Study Desk

Then Saul commanded his servants, “Find me someone who plays well and bring him to me.”

So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a wineskin, and one young goat and sent them by his son David to Saul.

When David came to Saul and entered his service, Saul loved him very much, and David became his armor-bearer.

Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would pick up his lyre and play, and Saul would then be relieved, feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.

There was bronze armor on his shins, and a bronze javelin was slung between his shoulders.

His spear shaft was like a weaver’s beam, and the iron point of his spear weighed fifteen pounds. In addition, a shield-bearer was walking in front of him.

but David kept going back and forth from Saul to tend his father’s flock in Bethlehem.

Every morning and evening for forty days the Philistine came forward and took his stand.

One day Jesse had told his son David: “Take this half-bushel of roasted grain along with these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp.

David left his supplies in the care of the quartermaster and ran to the battle line. When he arrived, he asked his brothers how they were.

While he was speaking with them, suddenly the champion named Goliath, the Philistine from Gath, came forward from the Philistine battle line and shouted his usual words, which David heard.

Previously, an Israelite man had declared: “Do you see this man who keeps coming out? He comes to defy Israel. The king will make the man who kills him very rich and will give him his daughter. The king will also make the family of that man’s father exempt from paying taxes in Israel.”

David answered Saul: “Your servant has been tending his father’s sheep. Whenever a lion or a bear came and carried off a lamb from the flock,

Then Saul had his own military clothes put on David. He put a bronze helmet on David’s head and had him put on armor.

David strapped his sword on over the military clothes and tried to walk, but he was not used to them. “I can’t walk in these,” David said to Saul, “I’m not used to them.” So David took them off.

Instead, he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the wadi and put them in the pouch, in his shepherd’s bag. Then, with his sling in his hand, he approached the Philistine.

He said to David, “Am I a dog that you come against me with sticks?” Then he cursed David by his gods.

David put his hand in the bag, took out a stone, slung it, and hit the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown to the ground.

David ran and stood over him. He grabbed the Philistine’s sword, pulled it from its sheath, and used it to kill him. Then he cut off his head. When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they fled.

David took Goliath’s head and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put Goliath’s weapons in his own tent.