David and Goliath
about 1025 BC, traditional dateTraditional date
Samuel anoints David, the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem. In the valley of Elah the young shepherd kills the Philistine champion Goliath with a sling and a stone, and his fame turns King Saul against him.
After the rejection of Saul, the account says, the Lord sent Samuel to Jesse at Bethlehem to anoint one of his sons. Seven sons passed before Samuel and were refused, with the words, “man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart”. The youngest, David, was fetched from the sheep and anointed among his brothers (1 Samuel 16:1–13). David then entered Saul’s service as a harp player and armour-bearer (1 Samuel 16:14–23).
The Philistines gathered at Socoh in Judah, and Saul’s army faced them across the Valley of Elah (1 Samuel 17:1–3). A Philistine champion, Goliath of Gath, came out every day for forty days and challenged Israel to settle the war by single combat. The Hebrew text makes him six cubits and a span tall, with bronze armour and an iron spearhead of six hundred shekels (1 Samuel 17:4–11, 16). The Greek Septuagint gives his height as four cubits and a span (Septuagint 1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms) 17:4), and so does Josephus (Josephus, Antiquities 6.171).
David, sent by his father with food for his brothers in the camp, heard the challenge and offered to fight (1 Samuel 17:17–32). He put aside the armour Saul gave him and took his staff, his sling and five smooth stones from the brook (1 Samuel 17:38–40). To Goliath he said, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of Armies” (1 Samuel 17:45). His stone struck the Philistine in the forehead. David cut off his head with Goliath’s own sword, and the Philistines fled (1 Samuel 17:48–52).
Saul kept David at court, and Saul’s son Jonathan made a covenant of friendship with him (1 Samuel 18:1–4). But when the women sang, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands”, the king grew angry and afraid, and twice threw his spear at him (1 Samuel 18:6–12).
The account sets David’s anointing beside his victory. The Spirit of the Lord comes on David and departs from Saul (1 Samuel 16:13–14), and David tells Goliath that the fight will show “that Yahweh doesn’t save with sword and spear” (1 Samuel 17:47). From here the books of Samuel follow David’s rise and Saul’s decline until Saul’s death (David Becomes King).
How this is dated
Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.
Samuel gives no year for these events. David was thirty when he became king (2 Samuel 5:4), about 1010 BC on the usual reckoning back from later reigns that Assyrian records fix (David Becomes King), and Saul calls him a youth at the time of the fight (1 Samuel 17:33). That places it roughly around 1025 BC. The date rests wholly on the Bible’s own figures.
The story has come down in more than one form. In its oldest manuscripts the Greek version is much shorter than the Hebrew: it lacks 1 Samuel 17:12–31 and 17:55–18:5, the parts in which David arrives from Bethlehem and Saul asks who he is. Whether the Greek shortened the story or the Hebrew joined two accounts is debated (D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath: Textual and Literary Criticism, 1986). A separate notice says, in the Hebrew text, that Elhanan of Bethlehem killed “Goliath the Gittite” (2 Samuel 21:19). Chronicles says that Elhanan killed Lahmi, Goliath’s brother (1 Chronicles 20:5). Some translations follow Chronicles in Samuel as well; the World English Bible, from which this wiki quotes, reads “Goliath the Gittite’s brother” there.
Primary sources
Scripture
Jewish Antiquities
- Josephus, Antiquities 6.171lexundria.com
In context
Grows out of
- about 1050 BC, traditional date
Leads to
- about 1010 BC to 1003 BC, estimated date