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Context No. 1183 of 4322 · 1 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

1 Chronicles 20:1-8: in context

1At the time of the return of the year, at the time when kings go out, Joab led out the army and wasted the country of the children of Ammon, and came and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem. Joab struck Rabbah, and overthrew it. 2David took the crown of their king from off his head, and found it to weigh a talent of gold, and there were precious stones in it. It was set on David’s head, and he brought very much plunder out of the city. 3He brought out the people who were in it, and had them cut with saws, with iron picks, and with axes. David did so to all the cities of the children of Ammon. Then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem. 4After this, war arose at Gezer with the Philistines. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai, of the sons of the giant; and they were subdued. 5Again there was war with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 6There was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had twenty-four fingers and toes, six on each hand and six on each foot; and he also was born to the giant. 7When he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea, David’s brother, killed him. 8These were born to the giant in Gath; and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

This chapter records David's later wars, and it lingers on a series of giants. In battle after battle with the Philistines, the descendants of the giant of Gath are struck down: Sibbecai kills Sippai, Elhanan kills the brother of Goliath whose spear was like a weaver's beam, and Jonathan, David's nephew, kills a giant with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. These giants, the text says, were born to the giant in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and his servants.

The detail worth noticing is that the giants keep coming, and they keep falling. Goliath was not the only giant; he had brothers and kin, a whole line of them out of Gath, and after David felled the most famous one as a boy, more of them rose up over the years. But they fell too, one after another, not always to David himself now but to his men, Sibbecai, Elhanan, Jonathan. The giant-slayer had trained up giant-slayers. There is a picture here of how the battles of faith go. Defeating one great obstacle does not mean the giants are done; others of the same brood keep appearing across a life. But the pattern, once God has established it, holds: the giants that terrify still fall, and often now through others whom the first victory emboldened. The young man who dropped Goliath became the king whose servants dropped Goliath's kin. God does not usually clear every giant at once; he gives victory over them one at a time, over years, and raises up others to share in the fight. The giants are real and recurring, and so, by God's hand, is their defeat.

When another giant of the same old brood rises up in my life, do I face it in the confidence that these giants still fall by God's hand, one at a time, as they did before?

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