CHAPTER SUMMARY

PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO THIS CHAPTER’S EXTRAORDINARY LENGTH, WE ARE SPLITTING IT INTO TWO ROUGHLY EQUAL HALVES.

As so often before, the Jews are waging war against the Plishtim, with the two sides on mountaintops facing each other with a valley in between. One of the Plishtim, Golyat of Gat (it’s important to live in a town that combines well with your name), is described in detail before we even find out why he matters.

Three and a half verses tell us his height and the details (the material of which they are made as well as their weight) of his uniform, armor, and weapons. After that description, we find out his significance: he came out of the Plishti camp to challenge the Jews to a duel in lieu of war; he will represent the Plishtim, and they, the servants of Shaul, should choose a champion who would engage him in battle, winner take all. After issuing the challenge, Golyat (who the navi refers to consistently as "the Plishti") crows that he has embarrassed the entire camp of Jews, and repeated his challenge. Shaul and the people, hearing the challenge, were greatly afraid.

There are two more details of this challenge that the navi will mention later, but at this point (verse 12), it digresses to tell us that David was the son of an Efrati from Beit Lehem in Yehudah, whose name was Yishai, who had eight sons and was, in the time of Shaul, old and important. His three older sons, Eliav, Avinadav, and Shamah, had followed Shaul to war, and David, the youngest, was shuttling from Shaul to home to help shepherd his father’s sheep.

Now the navi returns to tell us that Golyat would come out morning and evening (with his challenge) and did that for forty days.

Yishai asks David to go check on his brothers, to bring them some bread, and a gift for their commander. David does so, leaving the sheep with a watchman, and comes to the camp, where the Jews were arrayed against the Plishtim, with sounds of battle all around. David leaves the stuff he has brought with someone, and runs out to the front lines, asking his brothers how they are.

As he was speaking with them, he hears Golyat’s regular reviling of the Jews, which causes the people around him to cower in fear. They mention that the king has announced a reward of wealth, his daughter, and family freedom from taxes for anyone who kills Golyat, who comes leharef (to embarrass or revile) the Jews. David asks them to repeat what would be done for the person who kills Golyat, thus removing the herpah from the Jews, wondering how this uncircumcised one could be allowed leharef ma`arkhot elokim hayyim (the array of the Living God).

Eliav hears him talking with the people, and gets angry with David, accusing him of abandoning the sheep, saying he knows David’s evil, that he had just come to see the war. David deflects his criticism, saying that he was just talking. As he goes to another group to ask the same questions, Shaul hears about it, and summons him before him.

GOLYAT’S CHALLENGE

After describing the setting of what was about to happen, the verses introduce us to Golyat in detail. We are meant, I assume, to be impressed by Golyat’s size and strength, both to understand the fear he struck in those who saw him as well as to appreciate David’s lack of that same fear.

Golyat’s challenge is more complicated than it first seems. He suggests that each side select a champion (with him being the Plishti representative) and that the national outcome depend on their individual battle. Malbim assumes that that was the custom in war sometimes, so that there was little surprising about it, but is then left to explain why Golyat thinks he has embarrassed the Jews; wasn’t it their choice as to whether to accept his terms of battle? He answers that Golyat moved away from the idea of individual representative combat to simply looking for a worthy opponent, and embarrassing the Jews that they had no such opponent.

It is not clear to me, however, how individual combat was going to work—did Golyat really assume that the Plishtim would submit to the Jews willingly if Golyat lost, and vice verse? Also, what is the embarrassment of not having an individual willing to engage Golyat in single combat? To pick examples from the world of sports, cities do not really think that their city, as a whole, is less powerful if they lose the World Series; it is somewhat odd that Golyat (or anybody) would think that the Jews would rest their fate on one person.

Malbim’s second idea is even less convincing—there is no embarrassment in one team recognizing that they have no one to equal Michael Jordan’s ability (nor would they immediately assume that they could not defeat his team at a game of basketball); so, too, the embarrassment involved in not being able to take Golyat on individually is not at all clear. Warfare, after all, is about one group’s strength in comparison to another’s. That the champion of one side is much stronger or more competent than the champion of the other does not yet determine the outcome of a war.

Perhaps (although David’s response will suggest another answer) the fear that strikes all of them at the challenge is itself embarrassing; perhaps Golyat and the Jews assumed that at least one of them should have challenged Golyat, even if that meant losing, simply as an expression of courage.

DIGRESSING TO DAVID

The navi now reintroduces David, as if we have never met him before. In fact, though, we have met him as the anointed king as well as as Shaul’s music-player. The extra introduction here seems calculated to produce a particular impression of David, so as to highlight later events. David is the youngest of an important family, with an elderly father who has established his own significance, and with three older brothers who have gone to represent the family in the national army. Even David’s life outside the family, helping Shaul with his problems, was kept subordinate to his responsibilities to his family (shepherding). In terms of that family, he is just a kid.

By the way, in terms of considering how the monarchy worked at that time, David’s returning home regularly is worth noting. For all that Shaul is the king, he was apparently unable to simply draft David to stay with him as needed. Once Yishai had sent three sons to war—the oldest three—he had the right, a right the king at least felt loath to abrogate, to insist that his other sons stay home to help him manage his household.

FORTY DAYS, MORNING AND NIGHT

After introducing David, the navi mentions that Golyat had done his bit every morning and evening for forty days. The Talmud (Sotah 42b) says that the coming out morning and night was to stop the Jews from saying Shema, and that the forty days were meant to correspond to the days before the giving of the Torah (that Moses spent on the mountain). Both comments suggest a connection between the Golyat incident and the Jews’ relationship with God, a connection we will study further next week. (But remember this now for then).

When Yishai tells David to go visit his brothers, he accedes happily, perhaps (given what we know of his own military prowess) eagerly. He conscientiously finds a substitute to watch the sheep, and goes to the battlefield. Once there, he again makes sure that he leaves what he has brought with a responsible person, and then goes to the front lines.

When Golyat comes out, the people take it in the same way as we mentioned earlier, that Golyat is embarrassing the Israelite camp. David, in verse 26, seems to be just checking the information he had heard, when he actually reframes the issue at hand significantly. He asks what would happen to the person who killed the Plishti, removing the herpah from Israel, for who was this Plishti that he heref ma`arkhot Elokim hayyim, that he mocked the camp of the Living God.

The people listening to him miss the point, they simply reply as they had before, as if David had been seeking more information. In verse 30, however, David again asks the same question of another group of people, receiving the same answer. It is possible that he was trying to verify the truth of the promised reward, or that he was trying to draw attention to himself (as Metsudat David suggests, to allow himself an opening to offer to go), but it seems to me that David is trying to help the people think differently about the episode at hand.

Golyat is mocking the Jews, which he and the Jews think of as personally or nationally embarrassing. David, by stressing the camp’s status as ma`arkhot Elokim hayyim, is pointing out (first to the Jews, later to Golyat) that they have both missed the point. Golyat’s words rankle not because of the insult to David or his people, but because of the implied insult to God.

SIBLING RIVALRY

Before we can see what happens with David and Golyat, we need to review David’s interaction with his brother Eliav. The first time he asked people about the reward for killing Golyat, Eliav became incensed, accusing David of running away from home without permission and abandoning the sheep for the sake of seeing the battle. Eliav’s anger is odd, particularly since we know that David had in fact been responding to his father’s command, had taken care of the sheep’s welfare before leaving, and had done nothing wrong.

Eliav’s anger, at the very least, shows us why God had rejected him as a future king of the Jewish people. Without any implied claim about my own character, a hot temper is one of the most significant flaws in a leader, particularly a king. That Eliav would not investigate a matter before exploding in anger already goes a long way to explaining his disqualification. We might take the matter a little further, however, seeing this incident as a glimpse into the world of an older brother who would be left behind by history as he interacts with a younger one who would become the most renowned poet, warrior, and king in all of Jewish history.

That David was going to far outstrip Eliav was somewhat clear from Shmuel’s having anointed him king, although that was still not publicly acknowledged. As we have seen, however, the servants of Shaul already knew of David’s military prowess, which might have made Eliav insecure about his right to be at the battle. If—as we will see next week—David turns out to be a more formidable warrior than any of his brothers, their status as the brothers who went off to war was in serious jeopardy (imagine the embarrassment of being left behind to tend the sheep while your youngest brother went off to the glory of war). Eliav’s anger is perhaps inexcusable, but it is, I think, understandable, and reminds us of the real familial and social settings underlying these events. We will see a little more of this in a later incident, well-known because it is read in a haftarah every year.

For now, however, David simply deflects Eliav’s anger, and moves off to pursue his destiny. As Shaul hears of his claims, David is brought before him for a talk, a meeting we will discuss next week. Shabbat Shalom.