David Took Goliath's Sword

The modern scholars who are anxious to denigrate David emphasize that he was a traitor to the Israelites when he became a vassal of the Philistines.¹ They say that David began as “a Yahwist pastoral nomadic chieftain” “who rises to leadership among the Philistines.”² As the chief of a military force that is separate from the state armies of King Saul of Israel and Judah and the Philistine kings, David successfully manipulates the complicated political situation to ‘play both sides against the middle,’ acting as a Philistine vassal with a base in Ziklag while maintaining relationships with Judeans, sometimes fighting Philistines (I Sam. 23; Keilah). I believe that there is a very different way to see David’s actions and where they led.

Indeed, I Samuel tells us how David, in fleeing from Saul, becomes the commander of his own band of warriors who are loyal to him. David’s original force was made up of disparate elements: Everyone who was in straits and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was desperate joined him, and he became their leader (I Sam. 22:2).³ David and his men go over to the Philistines and serve one of the Philistine kings, Achish. David is even given his own base, Ziklag, and more Judeans join him: These were the men who came to David at Ziklag, while he was banished from the presence of Saul son of Kish (they were among the warriors who helped him in battle; they were armed with bows and were able to shoot arrows or to sling stones right-handed or left-handed; they were relatives of Saul from the tribe of Benjamin) … Some Gadites defected to David at his stronghold in the wilderness. They were brave warriors, ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains (I Chron. 12). From Ziklag, David goes on raids against peoples in the area, never attacking his fellow-Israelites, but telling the Philistines that he had raided towns in Judah.

He makes sure to leave no survivors so that no one can tell the Philistines what he was really doing.

The dramatic crisis comes when the Philistines are about to fight what will be the final confrontation with King Saul at Mt. Gilboa. If David joins against his countrymen, would he ever be able to become their king? If he doesn’t, the Philistines will know he had been playing a game all along. The other Philistine kings do not trust David and refuse to let him participate in the battle. Achish claims that David has proved his loyalty, and David protests, asking what he did to deserve this exclusion. He may have sighed in relief. He does not fight in the battle and will sing a beautiful song to Saul and Jonathan, even as he plans to take their place.

How shall we think about David’s time with the Philistines? Even if he never hurt his own people, we cannot deny that he served the enemy. And yet, if we think about David’s rise to the throne that enabled the rise of Israel as a nation-state, we gain an ironic perspective: If David had not gone over to the Philistines, there might never have been an Israel.

Iron

When we think of technology, we think in current terms about Artificial Intelligence, electric cars, and smart homes. If we try to imagine the world of 1000 BCE, the use of iron was the major technological advancement. And the Philistines had the technology.

The Philistines were one of the Sea Peoples from the Aegean region, western Anatolia, and Crete who came in waves to the eastern Mediterranean coast at the end of the Bronze Age with a huge surge in 1177 BCE. They established themselves in the Pentapolis of Gaza, Gath, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron and became the overlords of the Israelites during the period described by the Books of Judges and 1 Samuel. The Philistines brought the technology of ironwork that they seem to have taken from the Hittites in what we would call Turkey and Syria. Facilities of iron smelting have been discovered in the ancient Philistine settlements at Ekron and Tell Qasile. Iron weaponry placed the Philistines in a position of distinct advantage over their adversaries. Perhaps more than any other factor, iron weapons proved the decisive element in the Philistines’ early domination of Israel. To protect this valuable commodity and their corresponding advantage, the Philistines prohibited Israelites from engaging in the trade of iron smithing, lest the Israelites also gain iron weapons, as we see in an unusually detailed passage where we see the intense Philistine control: Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plow points, mattocks, axes and sickles sharpened. The price was two-thirds of a shekel for sharpening plow points and mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening forks and axes and for repointing goads (I Sam. 13:19-21).

The Israelites may have had lesser-grade swords, but they have been more used to slingshots and bows. In Judges 20:16-17, the Benjaminites use the sling. In I Samuel 2:4, Hannah prays that “the bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.” Those weapons were good enough in the previous era.

But now there are the Philistines, and it was at least partially the threat of the Philistines and their superior weapons that motivated the tribes of Israel to demand a king. The prophet Samuel, who has been their Judge, anoints a tall farmer named Saul as king. As the Israelite monarchy begins under Saul, the Philistines continue to dominate Israel’s armies in open battle. In I Samuel 13, Saul creates Israel’s first standing army, which consists of 3,000 men, 2,000 with Saul in Michmash and 1,000 with Jonathan, Saul’s eldest son, in Gibeah. Jonathan attacks the Philistine outpost: Jonathan struck down the Philistine prefect in Gibeah, and the Philistines heard about it. The overwhelming Philistine forces come with all their iron chariots and weapons: The Philistines assembled to fight Israel, with thirty (versions: three) thousand chariots, six thousand charioteers, and soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore. They went up and camped at Michmash.

The Israelites are not equipped with weapons of war: … on the day of the battle of (Michmash) not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in his hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them (1 Samuel 13:22). While some may question the veracity of this passage, I believe that it is accurate. The field of archaeometallurgy has done extensive study on the development and spread of iron and concludes, as a major expert puts it, “There is no substantial evidence of iron smelting (furnaces or slag) in the Middle East prior to 1000 BCE.”⁴ On the other hand, we do have evidence of iron production at Ashkelon, a major Philistine city, in the early 1st millennium BCE.⁵ Perhaps a cautious approach to this verse is to say that the Israelites did not have weaponry such as the best iron swords and chariots, equivalent to that of the Philistines.

Israel is in a terrible situation. Deserters flee and hide, and the men who do stay with Saul see they are in danger and are distressed. When the men of Israel saw that they were in trouble – for the troops were hard pressed – the people hid in caves, among thorns, among rocks, in tunnels, and in cisterns. When Saul numbers the troops still with him, they only amount to 600 men. What should Saul do? Jonathan will do it for him (I Sam 14): Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armor-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer followed and killed behind him. In that first attack Jonathan and his armor-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre. How does Jonathan do this?

The Song of the Bow

The obvious answer is that Jonathan may have been a great fighter in hand-to-hand combat. But Jonathan may have killed all those Philistines by climbing up to high ground and shooting them down with his bow and arrows.

The bow may seem like a primitive weapon, but as Yigael Yadin has written, “No other weapon in ancient days required so high a technical capacity to produce and such skill to operate.”⁶ We think about other allusions to Jonathan’s prowess with the bow. In a touching scene that turns out to be a sad farewell between the two beloved friends, Jonathan shoots arrows to signal whether David should flee from the wrath of the king. Jonathan seems to have been a premier archer who was often practicing his skill, so no one would have thought twice about why he was shooting arrows all over a field (1 Sam. 18). And even more poignantly, there is David’s beautiful elegiac tribute to Jonathan which, we emphasize, is called “The Song of the Bow”: How the mighty have fallen! …From the blood of the slain, from the flesh of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, the sword of Saul did not return unsatisfied…How the mighty have fallen! The weapons of war have perished (2 Sam. 1:19-27).

What are the weapons of war that have perished? The parallelism here indicates that Saul and Jonathan were Israel’s great weapons of war. Rashi may be correct in saying that now that the mighty men have fallen, it is necessary that the children of Judah give instruction in warfare and the use of the bow. But David may be thinking about the weapons of war that they will now need against the Philistines. The bow will no longer be enough. The older weapons of war cannot protect Israel against iron blades.

Just as the Israelites have faced superior technology with bow and arrows, David had faced the famous giant, Goliath the Philistine, with a slingshot and stones: A champion of the Philistines stepped forward, his name was Goliath of Gath, and he was six cubits and a span tall. He had a bronze helmet on his head, and wore a breastplate of scale armor, a bronze breastplate, weighing five thousand shekels. He had bronze greaves on his legs, and a bronze javelin slung from his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar, and the iron head of his spear weighed six hundred shekels … (I Sam. 17). That’s a lot of bronze and iron against a shepherd boy who is without armor altogether. Goliath has a spearhead made of iron. The Hebrew text describes this spear as a “weaver’s beam”; it is possible that this term was used because the iron weapon was relatively new to the Israelite culture and no word had yet been coined to describe it.

After he slays the giant, David takes Goliath’s sword. Perhaps there is even more of a metaphor in this confrontation than we realized. The bow and the sling will continue to be effective weapons, but the times were changing, and David will need heavy metal to lead Israel into a new era. Ironically, when Saul chases David into exile with the Philistines, he might have saved Israel from the Philistines.

The Irony of David’s Rise: David and the Weapons of War

Later, after David has become king and is forced out of Jerusalem by his rebellious son Absalom, we read: The king left, followed by all the people, and they stopped at the last house. All his followers marched past him, including all the Cherethites and all the Pelethites; and all the Gittites, six hundred men who had accompanied him from Gath, also marched by the king (2 Sam. 15:17-18). This passage tells us that ever since his days with the Philistines, he has had loyal mercenaries in his service. The Pelethites are Philistines, the Cherethites are from Crete, and the Gittites are from the Philistine city of Gath. When David, at the nadir of his life, flees Jerusalem from the rebellion of his son Absalom, it is the mercenaries who remain loyal (2 Sam. 15:18).

When we look at other passages in David’s career, the Philistine soldiers demonstrate the fiercest loyalty to David. In another rebellion, led by a figure from Israel, Sheeba ben Bichri, who claimed that the northern tribes should not be ruled by a Judean king (2 Sam. 20), the Kerethites and Pelethites are a key part of the force sent to defeat him: Joab’s men, the Cherethites and Pelethites, and all the warriors, marched out behind him. They left Jerusalem in pursuit of Sheba ben Bichri (2 Sam. 20:7). In a list of David’s high officials, we see: Joab was commander of the whole army [of] Israel: Benaiah son of Jehoiada was commander of the Carians/Cherethites and the Pelethites; Adoniram was in charge of forced labor; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was recorder; Sheva was scribe; and Zadok and Abiathar were priests; Ira the Jairite also served David as priest (2 Sam. 20:23-26). The Philistine soldiers are one of the institutions of his government.

It is logical to think that these professional warriors brought their iron weapons with them. And this may be part of the reason that it is under David that the Israelites began to experience victory over their Philistine foes. As David’s conquests expanded the borders of Israel, he was able to secure rich iron deposits to the south in Edom (2 Sam. 8). These proved an extremely valuable asset to Israel.

In the famous Messianic vision about a descendant of David, we read: Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war (Isa. 2:4). It is beautiful to speak about beating your swords onto ploughshares, but first you need the swords to win the land to plow. David can be called a traitor, but it was David who took Goliath’s sword and found many more swords among Israel’s enemies. Without those swords, there would never have an Israel. David’s rise certainly was ironic.