The Lord Looks on the Heart — and the Battle Is the Lord’s

• Anchor Bible Dictionary — “David,” “Jesse,” “Bethlehem,” “Goliath,” “Philistines,” “Gath,” “Elah, Valley of,” “Sea Peoples,” “Anointing,” “Messiah,” “Weights and Measures,” “Samuel, Books of.”
• Dictionary of the OT: Historical Books (IVP) — “David,” “Samuel, Books of,” “Philistines,” “Warfare,” “Music,” “Spirit of God,” “Text and Textual Criticism.” The last of these will name 1 Samuel as the standard example, and that is not a criticism of the book.
• NIDOTTE / TDOT — רָאָה (rāʾāh, see), נָבַט (nāḇaṭ, look upon), לֵבָב (lēḇāḇ, heart), מָשַׁח (māšaḥ, anoint), צָלַח (ṣālaḥ, rush upon), רוּחַ (rūaḥ, spirit), חָרַף (ḥārapḥ, defy, reproach), יָשַׁע (yāšaʿ, save).
• For the Greek and the text — any reference article on the Septuagint of Samuel should tell you three things: that the book is called 1 Kingdoms; that the Greek here is Old Greek and not kaige-revised; and that chapters 17–18 are much shorter in it than in the Hebrew. If an article does not mention the third, it is not a reliable guide to this passage.

• P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel (Anchor Bible, 1980) — the standard text-critical commentary on this book, and the fullest English defence of the shorter Greek.
• Robert Alter, The David Story (1999); David Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel (NICOT); Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel (WBC); Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel (NAC); Bill T. Arnold, 1 & 2 Samuel (NIVAC); Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Interpretation); V. Philips Long on the historical questions.
• D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath: Textual and Literary Criticism — Papers of a Joint Research Venture (OBO 73; Fribourg / Göttingen, 1986). Four Septuagint scholars, two of them arguing each way, in one book. If you read only one thing about this problem, read this.
• Emanuel Tov, “The Composition of 1 Samuel 16–18 in the Light of the Septuagint,” reprinted in The Greek and Hebrew Bible — where the verse-by-verse list of minuses, pluses and variants is set out in full.

Single combat between champions was a real institution, and we have an eyewitness account of one. In the Story of Sinuhe, an Egyptian official living in exile in Syria-Palestine in the twentieth century B.C. is challenged in his own camp. Read it beside 1 Samuel 17 and the resemblance is not thematic, it is structural: “A mighty man of Retenu came, that he might challenge me in my (own) camp. He was a hero without his peer, and he had repelled all of it… Then (he took) his shield, his battle-axe, and his armful of javelins. Now after I had let his weapons issue forth, I made his arrows pass by me uselessly… He charged me, and I shot him, my arrow sticking in his neck. He cried out and fell on his nose. I felled him with his (own) battle-axe and raised my cry of victory over his back” (ANET 19, Wilson’s translation). A champion; a challenge; a hero without peer; a shield-and-javelins inventory; a missile weapon that beats a close-quarters one; the giant falling on his face; the hero finishing him with the champion’s own weapon. 1 Samuel 17 is telling a kind of story its first hearers recognised at once — and the deviation is the point. Sinuhe wins by his own bow and takes the man’s cattle. David says out loud, before he throws, that the Lord saves without sword or spear and that the battle is not his.

The Philistines are on the Egyptian record. In the eighth year of Ramses III (early twelfth century B.C.), the Medinet Habu inscriptions describe a coalition on the move: “the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denye(n), and Weshesh, lands united” (ANET 261). Peleset is the Philistines. They are foreigners in Canaan too — newcomers of the same generation as the Israelite settlement, holding the coastal plain and the good iron while Israel held the hills. Gath, Goliath’s city, is almost certainly Tell es-Safi, which sits at the mouth of the Elah valley — that is, the valley of this chapter is the road from Gath up into Judah. In 2005 the excavators there found a potsherd in a securely dated Iron Age context inscribed in Proto-Canaanite letters with two names, ʾlwt and wlt. It is not “Goliath’s inscription,” and the excavator has said so plainly — but the two names are non-Semitic and etymologically of the same family as the name גׇּלְיָת, at the right place and roughly the right period (Maeir, Wimmer, Zukerman and Demsky, BASOR 351 [2008]). What it shows is that a name like Goliath belonged in Gath. That is all it shows, and it is worth having.

What the ancient retellings did — and which text each of them had. This is where the manuscript question stops being abstract. Josephus (first century A.D.) gives Goliath’s height as four cubits and a span, with the Greek and against the Hebrew. He also has David reply to the dog insult — “No, not for a dog, but for a creature worse than a dog” — which is a Greek plus and is not in the Hebrew at all. And yet he also has Jesse sending David to the camp with provisions, and Eliab rebuking him — material that is only in the Hebrew. He is a mixed witness, and an honest page has to say so. He does not have “whose son is this youth?”

• The Story of Sinuhe, Egypt, c. 20th century B.C. (ANET 18–22, the duel at 19) (an Egyptian tale — a witness, not Scripture) — the fullest ancient first-person account of a champion challenge, and the closest formal parallel to 1 Samuel 17 that survives.
• Ramses III, the war against the Peoples of the Sea, Medinet Habu, year 8, early 12th century B.C. (ANET 261) (an Egyptian royal record — a witness, not Scripture) — “the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denye(n), and Weshesh.” The Philistines arrive in the record.
• The Tell es-Safi / Gath ostracon, published 2008 (an archaeological find — a witness, not Scripture) — ʾlwt and wlt in Proto-Canaanite, from Iron Age Gath: names of the same non-Semitic family as “Goliath.” Not his, and not claimed to be.
• Josephus, Antiquities, books 6.8–6.9 (Whiston’s chapter division; the David and Goliath narrative) (Second-Temple — a witness, not Scripture) — Goliath “of four cubits and a span in tallness” (Ant. 6.171); David’s “worse than a dog” retort, which only the Greek has; Eliab’s rebuke, which only the Hebrew has; and no “whose son is this youth?” at the end. A mixed witness, and therefore an important one.
• Sirach 47:3–5 (Second-Temple; non-canonical in this church’s reckoning — a witness, not Scripture) — the earliest surviving reading of this chapter: “He played with lions as though they were young goats… In his youth did he not kill a giant, and take away the people’s disgrace, when he whirled the stone in the sling and struck down the boasting Goliath? For he called on the Lord, the Most High, and he gave strength to his right arm.” Note what Ben Sira keeps: the lion and the bear, the disgrace taken away (17:26), and above all who gave the strength.
• Hippolytus, Sermon on David and Goliath (2nd–3rd century A.D.; ed. Garitte, CSCO 263–264) (early Christian — a witness, not Scripture) — the oldest datable witness to the short form of the story: he does not have 17:55–58.
• 1QSam (1Q7), Qumran (a Hebrew manuscript — a witness to the text) — preserves 1 Samuel 18:17–18, verses the Old Greek does not have. The oldest datable witness to the long form. Published by Barthélemy in DJD I.
• 4QSam^a (4Q51), c. 50–25 B.C. (a Hebrew manuscript — a witness to the text) — the oldest Hebrew witness to 1 Samuel 17:4, and it reads ארבע אמות וזרת, four cubits and a span. Transcriptions in DJD 17; that, and not a summary, is where a reader should check them.

• 1 Samuel 9:2; 10:23 — Saul, “a handsome young man… from his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.” The book has already given the reader a king chosen partly for his height, and 16:7 is the correction (see 1 Samuel 8–10).
• 1 Samuel 13:14; 15:28 — “a man after his own heart”; “a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.” Chapter 16 is the answer to two sentences already spoken over Saul (see 1 Samuel 11–13 and 1 Samuel 14–15).
• Psalm 78:70–72 — “He chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds… With upright heart he shepherded them.” Israel’s own summary of this chapter, and it keeps both the sheep and the heart.
• 1 Kings 8:39 — “for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind.” Solomon prays 16:7 back to God at the dedication of the temple. So do Jeremiah 17:10 and Proverbs 16:2.
• Acts 13:22 — “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.” Paul, preaching in a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, quotes the outcome of this chapter and joins it to 1 Samuel 13:14. (Cited in text; there is no page for Acts 13 in this library yet.)
• 2 Corinthians 10:4 — “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh.” The New Testament’s own way of carrying 17:47 forward, and the reason no Christian may read this chapter as a warrant for force (see Ephesians 2 for the same logic applied to salvation itself).

• Ruth 4:17–22 — “they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.” The book of Ruth exists in order to end on the name that chapter 16 walks up to, and it ends in the same village. Samuel goes to Bethlehem because of a story about a Moabite widow and a barley harvest (see Ruth 4).
• Deuteronomy 17:14–20 — the law of the king: he must not multiply horses or wives or silver, and he must write out a copy of the law and read it all his days, “that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers.” The heart is in the law of the king before it is in 16:7. Israel asked for a king “like all the nations” and got a tall one; the Lord picks by the standard Deuteronomy already named (see Deuteronomy 17).
• Genesis 49:8–12 — “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.” The boy in the field is of Judah, and the blessing of Jacob has been waiting for this since Genesis (see Genesis 49).
• Judges 3:31; 15:15; 16:28–30 — an oxgoad, a jawbone, and a blind man’s arms. The pattern of God winning with the wrong equipment is not new here; it is the running habit of the book just behind this one (see Judges 3 and Judges 13–16). So is deliverance from Philistines specifically.
• Judges 7:2–7 — “The people with you are too many… lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’” Gideon’s three hundred and David’s five stones make the same argument (see Judges 6–8).
• 2 Samuel 7:8–16 — “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel… your throne shall be established forever.” God’s own summary of 1 Samuel 16, spoken back to David years later, and the covenant this anointing is walking toward (see 2 Samuel 7).
• 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5 — a genuine and well-known difficulty, reported here rather than avoided. 2 Samuel 21:19 says “Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.” 1 Chronicles 20:5 says Elhanan “struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite.” The ESV footnotes 2 Samuel 21:19 itself: “Contrast 1 Chronicles 20:5, which may preserve the original reading.” The readings on offer are that Chronicles preserves the older text and 2 Samuel has suffered in copying; that “Goliath” was a title or a second name; or that two Philistine warriors are involved. We report the difficulty and do not settle it.
• Psalm 78:70–72; Psalm 151 (LXX) — the first is Scripture and remembers David taken from the sheepfolds; the second is a short psalm found only in the Greek Bible and at Qumran, in which David speaks in the first person about being the smallest of his brothers and going out against the Philistine. It is non-canonical in this church’s reckoning, and it is a witness to how early readers loved this story.

• P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel (Anchor Bible, 1980) — the standard text-critical commentary on the book, working closely from the Greek and the Qumran evidence.
• Robert Alter, The David Story (1999) — a fresh translation with commentary, and the best English guide to the artistry of these chapters. (Cited for the literary observation only; the theological frame here is the church’s, not his.)
• David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel (NICOT, 2007) — consistently the most conservative recent voice on the Hebrew text, and useful precisely because he pushes back where others do not.
• Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel (WBC); Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel (NAC); Bill T. Arnold, 1 & 2 Samuel (NIVAC); Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Interpretation); V. Philips Long, The Reign and Rejection of King Saul.
• D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath: Textual and Literary Criticism (OBO 73; Fribourg / Göttingen, 1986) — the joint volume in which the two explanations argue with each other in print.
• Emanuel Tov, “The Composition of 1 Samuel 16–18 in the Light of the Septuagint” (repr. in The Greek and Hebrew Bible), with full lists of the minuses, the pluses and the variants; A. van der Kooij, “The Story of David and Goliath — The Early History of Its Text,” ETL 68 (1992), arguing the other way.
• Eugene Ulrich, The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus (1978), and F. M. Cross et al., Qumran Cave 4.XII: 1–2 Samuel (DJD 17, 2005) — what the scrolls actually preserve, in transcription.
• J. Daniel Hays, “Reconsidering the Height of Goliath,” JETS 48 (2005), and “The Height of Goliath: A Response,” JETS 50 (2007) — the argument for the shorter reading, with the counter-arguments printed alongside it. Azzan Yadin, “Goliath’s Armor and Israelite Collective Memory,” VT 54 (2004), on the description of the equipment.
• Aren M. Maeir, S. Wimmer, A. Zukerman and A. Demsky, “A Late Iron Age I / Early Iron Age IIA Old Canaanite Inscription from Tell es-Sāfî/Gath,” BASOR 351 (2008) — the ostracon, described soberly by the people who dug it up.

• 1. Why is the Greek so much shorter? Two explanations, both held by serious scholars, and this page picks neither.
  
  The Greek is an abridgement. On this view the Hebrew is the original story and the Greek translator (or an editor before him) cut it down — because the long form has awkward joins, and a tidier story results. Barthélemy and Gooding argue this in the 1986 volume, and van der Kooij has argued it since: the Masoretic story is a coherent and satisfying narrative once you read it on its own terms, and the shorter Greek looks like the work of someone smoothing away difficulties.
  
  The Greek reflects a shorter Hebrew. On this view the translator did not cut anything; he had in front of him a Hebrew manuscript that was already short, and the longer Hebrew grew later by the joining of a second telling. Lust and Tov argue this in the same volume, and it is McCarter’s position in the Anchor Bible. Their strongest argument is translation technique: the Greek of 1 Kingdoms is measurably literal — it is one of the most literal units in the whole Septuagint — and a translator who renders his source word for word everywhere else is not likely to have cut forty-four percent of two chapters. They also point to the Greek’s pluses: a man who was abbreviating does not add lines.
  
  What can be said without taking sides: both forms are ancient — the short form is attested by Hippolytus in the second century, the long form by 1QSam at Qumran. Neither is a modern invention, and neither is a corruption invented to embarrass the other.
• 2. Goliath’s height. Report both; print both; decide neither. Six cubits and a span is read by the Masoretic Hebrew, the Vulgate and the Syriac — roughly nine feet nine. Four cubits and a span is read by the Old Greek, by 4QSam^a (the oldest Hebrew manuscript of this verse, first century B.C.), by Josephus, and by the Lucianic Greek — roughly six feet nine. The arguments for four: it is the older attested reading by a thousand years, it has Hebrew and Greek witnesses agreeing against the Masoretic Text, and six feet nine in a world of men averaging five foot three is already a giant — enough to explain the armour, the shield-bearer and the terror. The arguments for six: the Masoretic Text is the received Hebrew and has its own weight; the description of the equipment fits an enormous man; and a scribe might as easily have reduced a startling number as inflated a plain one. The ESV prints six and footnotes four. This page prints both and does not adjudicate. Nothing in the passage’s meaning moves either way: the point of the chapter is not the size of the man but that the Lord saves without sword or spear.
• 3. The seam at 17:55–58. At 16:21–22 Saul knows David, loves him, and writes to Jesse by name; at 17:55–58 he asks Abner whose son the boy is. Three readings are on offer. (a) The two chapters preserve two accounts of how David came to court, set side by side by an editor who did not merge them — the composite artistry reading. (b) Saul is not asking the boy’s name but his family’s standing, because he has just promised his daughter and a tax exemption to the man’s household (17:25) and now needs to know which household that is — a reading with real support in the wording, since the question is always “whose son,” never “who.” (c) The Hebrew narrative here is not strictly chronological, and 16:14–23 summarises a service that began after the duel. And the fourth fact: the Greek does not have the problem at all, because it does not have these verses — which one side reads as the sign of an original short text and the other as the sign of a later tidying. All four observations are true at once. We report them and stop.
• What this page deliberately does not do. It does not decide the direction of the difference in chapters 17–18. It does not decide Goliath’s height. It does not decide the Elhanan question at 2 Samuel 21:19. It does not explain the harmful spirit of 16:14 by a theory. And it does not turn Goliath into a metaphor — see the note below.

• 16:7 is the sentence, and it cuts both ways. It is a comfort when you are the one nobody called in from the field. It is a warning when you are the one doing the looking. Samuel — a prophet, at the height of his powers, on an errand from God — got it wrong on the first man he saw.
• Nobody in the story applies it. Samuel looks at height. Jesse forgets a son. Eliab announces what is in his brother’s heart and is wrong. Saul reaches for armour. Goliath looks and laughs. The reader has been told the rule in advance and then made to watch five people break it — which is a more effective way of teaching it than being told twice.
• The battle line is the confession. “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts… the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s.” Said out loud, in front of everybody, before anything had been proved.
• The difference between the Hebrew and the Greek here is a gift, not a threat. Two ancient forms of one chapter, both old, both saying the same thing about God. The table above shows you the gaps rather than papering over them, and the ESV’s own footnotes point at three of them. A faith that can only survive on smoothed edges is being trained to flinch.
• Saul is a tragedy, not a joke. He is the tallest man in Israel and he cannot go out. He loves the boy in chapter 16 and will try to kill him in chapter 18. His armour does not fit anybody else. Read him with pity; the book does.
• And it is not about your giants. There is no encouragement in this chapter to be braver. There is an announcement about who saves — which is a great deal better, because it does not depend on you being David.

Step in response: two things this week. First, read 1 Samuel 16 and 17 straight through in one sitting — about ten minutes — and mark every occurrence of the word see or look or appearance; there are sixteen of the main one, and seeing them stacked up changes the chapter. Second, ask 16:7 of yourself in one specific relationship: name a person you have quietly written off on the basis of something you can see — how they present, how they speak, what they wear, where they come from — and this week do one concrete thing that treats them as someone whose heart you have not read.