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the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Socoh in Judah and camped at Ephes-dammim between Socoh and Azekah. 2 Saul and the men of Israel assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah. Then they lined up in battle array to face the Philistines. 3 The Philistines stood on a hill on one side and Israel stood on a hill on the opposite side, with a valley between them.
4 Now a champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out from the Philistine camp. He stood six cubits and a span in height, 5 and wore a bronze helmet and a coat of bronze weighing five thousand shekels. 6 He had bronze greaves on his legs, and a bronze javelin was slung between his shoulders. 7 The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and the iron spear head of his spear weighed six hundred shekels. He also had a shield-bearer who walked ahead of him.
8 Goliath stood and shouted to the armies of Israel, “Why have you come out to line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will become your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you will become our servants and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “I defy the armies of Israel this day! Give me a man so we can fight each other.” 11 When Saul and all Israel heard these words from the Philistine, they were dismayed and terrified.
12 Now David was the son of an Ephrathite from Bethlehem in Judah named Jesse. Jesse had eight sons, and during the reign of Saul he was already old and advanced in years. 13 Jesse’s three oldest sons had left and followed Saul to the war, and their names were Eliab the firstborn, the second, Abinadab, and the third, Shammah. 14 David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul, 15 but David went back and forward from Saul to tend his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.
16 The Philistine came forward morning and evening, and presented himself for forty days.
17 Jesse said to his son David, “Take the ephah of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. 18 Take also these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand. Find out how your brothers are faring, and bring back news of them. 19 They are with Saul and all the men of Israel in the Valley of Elah, fighting against the Philistines.”
20 So David got up early in the morning, left the flock with a shepherd, and he loaded up and set out, as Jesse had instructed him. He arrived at the camp as the army was going out to their battle positions, shouting the war cry. 21 Israel and the Philistines lined up in their battle formations, facing each other. 22 David left his things with the supply keeper, ran to the battle line, and went and greeted his brothers. 23 As he talked with them, the champion named Goliath, the Philistine from Gath, came forward from the Philistine battle lines and shouted out his usual challenge, and David heard him. 24 When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran away from him and were very much afraid. 25 The men of Israel said, “Do you see this man who keeps coming forward? He comes to defy Israel. The king will give great riches to the man who kills him, and he will also give that man his daughter in marriage, and exempt his father’s house from paying taxes in Israel.”
26 David asked the men standing near, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Just who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
27 The men repeated to David the offer made and told him, “That is what will be done for the man who kills him.”
28 When David’s oldest brother Eliab heard him speaking with the men, he became angry. He said to David, “Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how arrogant you are and of the evil of your heart; you only came down here to see the battle.”
29 “What have I done now?” David asked. “Can’t I even speak?” 30 Then he turned away and spoke to others, asking in the same way, and they also gave him the same answer. 31 What David had said was reported to Saul, and he summoned David.
32 David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” 33 But Saul said to David, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him. You are only a boy, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep, and if a lion or a bear came and carried off a lamb from the flock, 35 I would go out after it, strike it down, and rescue the lamb from its mouth. If it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it down, and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.” 37 Then David said, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of the Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own military garments; he put a bronze helmet on his head and armour on his body. 39 David strapped his sword over the armour and tried walking around, but he was not used to them.
David told Saul, “I can’t walk in these, because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. 40 Then he went out with a staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the stream and put them in a pouch in his shepherd’s bag. And holding his sling in his hand, he approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, moved in closer and closer to David. 42 When the Philistine looked David over and saw he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, he despised him. 43 He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field!”
45 David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the carcasses of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 47 And all this assembly will know that the Lord does not save with a sword and shield; for the battle is the Lord’s and He will give you into our hand.”
48 When the Philistine moved forward and drew near to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. 49 David put his hand into his bag, took out a stone and slung it, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone crushed through into his forehead, and he fell face down to the ground.
50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone. David struck down the Philistine and killed him, even he though didn’t have a sword in his hand.
51 David ran and stood over the Philistine, and he took hold of the Philstine’s sword, drew it from its sheath, and killed him, and cut off his head with it.
When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. 52 At this, the men of Israel and Judah rallied. They broke out from their battle lines with a shout, and they pursued the retreating Philistines all the way to the entrance of Gath and the gates of Ekron. And the dead bodies of the Philistines were strewn along the Shaaraim road as far as Gath and Ekron. 53 When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camps. 54 David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put Goliath’s weapons in his own tent.
55 As Saul watched David go out to confront the Philistine, he said to Abner, the commander of the army, “Abner, whose son is this young man?”
Abner replied, “ As surely as you live, O king, I do not know.”
56 The king said, “Find out whose son this young man is.”
57 So when David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine still in his hand.
58 Saul said to him, “Whose son are you, young man?”
And David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”