Scripture Daily

Context No. 1318 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 17:16-25: in context

16The Philistine came near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days. 17Jesse said to David his son, “Now take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp to your brothers; 18and bring these ten cheeses to the captain of their thousand; and see how your brothers are doing, and bring back news.” 19Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel were in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines. 20David rose up early in the morning and left the sheep with a keeper, and took the provisions and went, as Jesse had commanded him. He came to the place of the wagons as the army which was going out to the fight shouted for the battle. 21Israel and the Philistines put the battle in array, army against army. 22David left his baggage in the hand of the keeper of the baggage and ran to the army, and came and greeted his brothers. 23As he talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines, and said the same words; and David heard them. 24All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were terrified. 25The men of Israel said, “Have you seen this man who has come up? He has surely come up to defy Israel. The king will give great riches to the man who kills him, and will give him his daughter, and will make his father’s house tax-free in Israel.”

For forty days, morning and evening, the Philistine giant Goliath has come out to taunt the armies of Israel, and for forty days Israel has done nothing but tremble. Jesse sends his young son David to the camp with provisions for his older brothers and cheeses for their commander, and to bring back news of how they fare. David arrives just as the armies are drawing up for battle, runs to the lines to greet his brothers, and while he is speaking, Goliath steps out and shouts his usual defiance. David hears it. And he watches every man of Israel flee in terror at the sight of the giant, muttering among themselves about the reward the king has offered to anyone who will fight him.

What is striking is that David hears Goliath's blasphemy with fresh ears. The soldiers have heard it twice a day for forty days; they have grown used to it, and the outrage has worn down into a dull, accustomed fear. To them the giant's defiance of the living God has become simply the way things are, a daily humiliation they have learned to live with and flee from. David, newly arrived, hears the same words and is scandalized by them, because he has not had forty days to grow numb; he hears the defiance of God for the fresh outrage it actually is. There is a warning in that about how familiarity dulls us. Things that ought to shock us, sins we would once have found intolerable, the steady defiance of God in the world around us or in our own lives, can through sheer repetition become background noise, accommodated and no longer felt. The seasoned soldiers had made their peace with a scandal; it took someone with fresh eyes to be properly outraged and to act. We need, from time to time, to recover the shock, to hear again with fresh ears what we have grown too accustomed to tolerate, and to let it move us as it moved David.

What have I grown so accustomed to that it no longer shocks me, a defiance of God I have made my quiet peace with, and can I recover the fresh outrage of David, hearing again what forty days of familiarity have dulled?

Sources