5)

In the preceding story David was described to Saul as a man of valor, a standing hardly consonant with his employment as armor-bearer and suggesting typical Eastern hyperbole among friends at court. We now come to an incident which is actually recorded in a highly complex story in which two traditions seem to have been combined. The story we have just looked at associates David with Saul as armor-bearer or musician. This early tradition is continued in chapter 17, but it is intermixed with a later tradition which began in 1 Samuel 16:1-13 and which identifies David as a comely shepherd lad, not associated with Saul, and anointed by Samuel at Bethlehem. The early tradition is continued in 1 Samuel 17:1-11; 1 Samuel 17:32-40; 1 Samuel 17:42-49; 1 Samuel 17:51-54, and the later tradition is preserved especially in 1 Samuel 17:12-31; 17:55-18:5; and other single verses. In the second version, David was a shepherd boy, untrained in the arts of war, who was sent by Jesse with provisions for the older sons in Saul’s army. He naively offered to meet singlehanded the giant who was terrorizing his countrymen. The story obviously knows nothing of David as Saul’s armor-bearer, but emphasizes his status as a mere shepherd lad. Even his brethren have apparently not fully accepted his position as the Lord’s anointed. At this point the second version finishes abruptly and is fitted into the first and earlier tradition contained in the first eleven verses of the chapter. No one reading the chapter carefully can avoid seeing the obvious combination here. At verse 32 David is once more Saul’s armor-bearer and a man of valor. The armor was left behind as too cumbersome, and David took the field with the sling and stone so familiar in his former life as a shepherd boy. His strategy succeeded; the Philistine giant was stunned by the stone from David’s sling and then killed by David with a sword. Verse 50 belongs to the later tradition and regards the giant as killed by David’s stone. In this verse the picture of the shepherd boy returns, as also in verse 55 where David is obviously unknown to Saul and is not his armor-bearer. In this tradition the Goliath incident serves as a means of introducing David to Saul, and the version finishes with the developing friendship between David and Saul’s son, Jonathan. David is taken into Saul’s service and fitted out with Jonathan’s armor, a common way of sealing a friendship.

We note the covenant friendship between David and Jonathan. This was a form of relationship made in the presence of the Lord, in which each party accepted obligations toward the other; it was regarded as being of the same order as blood relationship. It was such that it could be described as the knitting together of the souls of the two men (1 Samuel 18:1), by which was meant that the very being of the one was extended into and embraced the personality of the other; each became the other’s alter ego.

It is difficult to assess which of these two versions is closer to historical actuality. The Goliath incident was a turning point in the Philistine war; Jonathan’s covenant with David is bedded deep in Israel’s history; David’s resourcefulness and his shepherd background seem beyond dispute; and his outwitting of Goliath is credible. David’s actual mode of introduction to Saul is an issue, however, that remains in obscurity, although the early tradition of a relationship based upon David’s ability as a musician fits in well with David’s place in Israel’s religious life as a typical master of psalmody.