David's Anointing and Goliath
These two chapters introduce David and contain one of the most striking compositional tensions in the entire book. They preserve two irreconcilable accounts of how David came to Saul's attention, and the question of who actually killed Goliath is further complicated by a passage in Second Samuel that attributes the kill to someone else entirely.
The Anointing of David (Chapter 16:1–13)
God sends Samuel to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse, to anoint one of Jesse's sons as the next king. The process is deliberately designed to invert conventional expectations. Samuel sees Jesse's eldest son, Eliab, and assumes he must be the chosen one. God's correction is pointed: "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (16:7). Seven of Jesse's sons pass before Samuel, and none is chosen. The youngest, David, is out in the fields tending sheep and has not even been brought to the gathering. He is sent for, arrives, and Samuel anoints him. From that day forward, the Spirit of the LORD comes powerfully upon David.
The narrative carefully inverts the Saul story: Saul was tall, impressive, and initially chosen for his outward appearance (9:2); David is overlooked precisely because he does not present that way. The inversion signals to readers familiar with Saul's story that something different is beginning. The anointing is private, witnessed only by Jesse's household, and David returns to tending the sheep. Nothing in his circumstances has changed. The theological significance is entirely interior to the narrative.
Two Accounts of David's Entry into Saul's Service
Chapter 16:14-23 presents the first account: Saul is tormented by a distressing spirit, described as coming from God, and his servants suggest finding a skilled musician to soothe him. One of the servants mentions David, describing him as a skilled musician, a brave man, a warrior, and prudent in speech. Saul sends for him, comes to love him greatly, makes him his armor-bearer, and David takes up regular service at court.
Chapter 17 then presents an entirely different account of David's introduction to Saul. A Philistine champion named Goliath of Gath, described as over nine feet tall and armored from head to foot, has been challenging Israel to send a man to fight him in single combat. No one will go. David arrives at the Israelite camp as a young boy bringing food to his brothers, who are serving in Saul's army. David hears Goliath's challenge, asks about the reward, and volunteers to fight him. He is brought before Saul. Saul asks him directly, "Are you able to go out against this Philistine and fight him? You are only a young man" (17:33). David persuades Saul, refuses the offer of armor, takes his sling and five smooth stones, and kills Goliath. After the battle, Saul asks his commander Abner, "Whose son is that young man?" (17:55). Abner does not know. David is brought to Saul and introduces himself as the son of Jesse of Bethlehem.
These two chapters cannot both be accurate as a sequential account. If David has already been Saul's armor-bearer and regularly in his service (chapter 16), Saul's question in 17:55 about who this young man is makes no sense. The ancient editors recognized this problem: the Greek Septuagint resolves it by omitting large sections of chapter 17, including the parts that require David to be unknown to Saul. The fact that ancient translators altered the text to address the contradiction confirms that it is a real one, not a modern misreading. The most straightforward scholarly explanation is that chapters 16 and 17 preserve different traditions about how David first came to prominence, and the final Hebrew editors chose to retain both.
Who Killed Goliath?
The chapter 17 account attributes the killing of Goliath the Gittite to David in what is one of the most famous narratives in the entire Bible. Second Samuel 21:19 states: "In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jair the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod." The same figure, identified by the same hometown and the same distinctive description of the spear, is killed by two different people in two different texts.
The parallel account in 1 Chronicles 20:5 changes the text to read that Elhanan killed "Lahmi the brother of Goliath," an apparent editorial attempt to resolve the conflict by making Elhanan's victim a different person. Scholars have proposed various explanations. One is that Elhanan was the original killer and that the tradition of David killing Goliath represents the later attachment of heroic exploits to the dominant figure of the narrative, a well-attested phenomenon in ancient epic traditions where the deeds of lesser figures become associated with the central hero. The contradiction stands as one of the clearest examples in the Bible of how the canonical text preserves conflicting traditions without resolution.