The Shepherd's Sling Against the Giant
1 Samuel 17 sets the Philistine and Israelite armies on facing hillsides of the Valley of Elah. From the Philistine camp comes Goliath of Gath, a champion six cubits and a span tall (about three meters; the older Greek text and a Dead Sea scroll read four cubits and a span, about two), wearing a bronze helmet and a coat of mail weighing five thousand shekels, bronze greaves on his legs and a bronze javelin slung between his shoulders, his spear shaft like a weaver's beam, its iron head weighing six hundred shekels. Morning and evening for forty days he strides out and defies the ranks of Israel, and Saul and all Israel are dismayed.
David, youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem, is still keeping sheep; sent with provisions for his brothers at the front, he hears the taunt. To Saul he says that when a lion or a bear carried off a lamb from his father's flock, he struck it down and rescued the lamb from its mouth — this uncircumcised Philistine will fare like them. He tries on Saul's armor, cannot walk in it, and puts it off, taking instead his staff, five smooth stones from the streambed in his shepherd's bag, and his sling. Goliath, seeing a ruddy youth, is contemptuous: am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks? David answers that Goliath comes with sword, spear, and javelin, but he comes in the name of the Lord of hosts. He slings a stone that sinks into the giant's forehead; Goliath falls face down, and David, having no sword, draws the giant's own blade and cuts off his head. The Philistine army breaks and flees.
The duel begins David's rise from shepherd to king of Israel. 'David and Goliath' became the West's standing phrase for the weak defeating the strong, and Michelangelo's marble David of 1504, set up in Florence, catches the youth in the moment of appraisal before the throw — among the most famous sculptures of the Renaissance.
