People of the Bible

Goliath

Came out twice a day for forty days to offer a fight nobody would take, and was beaten by the one weapon his armour did not cover.

Goliath is from Gath, and the account measures him carefully before it lets him speak: his height, the weight of his coat of mail, the weight of the iron in his spearhead, and a man walking in front carrying his shield. His proposal is efficient and entirely reasonable, one man against one man and the losing nation serves the winner, and for forty days it paralyses an army. When a boy finally comes out with a stick and a bag, he is insulted, and asks whether he is a dog. The whole encounter after that takes one verse.

Where he appears1 Samuel 17

1 Samuel

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The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The Account of Goliath

01
1 Samuel 17:4-11
The inventory
Six cubits and a span, five thousand shekels of bronze on his body, six hundred of iron in the spearhead, and a man ahead of him carrying the shield. Saul and all Israel are dismayed.
Goliath arrives accompanied by his measurements. Before he speaks, the passage supplies height, metal, weight, protective clothing, a spear shaft, a spearhead, and a man carrying his shield. The description makes the space between the armies feel occupied by something much larger than one man. Even his equipment needs an introduction.
His challenge then puts the entire nation behind a single proposed representative. Choose one man, let him fight, and let the defeated side become servants. This is not a private quarrel between two unusually memorable combatants. Goliath proposes to decide the standing of both peoples through one encounter, while calling Israel merely servants to Saul. His terms are as imposing as his armor.
Saul is included among those who are dismayed. The king introduced in 9:2 as taller than his people now hears the demand for a man and supplies none. The chapter does not need to call him a coward to establish that gap. Goliath has not yet struck an Israelite in this passage. His words, supported by the immense body that speaks them, have already held an army in place.
Verse by verse
1. 17:4
  Champion translates a Hebrew expression meaning a man of the space between, the combatant who steps between the opposing forces.
2. 17:4
  The KJV gives six cubits and a span. The Greek text represented in Brenton's Septuagint gives four cubits and a span; the difference is an ancient textual reading, not a modern conversion of units.
3. 17:5
  Shekels here measure weight, not a purchase price. The verse describes the mass of the armor, not what Goliath paid for it.
4. 17:9
  These are Goliath's proposed terms. The later Philistine flight in verse 51 is not a performance of the promised submission.
Worth knowing
The Hebrew qasqassim behind coat of mail means scales. The related noun describes fish scales in Leviticus 11:9-12 and Deuteronomy 14:9-10, so the image is scale armor, not necessarily the interlocking rings a modern reader may picture from medieval chain mail. The vocabulary supplies a more specific texture than the familiar English expression alone suggests.
1 Samuel 17:4-11
King James Version · 8 verses
17:4And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
17:5And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.
17:6And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.
17:7And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.
17:8And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me.
17:9If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.
17:10And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.
17:11When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.
02
1 Samuel 17:16
Forty days, morning and evening
One line. He presents himself twice a day for nearly six weeks, and the repetition is the weapon: nothing has to happen for the fear to do its work.
The challenge has acquired a timetable. Morning and evening, the same man comes forward; forty days pass without the proposed contest resolving the standoff. The single verse makes repetition do what another speech could not. Goliath's presence is no longer only an alarming arrival. It is part of the army's day.
The surrounding verses place David on a different circuit: back to the sheep, then sent with grain, bread, and cheese. The Book of First Samuel sets the champion's repeated appearance beside the ordinary movements that bring David to the camp. It does not say David has spent forty days hearing the challenge himself. When he hears it in verse 23, the words are familiar to the army. Their effect on this listener is not.
Verse by verse
1. 17:16
  Morning and evening describes the recurrence of Goliath's appearances. The verse does not describe forty separate battles or give a separate speech for each appearance.
2. 17:16
  Presented himself renders a form of the Hebrew verb yatsab, taking one's stand. The action is his repeated public positioning before the forces, not a new introduction on every occasion.
Worth knowing
This verse lies within a substantial difference between ancient textual forms. The Greek form represented in Brenton's Septuagint passes from 17:11 to 17:32 and lacks verses 12-31, including the forty-day interval. The KJV follows the longer Hebrew form. Comparing them reveals more than a different wording of this sentence: the sequence itself is considerably shorter in that Greek witness.
1 Samuel 17:16
King James Version · 1 verse
17:16And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.
03
1 Samuel 17:41-47
Am I a dog
He sees a boy with a staff and takes it as contempt, and curses him by his gods. The answer names the sword, the spear and the javelin, and then names something else.
Goliath objects to being treated like a dog and then offers David to the animals. His contempt is not subtle. The staff, the youth, and the handsome face do not look like the answer a veteran fighter expected after all those challenges. He curses David by his gods, turning the encounter into something more than an exchange of military insults.
David does not answer by making a better estimate of the giant's dimensions. He names the LORD of hosts and identifies the army Goliath has defied as belonging to that God. Goliath has spoken of Saul's servants; David speaks of God's armies. The quarrel turns on whose people stand in the valley, not only on which man can carry the larger weapon.
The threats also widen. Goliath promises one body to birds and beasts; David speaks of the Philistine host and of what all the earth will know. The assembly is to learn that the LORD does not depend on sword and spear for salvation. That is not a claim that no weapon will be used. It is a refusal to let Goliath's inventory decide the outcome before the combat begins.
Verse by verse
1. 17:42
  The passage explicitly gives Goliath's disdain and its stated grounds. It does not identify a medical condition affecting his eyesight or perception.
2. 17:43
  Goliath curses by his gods, but this verse does not name a particular deity. Naming Dagon here would go beyond the wording.
3. 17:45
  David names the LORD as the one whose armies have been defied. His reply changes the identity assigned to Israel in Goliath's challenge.
4. 17:47
  Not with sword and spear denies dependence on those weapons. David still carries a sling and stones; the passage does not present him as physically unarmed.
Worth knowing
LORD of hosts is not a title David invents for the battlefield. First Samuel 1:3 already uses it for the God whom Elkanah goes to worship at Shiloh. In 17:45 David adds the God of the armies of Israel. Within the same book, the title connects the worship at Shiloh with the army Goliath has publicly defied.
1 Samuel 17:41-47
King James Version · 7 verses
17:41And the Philistine came on and drew near unto David; and the man that bare the shield went before him.
17:42And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.
17:43And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
17:44And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.
17:45Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
17:46This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
17:47And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hands.
04
1 Samuel 17:48-51
He ran towards the army
The champion moves forward and so does David, at speed, which nobody expects. One stone, and then his own sword is used to finish it.
The speech is much longer than the fight. Goliath approaches; David runs; one stone strikes; the heavily described man falls on his face. The passage spends no comparable space cataloging the stone. Its smallness in the description is part of the contrast with the inventory that introduced its target.
Then comes the blunt qualification: there was no sword in the hand of David. The missing weapon is supplied by the man lying before him. Goliath's sword, still in its sheath, becomes the instrument with which David cuts off his head. The champion's equipment has not vanished from the account. It has changed hands.
The Philistines see that their champion is dead and flee. Goliath had offered their submission if Israel's representative killed him; what follows is pursuit, not a delegation arranging service. His confident terms do not govern even his own side's response. The man who proposed to settle the nations' future with his strength cannot make his army keep his promise.
Verse by verse
1. 17:49
  The KJV identifies the forehead as the point of impact. It does not describe an uncovered gap in the helmet or give a reconstruction of the projectile's speed.
2. 17:50-51
  Verse 50 summarizes the victory with sling and stone; verse 51 describes the use of Goliath's sword and decapitation. The text does not supply a modern medical account of the exact instant of death.
3. 17:51
  Goliath's sword reappears in 1 Samuel 21:9, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod at Nob, where David receives it from the priest.
4. 17:51
  First Chronicles 20:5 identifies Lahmi, killed by Elhanan, as Goliath's brother. The KJV of 2 Samuel 21:19 also reads the brother of Goliath, with the brother of supplied by the translators.
Worth knowing
Goliath's fall echoes the earlier defeat of Dagon in 1 Samuel 5:3-4: both fall upon the face to the earth, and both lose their heads. The correspondence is in the described posture and mutilation, not an assertion that Goliath is Dagon. Within the same book, a Philistine divine image and a Philistine champion end in strikingly similar physical positions.
1 Samuel 17:48-51
King James Version · 4 verses
17:48And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.
17:49And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.
17:50So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.
17:51Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.

Why it matters

Goliath is the set piece the rest of Scripture keeps reaching for, and the detail the account cares about is not his size but the inventory. Bronze helmet, coat of mail, greaves, target, staff, spear, shield bearer. Everything is listed and none of it protects his forehead. The boy states the theology out loud before he runs: the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hands, that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel.

3 songs

The music

Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.

1 Samuel 17:40-49
Run at the Giant
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1 Samuel 17
The Giant Fell
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1 Samuel 17:1-58
Who Is This Uncircumcised Philistine?
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Goliath

The Account of Goliath

The inventory

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:4-11

Forty days, morning and evening

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:16

Am I a dog

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:41-47

He ran towards the army

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:48-51

Why it matters

The music

Run at the Giant

The Giant Fell

Who Is This Uncircumcised Philistine?

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