Confidence in the Living God

David and Goliath Revisited

Andrew Watson

• Publisher: BRF
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780857464842
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Confidence lies at the heart of society, determining the success or failure of the economy, the government, companies, schools, churches and individuals. As Christians, we are called to proclaim our faith in God, but how can we build and maintain this confidence in an increasingly secularised culture where such faith is often seen as marginal, embarrassing or even downright dangerous? Using the story of David and Goliath as his starting-point, Andrew Watson shows how the Lord can indeed be our confidence, whatever the odds. He explores how God can develop a proper self-confidence within individuals and his Church, revealing the gospel through transforming words and transformed lives. He considers, too, how we can confidently tackle the challenges of day-to-day living, whether a difficult work situation or family relationship, or simply anxiety about the future. The book includes a discussion guide and is ideal as a whole church course on the subject of confidence.

1

Building Confident Foundations: Introducing the Philistines

History repeats itself.

Has to.

Nobody listens.1

It’s one of Steve Turner’s more succinct poems, but it still packs a punch. For the reality is that humankind is often extraordinarily bad at learning from history, so consigning itself to a tedious repetition of the same mistakes time and time again. Individuals, families, churches, communities, whole nations fall prey to this tendency. Even in successful organisations, a laudable emphasis on vision for the future all too often replaces (rather than supplements) an accompanying emphasis on reflection on the past. And the result is this: that precisely those lessons that we should be squirrelling away, so developing a deposit of wisdom and godly confidence within us, are instead strewn behind us like so much litter as we continue our headlong rush onwards and (all too rarely) upwards.

For a number of years I was privileged to live near a particularly beautiful stretch of the River Thames, and my morning walks beside the river were frequently punctuated by the sound of a cox bellowing orders to a boatful of rowers. The cox could see straight ahead, and guide the boat in the right direction, yet the power came from the oarsmen facing the opposite way; and there’s something of that interplay between cox and oarsmen—between the composite need for looking forwards and reflecting backwards—which seems fundamental to vigorous, purposeful living.2

No Future Without Forgiveness is the title of Desmond Tutu’s reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa,3 and its second chapter movingly describes both the humiliation of apartheid and the complex discussions which led to the Commission’s formation after the glorious elections of April 1994. On the one hand there were many who argued for the approach of the Nuremberg Trials, letting those who had perpetrated the worst atrocities of the apartheid era ‘run the gauntlet of the normal judicial process’. On the other, there were some who suggested that the blanket amnesty secured by General Pinochet in Chile was the only practicable model, effectively whitewashing decades of human rights abuses. While the Nuremberg approach was quickly rejected, the notion that South Africa should embrace a kind of national amnesia was seen as still more repugnant, turning those who had been ‘cruelly silenced for so long’ into ‘anonymous, marginalised victims’. The approach of the Commission—which granted an amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure of what they had done—proved both realistic and healing, facing up to the past while avoiding the danger of individual vendettas or a partial ‘victor’s justice’.

More personally, I was recently involved in a conversation with a newly engaged couple prior to their marriage. Both were Christians, both were in their late 40s, and one had been married before. At some point in the conversation I raised the issue of the previous marriage, and was greatly surprised at the reaction it provoked. ‘We’ve never talked about that,’ said the prospective husband. ‘We really don’t think it would be helpful.’ ‘No,’ continued the prospective wife, ‘it feels like it happened in a different life.’ It’s not that I was expecting a blow-by-blow account of the earlier relationship, but the idea that such a key event should somehow have become a no-go area between them, consigned to some fictitious ‘different life’, hardly inspired a sense of confidence in the stability of their future marriage.4

And so we turn to the first few verses in the story of David and Goliath, and to the question of what the Israelites might have learnt, had they taken the time and trouble to reflect on their previous dealings with their Philistine opponents.

Facing backwards

Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. They pitched camp at Ephes Dammim, between Sokoh and Azekah. Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.

1 Samuel 17:1–3

It’s a prosaic start to an exciting story, locating the source of the future battle around ten miles west of the little town of Bethlehem, as the Philistines sought to expand their territory at Israel’s expense. But it suggests a fairly leisurely process of assembling and setting up camp, with no immediate sense of hurry or panic: an ideal opportunity for Saul, we might think, to provide the kind of reflective and inspirational leadership required for the challenges that lay ahead.

Israel had encountered the Philistines on many previous occasions, and each of those meetings (the good, the bad and the disastrous) had provided considerable food for thought for all who were willing to ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ them.5 The ground on which the battle was to be fought had its own memories too, memories of a stunning Israelite victory, as we will later discover. While they gathered their forces and sat around their campfires, then, Saul and his men might usefully have looked to the past and asked some searching questions about the Philistines and the history of their previous encounters. Unfortunately the paralysis of the Israelite army that we read of later in the chapter suggests that the opportunity was lost, and no such reflection took place.

Who were the Philistines?

The Philistines generally receive a distinctly bad press. In the Bible they play the role of Israel’s inveterate enemies, more famous and formidable than the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites put together;6 while through history—and especially in the past 200 years—their name has been associated with all that is mercenary, banal and lowbrow. ‘He’s a right Philistine!’ as we might put it.

In the 1860s Matthew Arnold championed high culture as opposed to the popular tastes of the ‘philistines’ of his day. Some years before, the composer Robert Schumann had brought together his so-called ‘League of David’, whose defence of the classical tradition, he felt, was being assaulted by the banality of Rossini and the ‘downright amateurism’ of Richard Wagner.7 To Schumann, David was first and foremost a poet and musician, ‘Israel’s singer of songs’ (2 Samuel 23:1, NIV), and his defeat of the Philistines more a cultural statement than a military victory.8

In reality, though, the Philistines of David’s day were people of real discernment and sophistication. Four out of five of their major strongholds—Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron—have now been excavated,9 revealing a formidable combination of superior technology, military might and artistic ingenuity. The painstaking studies of archaeologists like Neal Bierling,10 who worked on the Ekron site, have established significant links between the Philistines and the worlds of Mycenae, Crete and Troy; and while the Philistine script has still to be fully deciphered, there is no question that the Philistines were considerably more advanced technologically (if not theologically) than their Israelite neighbours.

Where did the Philistines come from? It seems that they were among the so-called Sea Peoples who were displaced during the political upheavals around the Aegean during the 13th century BC and who responded by launching two attacks on Egypt. The second of these was during the reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses III, with contemporary Egyptian records apparently naming the Philistines among other groups involved in the planned invasion; and Ramesses later boasted of how he had defeated the People of the Sea and forced them to settle in citadels on Canaan’s southern sea coast in what we call Palestine (itself a name derived from the word for ‘Philistine’) or Israel.

Artistically the Philistines specialised in a unique form of pottery, with a white background and red and black decorations in the forms of birds, fish and geometric shapes. Agriculturally they took full advantage of the excellent conditions for growing olive trees, with one excavation containing the remains of more than a hundred olive presses. In terms of religion they ignored the Greek gods and goddesses, and embraced instead the worship of Baal, Asherah, Dagon and Mot, the pantheon of the Canaanites among whom they lived. Technologically they mastered the art of ironwork, building kilns capable of reaching the metal’s melting point of 1530°C. Iron weapons could be produced at lower temperatures, but only the hotter kilns would produce a metal which was stronger and more durable than the bronze weaponry of their neighbours.

Given what we now know of the Philistines, then, there is a sense in which the story of David and Goliath represents the collision of two worlds: the Greek world of Homer’s The Iliad11 and the Hebrew world of the Bible, with a smattering of Canaanite mythology thrown in for good measure. The very idea of a duel between champions, alongside the vivid description of Goliath’s armour and his blood-curdling taunts, has far more in common with the world of The Iliad than with that of ancient Israel. But the fierce faith of David in Yahweh, in the ‘living God’, is far removed from the scheming world of the gods and goddesses in Homer’s epic. Indeed it is the clash of these cultures, not simply the details of the fight itself or its place in David’s rise to kingship, which makes this story so gripping.

Four lessons from history

What were the lessons that Saul and the Israelites might have learnt as they gathered for war and camped together in the Valley of Elah?

Lesson one was that the Philistines were formidable opponents. In terms of their ambitions, they already had parts of Israel’s territory surrounded, and seemed intent on continued expansion into the very heart of the ‘promised land’.12 In terms of their numbers, they’d recently managed to assemble 3000 chariots, 6000 charioteers and (allowing for a little poetic licence) ‘soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore’ (1 Samuel 13:5). In terms of their firepower, the humiliating sight of the Israelites having to go to Philistine blacksmiths to have their ploughshares, mattocks, axes and sickles sharpened (13:20) acted as a stark reminder of the military impotence of the Israelite forces, when compared to the well-armed Philistine militia. On a day when Saul’s son Jonathan remarkably triumphed at the battle of Michmash, we are told that only he and King Saul had a sword or spear in their hands (13:22). The rest of the Israelites were presumably fighting with axes and sickles—hardly an impressive sight when compared with the forged iron weaponry of their opponents.

Lesson two, though, was that the Philistines were not invincible. For one thing, several Israelite leaders had scored notable victories over them—the little-known judge Shamgah, for example, who ‘struck down six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad’ (Judges 3:31); the better-known judge Samson, whose call to ‘begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines’ (13:5, NIV) was fulfilled in a series of angry attacks, motivated in part by Samson’s greatest weakness, an insatiable penchant for Philistine women;13 the prophet Samuel (not otherwise known for his military prowess), Jonathan and Saul. For another, even the disastrous defeat at Aphek, which led to the deaths of 30,000 Israelite soldiers and the capture of the sacred ark of the covenant, had led to a surprisingly favourable turn of events—a lethal tour of the ark through Philistine territories, bringing plague and panic wherever it went (1 Samuel 4—6).

The Philistines seemed completely unimpressed by the Israelites and their leaders, yet they were consistently on edge when it came to Israel’s God. This was a God who h...