David versus Goliath is one of best-known stories in the Bible, found in Chapter 17
of the First Book of Samuel. The imagery varies, depending on which translation of the Old
Testament you're using - or the budget of the made-for-TV adaptation you're watching
- but the gist is the same: Goliath is a huge giant of a warrior who challenges the Israelites
to battle. They, in turn, struggle to find a champion willing to face Goliath, until
a little shepherd boy named David answers the call. It seems like the ultimate mismatch,
but one well placed stone flung from a simple sling ends Goliath's reign of terror.
That's the basic story that everyone knows. But there's actually a lot more to the tale
of David and Goliath than you usually see in the average Sunday school retelling.
First, we need to talk about the elephant-sized man in the room: Goliath.
Not much is actually said about Goliath in the Bible. We know that he's a champion of
the Philistines, who are sort of the Decepticons to the Old Testament's Israelite Autobots.
1 Samuel 17 states that he hailed from the citystate of Gath, a region theorized to have
existed in the middle of modern day Israel. And… that's more or less it.
As mythological stories tend to do, this tale changed as time went on and people began embellishing
it. When the story first started circulating, Goliath wasn't described as particularly massive.
He's never referred to as a "giant" in the text, even though there are references to
other giants in the Bible, like the Nephelim in Genesis. His height is given at "six cubits
and a span," or around nine and a half feet tall, but scholars have pointed out that older
descriptions found in the Dead Sea Scrolls put him at just four cubits and a span. That's
about six foot nine — still really tall, but well within the normal range for a human
being.
In point of fact, the Bible doesn't make a huge deal about Goliath's size at all. Samuel
only brings it up once, and spends more time describing what the big guy's armor and spear
were made out of. And that's not the only thing the Bible fixates on more than his height.
David, while chastising Israel's King Saul and his soldiers for not stabbing the Philistine
champion to death, mentions twice that Goliath is uncircumcised, but never brings up his
physical stature. So it sounds like the big guy should've been grateful that it was just
his head that got chopped off at the end of the story.
And then there's David.
David continued on to become one of the most well known characters in the Abrahamic faiths,
brought up in the Old and New Testaments as well as the Quran. His defeat of Goliath,
within the context of the story, had less to do with a surprise win and more to do with
the righteous overcoming the unworthy. To wit, King Saul refuses to fight for his people,
while a shepherd recognizes the need to kill a proverbial lion to save the metaphorical
sheep.
David's post-Goliath story isn't always so inspiring, though. Yes, according to legend,
he went on to write the book of Psalms, which consists of a bunch of songs and poems about
how great God is. But he also got involved in some Game of Thrones level skulduggery.
After some maneuvering to secure the throne, King David goes full villain. Peeping on the
beautiful Bathsheba while she bathes, David decides he has to have her, even though she
is married to one of David's loyal soldiers, Uriah the Hittite. After issuing her a royal
summons, David impregnated Bethsehba and then quickly tried to cover it up by having her
husband brought home, with the idea that if they slept together, Uriah would assume the
kid was his.
Uriah, however, refused to return home, basically stating that it wouldn't feel right to be
with his family while all his fellow soldiers were still suffering in the field. So David
instead ordered him to the front lines, secretly pulling strings to make sure that Uriah would
be killed in battle. Sure enough, he was, and David immediately married the newly widowed
Bathsheba.
Sure, David vs. Goliath is a famous underdog story of triumph over all odds. But unfortunately
for David, his story didn't end there. As Harvey Dent famously said,
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