This day will Jehovah deliver thee up into my hand; and I will smite thee, and take thy head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the camp of the Philistines this day to the fowl of the heavens and to the wild beasts of the earth. And all the earth shall know that Israel has a God;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
and all this congregation shall know that Jehovah saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is Jehovah's, and he will give you into our hands.
The verse is David's answer to a giant, spoken in the open ground between two armies. It names the real opponents in the fight, and says what the outcome will prove.
One writer sets what human nature wants to see against the ground David chose.
The flesh likes to see sword opposed to sword, helmet against helmet; the flesh loves its own. But David said, "I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied." So David puts the question on its true basis. It is now simply a question between the LORD of hosts and the Philistine. David puts David right out of the question. He brings in God Himself as the opponent of Goliath.
David went out without Saul's armour, and one writer explains why that mattered.
Here we have the true object of the man of faith. Israel and all the earth were to have a glorious testimony to the power and presence of God among His people. If David had used Saul's armour, no one would have learned that the Lord does not save by sword and spear. His warfare would look like anyone else's. But the sling and the stone gave little prominence to the one who used them. They gave the glory to Him from whom the victory came.
Another writer draws a wider principle from the weapon David used.
The weapon needed was not far off. The stone lay in the brook that ran between the two armies. It laid the Philistine champion low and silenced his boasting for ever. All his armour proved useless against the death-blow. Even the shield his armour-bearer carried in front of him did not stop the stone. God provided what was needed, and it proved to be enough. Here we have a principle of wide application. God does provide the weapons with which, if called upon, His people may meet those opposed to Him.
David names God twice, and not with the same name. "All the earth" is to learn there is a God in Israel; "all this assembly" is to learn that the LORD — Jehovah — saves. Mackintosh sees a deliberate distinction.
"All the earth" was to know and own the presence of God among His people. They could know nothing of the precious relationship involved in the title "Jehovah." That title was for the assembly of Israel alone. They were to know not only His presence among them, but His blessed way of acting. To the world He was Elohim; to His beloved people He was Jehovah.
David faces the giant alone, yet he says "into our hand," not "into my hand." One writer sets his words beside Jonathan's.
Jonathan was conscious in his soul of his link with the people of God — with Israel. So he said of the Philistines, "The LORD has given them into the hand of Israel." We see the same in David when he went out to meet the giant: "He will give you into our hand." In both cases there was no independent action. The faith was indeed their own, but they acted for and with the nation that God owned as His.
One writer asks how David sized up an enemy far stronger than himself.
Look at David in the presence of Goliath. Does he feel it is impossible to cope with such a powerful adversary? Nothing of the kind. His one conviction was that "the battle is the LORD's"; that Goliath was the Lord's enemy, and so the Lord would give him into his hand that day. He measured his enemy by the strength of the Lord. By that measure Goliath shrank into a tiny dwarf before him — into complete powerlessness and nothingness.
One writer takes the words "the LORD saves" and applies them to the reader.
Notice that — the Lord saves. You cannot save yourself; I cannot save myself. It is the Lord alone who can save me. God alone can meet man's need and ruin as a sinner, and I have no option but to accept God's Saviour.
- Whose fight — David steps aside and leaves the Philistine facing God. Goliath had defied Him, so the quarrel was His.
- Whose weapons — Saul's armour would have hidden God. The sling and the stone came from the brook nearby, and left the glory nowhere else to go.
- Whose name — the earth learns there is a God in Israel; the assembly learns the covenant name of the One who saves.
- Whose hand — David says "into our hand," not "into my hand." The faith was his own, but he fought for the whole nation.
- Whose salvation — the faith that cuts a giant down to nothing says the same thing to you. No one saves himself. The Lord saves.
And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came and advanced to meet David, that David hasted, and ran towards the ranks to meet the Philistine.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And David put his hand into the bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, and the stone sank into his forehead; and he fell on his face to the earth.
David closes the last few yards toward Goliath with a sling in his hand. One stone ends the fight — and the question is why God chose that weapon instead of a sword.
The hand goes into a bag, not into an armoury. One commentator marks the kind of means God chooses, and whose faith won the day:
God loves to do great things by the simplest means... Israel won the victory according to the faith of David.
The sling and the stone owed nothing to David's skill or to Israel's armoury. One writer draws out where David's real power lay:
David's power did not lie in the weapons that Saul offered, nor in anything that would attract the mighty of this world. The sling and the stone testified as clearly as anything could that "the Lord was with him," for they were not the weapons of man's warfare.
No one forged the stone that killed Goliath. It had been lying in the brook between the two armies all along, and one writer draws a principle from that which reaches far past this battlefield:
The weapon needed was not far off. David found the stone in the brook that ran between the two armies. It laid the champion of the uncircumcised low and silenced his boasting for ever. All his armour proved useless against the death-blow. Even the shield his armour-bearer carried in front of him did not stop the stone. God provided what was needed, and it proved to be all-sufficient. This is a principle of wide application. God does provide the weapons with which, if called upon, His people may meet those opposed to Him. The Lord promised to provide them (Luke 21:15). Stephen proved the Lord faithful to His word: his enemies could not resist the wisdom and spirit with which he spoke (Acts 6:10).
Goliath went into battle in full armour, with a man in front of him carrying his shield. He had guarded himself against the weapons he expected:
He never thought of such a weapon as a sling. He was looking for arrows. He had protected himself with a great big shield. But the stone slung by David went up in a curve and struck the giant on the forehead — on the spot he least expected it. Satan never thought that the death of Jesus would annul death. He never thought that sin would be put away by Jesus being made sin. Had he known, he would not have plotted His death.
David does not stall at the decisive moment. One writer traces that boldness back to what David had learned alone with God:
Living before God in secret will always make us act, if I may put it that way, on the offensive. This is remarkable in David... David did not delay and did not falter; he instantly used his simple weapons and struck his enemy to the ground.
Commentators do not stop at the duel. They read the sunken stone as the outline of something later:
The stone that sinks into Goliath's forehead deprives him of strength and of life. David cuts off Goliath's head with his own sword, like Him who by death destroyed the one who had the power of death.
One writer carries it to the cross, where the victory first looked like defeat:
Five smooth stones and a simple sling brought that huge mass of boasting flesh down to the dust... The Lord was crucified in weakness. He went out against the powers of darkness and the devil for us. As He hung rejected and exposed on a criminal's cross, it seemed as though He had met with complete defeat, beyond all recovery.
- Small means. God loves to do great things by the simplest means — a hand in a bag, one stone, one throw.
- Supplied means. The stone was lying in the brook before the battle began; God provides the weapon His people need, and it proves all-sufficient.
- Unguarded point. Armour, spear and shield were all useless, because the blow landed where the giant never expected it.
- Forward motion. Faith that has lived before God in secret does not hesitate in public; David did not delay and did not falter.
- The pattern fulfilled. The stone took away Goliath's strength, and his own sword finished him. Christ too was crucified in weakness, and by death He destroyed the one who had the power of death.