Places of the Bible

The Valley of Elah

Two armies on two hills with a valley between them, and for forty days nothing happened in it.

The geography is given with unusual care and it explains the standoff. The Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side, and there was a valley between them. Neither army can attack without giving up the high ground, so the Philistines propose a substitute: choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. The valley becomes a stage nobody will walk onto.

Where it appears1 Samuel 17

1 Samuel

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The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The Account of The Valley of Elah

01
1 Samuel 17:1-3
There was a valley between them
The description is a map. Two hills, one valley, and a military problem that the rest of the chapter is an answer to.
The first confrontation is drawn as a landscape. One army occupies one height, the other occupies another, and the sentence leaves the valley lying between them. Before the Book of First Samuel gives the champion his measurements, it gives the conflict its shape. There is a space neither battle line has yet crossed.
Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, is not a decorative geographical aside. The Philistines have assembled in territory identified as Judah's. This is not a contest arranged on neutral ground for the entertainment of two armies. The land itself is already part of the dispute.
Both sides have gathered, camped, and arranged themselves for battle. The verbs describe considerable activity without yet describing a resolution. Soldiers can occupy the correct positions and still leave the decisive ground untouched. That final clause, and there was a valley between them, makes the distance almost tangible. The setting is doing work before anybody speaks.
Verse by verse
1. 17:1
  Shochoh is explicitly identified as belonging to Judah. That territorial statement distinguishes the Philistine encampment from a neutral meeting place.
2. 17:2
  Set the battle in array means arranged the fighting force in formation. It does not, by itself, say that combat had already begun.
3. 17:3
  The opposing heights and intervening valley establish the layout. The passage supplies neither the distance between the armies nor an exact position for either battle line.
Worth knowing
Elah is a Hebrew tree name, usually identified as the terebinth; Strong's Hebrew 425 connects the place name with that word. The valley is therefore named for a tree, not for Goliath or David. These verses identify no particular surviving tree and supply no botanical landmark for locating the duel.
1 Samuel 17:1-3
King James Version · 3 verses
17:1Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle, and were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and pitched between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dammim.
17:2And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the Philistines.
17:3And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them.
02
1 Samuel 17:8-11
Choose you a man for you
The proposal is a way out of the deadlock that costs one life instead of thousands, and Israel’s response is dismay.
Goliath does more than ask for an opponent. He supplies Israel with a description: servants to Saul. That is a deliberately narrow way to name the people opposite him. Later in the chapter David will call them the armies of the living God. The two men disagree about whose army this is before they disagree at close range.
The offered terms are enormous. One man's defeat is to make an entire people servants. Goliath presents a duel as a shortcut through a national war, but the passage records his proposal, not a treaty accepted by both sides. When he dies in verse 51, the Philistines run. They do not line up to honor the arrangement.
Saul is included in the fear without qualification. The people had requested a king who would go before them and fight their battles in 1 Samuel 8:20. Here that king stands with the army, hearing a demand for one man. There is no shortage of soldiers. There is a shortage of an answer.
Verse by verse
1. 17:8
  Servants to Saul is Goliath's description. David's contrasting description, armies of the living God, appears in verse 26.
2. 17:9
  The terms are spoken by Goliath. No response here formally binds Israel to his proposed agreement.
3. 17:11
  The verse explicitly names both Saul and all Israel as dismayed and afraid. It does not describe Saul alone while exempting the rest of the army.
Worth knowing
The Hebrew expression translated champion in 1 Samuel 17:4 and 17:23 contains benayim, explained in Strong's Hebrew 1143 as the space between two armies. The title is literally associated with the man between the lines. Goliath's role is built into the geography already described in verse 3.
1 Samuel 17:8-11
King James Version · 4 verses
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.
03
1 Samuel 17:16
Forty days, morning and evening
One verse turns a crisis into a habit. The army forms up and hears the same speech twice a day for nearly six weeks.
The challenge has acquired a timetable. Morning and evening, the same man presents himself; forty days give the sentence its oppressive length. The size of Goliath is only one part of the problem. His appearance has become something the camp can expect.
This notice also prevents David's arrival from being mistaken for the beginning of the confrontation. The armies have already been living with it. Verse 23 will say that Goliath spoke according to the same words when David heard him. Nothing in the challenge has suddenly become more provocative. What changes is who hears it.
David is not said to have watched the whole forty days. The preceding verse places him returning to his father's sheep at Bethlehem, and the following verses introduce Jesse's errand. The Book of First Samuel sets a long military impasse beside ordinary household business. The army has a daily terror. Jesse has bread to send.
Verse by verse
1. 17:16
  Forty days measures the champion's repeated appearances. The verse does not state that David was present throughout that period.
2. 17:16
  Morning and evening specifies repeated occasions within the day. It does not mean Goliath spoke continuously from morning until night.
Worth knowing
The shorter ancient Greek form of 1 Samuel 17 lacks verses 12-31, including this forty-day notice, as textual comparisons such as Jeremy M. Hutton's identify. The KJV follows the fuller Hebrew text here. The difference concerns an entire passage, not an alternative translation of forty.
1 Samuel 17:16
King James Version · 1 verse
17:16And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.
04
1 Samuel 17:17-29
Is there not a cause
He arrives on an errand with food, asks what will be done for the man who kills him, and is accused by his eldest brother of coming to watch.
The errand comes with ten cheeses. That is a wonderfully solid detail in a passage so often stripped down to a giant and a sling. Jesse is sending food, asking after his sons, and expecting something brought back. David does not arrive because the text has assigned him an appetite for adventure. His father sent him.
The change in vocabulary matters more than the change in personnel. The soldiers speak of defying Israel; David speaks of defying the armies of the living God. He also asks about the reward. The passage preserves both concerns without inviting a choice between making him mercenary and pretending he never noticed the offer.
Eliab then reduces his brother's work to those few sheep and claims to know his heart. The previous chapter has already warned how badly human assessments of the heart can miss. Here the accusation is Eliab's, not the Book of First Samuel's verdict. David has delivered what Jesse ordered and arranged care for what he left behind. Before the confrontation with the Philistine, there is a sharp argument with a brother.
Verse by verse
1. 17:18
  The pledge is something Jesse expects David to bring back in connection with his brothers' welfare. Its precise form is not explained here.
2. 17:22
  Carriage means the things being carried, or baggage. It is not a wheeled vehicle in this sentence.
3. 17:26
  David's reference to the living God changes the terms from an insult to Israel alone to defiance of Israel's God.
4. 17:29
  The Hebrew dabar can mean word or matter. The KJV's cause can also be understood here as David defending his right to speak, rather than declaring a grand cause.
Worth knowing
The passage answers Eliab's question about the sheep before he asks it. Verse 20 says David left them with a keeper, and verse 22 similarly places his baggage with its keeper. The repeated practical detail matters: the accusation of abandoned responsibility arrives after the text has recorded responsible arrangements.
1 Samuel 17:17-29
King James Version · 13 verses
17:17And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp to thy brethren;
17:18And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge.
17:19Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel, were in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines.
17:20And David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle.
17:21For Israel and the Philistines had put the battle in array, army against army.
17:22And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage, and ran into the army, and came and saluted his brethren.
17:23And as he talked with them, behold, there came up the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the Philistines, and spake according to the same words: and David heard them.
17:24And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were sore afraid.
17:25And the men of Israel said, Have ye seen this man that is come up? surely to defy Israel is he come up: and it shall be, that the man who killeth him, the king will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.
17:26And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?
17:27And the people answered him after this manner, saying, So shall it be done to the man that killeth him.
17:28And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men; and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.
17:29And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?
05
1 Samuel 17:48
David hasted, and ran toward the army
The first movement into the valley in forty days is made at a run, in the wrong direction for somebody with no armour.
The direction of the running has changed. In verse 24, the men of Israel fled from the Philistine. Here David runs toward him. The same stretch of ground that separated two armies now makes the contrast visible without another speech.
The sentence gives Goliath movement too. He arises, comes forward, and draws near. David is not described striking a motionless object while the battle politely waits. Both men advance, but the wording puts haste and running on David's side. After forty days of repeated challenges, the movement is suddenly brief and decisive.
That speed does not supply access to David's unrecorded thoughts. The verse does not say that he felt nothing, calculated a particular distance, or relied on an undisclosed trick. His stated explanation is already in verse 47: the battle is the LORD'S. The running belongs beside those words, not beside an invented account of his pulse. What the text does show is unmistakable. He closes the distance.
Verse by verse
1. 17:48
  Toward the army describes movement toward the battle line. The sentence immediately specifies the Philistine as the person David advances to meet.
2. 17:48
  Hasted and ran emphasize David's movement. Neither the running speed nor the distance covered is supplied.
Worth knowing
Verse 50 expressly says there was no sword in David's hand when he prevailed with the sling and stone. Verse 51 then identifies the sword he uses as the Philistine's own. The sequence carefully distinguishes the weapon David brought into the encounter from the weapon he took after Goliath fell.
1 Samuel 17:48
King James Version · 1 verse
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.

Why it matters

The stalemate lasts forty days, morning and evening, and the account notes that Goliath presents himself twice a day for the whole period, which turns the delay into a routine. What breaks it is an errand. David is sent with ten loaves and ten cheeses to check on his brothers and to take their pledge, and he arrives as the army is going out shouting for the battle, hears the challenge, and starts asking people what the reward is. The first thing he does in the valley is ask a question, twice, until it reaches the king.

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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The Valley of Elah

The Account of The Valley of Elah

There was a valley between them

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:1-3

Choose you a man for you

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:8-11

Forty days, morning and evening

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:16

Is there not a cause

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:17-29

David hasted, and ran toward the army

Verse by verse

1 Samuel 17:48

Why it matters

The music

Run at the Giant

The Giant Fell

Who Is This Uncircumcised Philistine?

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