It’s an impressive story.
Any combat is gutsy at the best of times. Modern warfare is conducted at a distance, it is rare these days that soldiers close and fight with edged weapons. It’s a visceral kind of conflict where you have to get close enough to smell the guy you are going to kill.
The essence of the story is a solitary brave hero striding across an ancient plain to face a formidable adversary.
Without this conflict there would be no story, but men have been busy killing each other since …… well ever since men discovered what wonderful sport it is. What else about this story distinguishes it from any other story about two guys trying to kill each other?
David was a shepherd, and Goliath was a trained warrior. This was not just some gladiatorial bout; it was for all the marbles. The proposition was simple enough. If Goliath won, the Israelites would be slaves of the Philistines. If Goliath lost, the Philistines would be slaves of the Israelites. Should David prevail he would marry the Kings daughter and become King himself. Finally, this was not some unfortunate situation where David was forced to fight; he chose to do this. This is powerful stuff. Two men fighting to the death, and the winner gets to enslave the losers’ people, marry a princess and rule a kingdom. We live in exciting times, but in my entire life I have yet to see any single event that combines ritual killing, enslavement, arranged marriage and regal succession.
So, I have to ask you … If you were in David’s position right now would you submit to a death match where if you lost you would be brutally hacked to death and if you won you would rule a kingdom?
If you would then good for you, because most people would just continue doing what they know best and spare themselves the possibility of a gruesome hacking thank you very much.
This pretty much sums it up; you have the whole deafening din of everything that makes up your life to deal with. It’s easy to look at David’s story (especially knowing the outcome) and thrill to its spectacle and promise, but it’s really hard to put yourself in his place.
Another thing to consider is just how did David go from delivering food to his brothers to facing Goliath? Was this a mistake? Did Saul inadvertently send a delivery boy out on a killers’ errand? Did David just get lucky when he killed Goliath? If this were the case, the message contained therein: “You either have to get lucky, or someone needs to screw up for you to get ahead” is definitely not something we’d eulogize for 300 decades. Regardless of how many people feel that this is the actual truth, it’s just not something that we immortalize in parables that get handed down to the kiddies.
David’s situation represents a decision in the abstract. It’s a precious few of us that get to participate in a regally sanctioned death match, but we all have things to deal with in our everyday lives and some of them require heroic action. While you are consumed with everything that makes up your busy life, how do you identify and capitalize on life altering opportunities? It would be nice if these opportunities present themself with a tag attached saying “I’m important”. It’s more likely that they present in exactly the same way as everything else in your life, yet another thing that needs dealing with.
Even more insidious is the possibility that when presented with opportunities for great gain that come with personal risk, it’s easy to immerse yourself back in that familiar din. Worse still is that this is a cocoon that you have fabricated that insulates you from ever having to face these issues, and should they rudely force themselves to the forefront of consciousness, manufactures ready made fears and doubts that manifest as well articulated rationalizations about why you are neither equipped nor required to seize this burning spear.
Nearly all of the elements of this story are available on first inspection. Without making a decision in the abstract, let's look at the information available to David and the types of thoughts he might have about his options.
What do I fear?
David came to the Israeli camp to deliver food to his brothers. He has everything that he normally has to deal with (tending sheep, feeding his brothers), and on top of all this it looks like a war is going to kick off, quite probably while he is there. It may just be possible that David had conventional thoughts –
“What should I do if there’s a fight? I’m just a shepherd, nobody expects me to fight, I’m just here to deliver food to my brothers. What if there’s a fight and we lose, will the Philistines come looking for survivors? What will happen to me?”
A simple shepherd (i.e. you and me) looking at this situation might see that his only purpose is to deliver food to his brothers. His choices might be to stay and fight with his brothers, or return home. David as we know is no simple shepherd, and may have already decided to join his brothers and fight for his country. If he looked at this in the context of his daily life, he might think:
“There’s going to be a fight. I’ve decided to fight with my brothers. While I’m focusing on this important decision, my aggressor has chosen to make his presence visible through their champion who is intimidating my army, and bolstering his own army. He is reinforcing everyone’s opinion that we are too cowardly to fight man to man; that we’d prefer the anonymity of battle where whoever wins many will die. The Philistines believe that they will be victorious in any count, since they are trying to take over Israel – you don’t attempt an invasion expecting to lose the requisite hostilities.”
You are faced with a decision to stand with your brothers. Pitched battle involves armored men in tight conditions beating the daylights out of each other. Your preferred weapon needs lots of room to swing, you could never get a slingshot in action in the scrum that is likely to ensue, and you don’t have a lot of training with arms and armor. While it’s compelling to stand and fight with your brothers, it looks like your primary responsibility would be to give up your life as expensively as possible. This is a pretty bleak picture. Focusing on what appears to be a relatively limited set of options (stay and fight, or go back and tend sheep in what could become occupied territory), can get you into a situation where you don’t really want to do either, but are looking at what would be involved in doing both.
Staying to fight, and winning but escaping injury or death would be the best outcome, but in the context of a pitched battle there are so many factors that you have no control over. The simplest might be not fighting but having your army win, you deliver food to your brothers and go back to tending sheep. Lower down the scale would be staying away tending sheep and your army losing the battle. You can easily be mired in a situation where you feel yourself being dragged into choices with pretty bleak outcomes. You’ve got to do something, but all the alternatives are bad.
David was going about his daily routine, and at the periphery of this was the specter of combat. It was not his problem, but if David did nothing it could soon have become his problem, he might well have been out in the fields one day with his sheep, and the next thing he knows is that his sheep and family lands belong to someone else – there has been a battle and his side lost. You don’t plan to invade a country if you think you will lose, and the first act of an invading army is usually looting and raping and killing.
How do you feel about the situation now, better or worse?
What do I see?
The most obvious thing about this situation is a big man hurling abuse.
When he came to the Israelites camp and heard Goliath issuing his daily challenge, the Israeli soldiers told David:
1 Samuel, 17:25
"…Have ye seen this man that is come up? Surely to defy Israel he is come up: and it shall be, that the man who killeth him, the king will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.”
Oh reeeally?
David heard this but again he checked to make sure
1 Samuel, 17:26
“And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philestine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? …”
His initial understanding was reconfirmed.
1 Samuel, 17:27
"And the people answered him after this manner, saying, So shall it be done to the man that killeth him”
The king in question with all this largesse was Saul, and he came from a distinguished family. He was good looking and tall (a head taller than everyone else). Early in his reign Saul won many victories that secured his position as the King of Israel. Saul was a big man and a warrior king. He had at his command an army. He must have spent some time considering the Philistine’s proposal since Goliath had been needling him for 40 days and nights. As king, he had access to the best minds in his Kingdom and the bravest, most powerful warriors were at his disposal. Saul was obviously stuck, because he’d been putting up with this for over a month, and it can’t have been very nice having a big man yelling threats at you every day.
What do I know
One of the things we know most about is our self.
David was a shepherd, and was used to living out in the open – he would sleep with his flock. This indicates a degree of hardiness and field craft. His sheep were his family’s livelihood. On 2 separate occasions, he killed a lion and a bear that were carrying off sheep. Shepherds are not usually heavily armed or armored. When you fight a man, you face someone who has similar capabilities to yourself. Bears and Lions are apex predators that can weigh over 500 Lbs. They can kill just about anything with only their teeth and toenails. In societies where individuals come into contact with lions and/or bears without the benefit of heavy caliber ordnance, those that fight and live to tell the tale hold an exalted place.
David did this with a slingshot, and he did not ‘frighten them off’, he killed them. David had probably been practicing the slingshot for years (there’s not a whole lot else to do while watching sheep). Maybe he was ‘curious’ about what his little friend could do to a human head, little knowing that Saul would come along and give him the chance to see what his little friend could do for his sheep herding career. He was just whipping rocks at things (including but probably not limited to lions and bears) because he liked it.
Put bluntly, the ability to kill either a bear or lion is no mean feat. If I had to pick single person combat with a lion, bear or man, I’d go with the man. Doing this twice indicates that this was not a fluke. David might have been a shepherd, but he was no slouch – he knew how to handle himself.
So, David had fought and killed lions and bears. He was a rugged outdoorsman and probably very fit. Looking at this, Goliath was just another man (albeit a big one), who in comparison to bears and lions was not that formidable. Certainly if David had been stupid enough to close with an apex predator we would be telling the story of the lion and Goliath. David knew he could engage from a distance, and that as dangerous as Goliath was he could outrun him and keep out of harms way. That’s definitely something that you cannot do with a lion or a bear, and pelting them with rocks is a pretty good way of getting them to chase you around unless you kill or incapacitate them immediately.
Getting good with slingshot with a bunch of sheep watching is one thing, getting off an accurate killer shot against a fast hungry carnivore is a whole other level of personal performance.
So David was probably confident of braining Goliath immediately, and should he fail and merely aggravate him, David could simply keep out of Goliaths reach. Slingshots are lightweight weapons, and a skilled practitioner can get off a shot every few seconds. They have another really nice feature too; ammo is just lying around.
Now, none of this diminishes David’s skill or courage. I think that the story actually diminishes David’s raw intelligence. He didn’t volunteer for a suicide mission; he knew he had a chance of winning. True, if he lost he was a dead man, but if he won he would no longer need to tend sheep for a living.
So again, you are David, you know that you have defeated dangerous animals, and you know how you did it. Just looking at Goliath you could deduce that your strengths were his weaknesses, and that his strengths could be nullified. (i.e. being fast and mobile and keeping out of his way was a good way to win).
How would you feel about that death match now?
The situation is now augmented by what you see and what you know.
This represents the jumping off point for most of us. A situation arises that needs dealing with (What do I see?). We look at this situation based on how it presents itself (What do I fear?), we think about it in the context of our daily life (I have to deal with this as well as everything else I have to deal with), and we think of it in terms of what we already know (what else have I done like this that will help me with this situation?).
How do you feel about fighting the killer now, better or worse?
David could have delivered food and gone home, certainly he wouldn’t have gone down in history, but at the other end of the spectrum there was nothing that obligated him to face Goliath. It wasn’t like Goliath had him cornered.
David chose to fight Goliath.
What can I learn?
There is another immediately obvious fact that bears consideration.
You just don’t see that many 9 foot tall men, and Goliath by some accounts was over 9 feet tall. It’s uncommon to see someone who is 7 foot tall. Over 9 foot is so unusual as to be suspicious – even the tallest human beings never get this big under normal circumstances. Either it’s a lie and Goliath was just a big guy, or there’s something else going on.
Now, put yourself in David’s position again. Without just wading in and saying “I’ll fight this guy for you,” you decide to do some reconnaissance. You are familiar with the local terrain and are used to living off the land, your life as a shepherd has prepared you well for a little G2. You decide to slip off and take a look at these Philistines, see how many there are, what their overall readiness is. Maybe you can get close enough to overhear what they are talking about.
Picture yourself hiding at the edge of enemy territory. It’s hard to avoid looking at Goliath. Man this guy is big! He looks like he could pulverize anything. You are probably thinking about killing him and getting this whole thing over with but are conflicted by the other less appealing alternative, and as you watch in fascination, you notice some odd things.
Apart from getting up each day to yell threats, he doesn’t move much. Everyone else is wound up with nervous excitement about the upcoming battle, but this guy is so laid back it’s not true. People seem to be ministering to his needs, not because he is a champion, but because he needs it. He occasionally throws up. He seems to be in a bad mood because people are careful about how they approach him – nobody wants to anger a 9 foot champion. Not only are they careful around him, they keep clear of his back and sides, they make sure they approach him from the front. People that materialize at his side startle him and he’s already in a bad mood. When he gets up to move, he lurches and it seems to be an effort to get to his normal yelling point.
It strikes you, this is a sick man who cannot exert himself too much, and he can’t see things to his sides. Sure he’s big and fierce, but not as big as a bear, and certainly not as fast. He is a champion, and in a set piece fixed battle you would not want to be anywhere near him, but right now he is a propaganda vehicle for the Philistines. They probably believe that no one will challenge Goliath (after all, the Israeli’s have been sitting on their hands for 40 days), and that this campaign of intimidation will wear down the Israelis prior to the inevitable set piece. In the unlikely chance that an Israeli champion does come forward, he will probably be just like Goliath – heavily armed and used to slugging it out toe to toe. Sick or not, Goliath has a great deal of experience in this type of arrangement.
Did you know?
There is a medical condition called acromegaly that causes abnormal growth?
Over 90 percent of acromegaly sufferers have a tumor in the pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of growth hormone. The growth hormone makes the sufferer grow abnormally large. As the tumors grow, they compress the surrounding brain tissues. As the optic nerves are very close to the pituitary, the expansion of the tumor causes headaches and visual disturbances such as tunnel vision. Other symptoms include sweating, nausea, and paradoxical weakness.
If he had acromegaly, Goliath would have been in poor condition for a jog in the park, let alone single person combat. Based on a little amount of effort and research, you now have another piece of information to make a decision. Does this make you as brave as David? Probably not, however you do know that you could probably kill this guy just by making him chase you.
How do you feel about fighting Goliath now, better or worse?
What presented itself initially as an ugly set of alternatives:
you can stand with your brothers in a fight that you are not prepared for or you can ditch your brothers and go home to safety but whatever you do, you could end up living in an occupied country and there is also a good chance either way that you could be mutilated or die,
has been refined by what you know already:
you fancy your chances in a straight fight, after all you’ve killed lions and bears, if you win you become a King and if you fight your normal fight, you have a distinct advantage (because you fight from a distance, and he has to be close enough to touch you before he can get going), and (wait for it) - right before you commit, you learn: this guy is really sick, he’s nauseous and has headaches, he’s also weak and could not continue any type of fight for very long, oh, and by the way, he’s nearly blind - If you are not standing right in front of him, he can’t even see you,
now has a more clearly defined alternative:
You can kill this guy.
Sure you might get mutilated, but if you stay and fight with your brothers (which is what you were leaning toward anyway) this outcome is an almost certain possibility.
Returning to you, it is again the story of you and Goliath – would you fight Goliath in a death match?
You probably don’t need Sun Tse to tell you that you should be all over this deal.
You are faced with important decisions all the time. In nearly every case your ability to deal with a situation will benefit from a little research. How much additional knowledge is enough – it’s really hard to say. A good rule of thumb is that any more knowledge is usually better than none at all.
Convince a King.
While it might seem incongruous that a shepherd would make a decision to go and fight a 9 foot tall professional killer, from the above (purely speculative) scenario it’s possible to see how David could have arrived at this conclusion.
I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when David put his case to Saul, because I have no idea what a shepherd could say in an audience with a King that would make him let David do this. David came to the Israeli camp to feed his brothers, and convinced Saul that he, an unknown young man not militarily trained should go out and fight this monster. I don’t think Saul was ducking the issue, since if this kid lost his people would be slaves.
This shows immediately that David was no ordinary human being. It takes a certain amount of guts to volunteer for a death match. It takes a phenomenal amount of persuasion to convince a King to bet his kingdom on the outcome.
In its own right, the story of David’s triumph over Goliath is compelling. Maybe there was nothing wrong with Goliath; maybe Goliath was right at the peak of his shepherd mangling abilities on this particular day – who knows. What we do know is that David was brave enough to fight a known champion, and possessed of some superhuman powers of persuasion to make King Saul let him do it.
Kill the Monster.
So – there’s a certain amount of thinking, information gathering, decision-making and persuasion that has gone on thus far. The whole point of this story is that David won, and this required that he actually did what he said he could do. This goes a little beyond action in the regular sense because he had to face a killer alone.
All the confidence and preparation in the world cannot diminish a reality that must have been obvious to David –
“When this is over, one of us will be dead”.
So David firstly came to terms with the very real specter of being killed. After this, David did not go out and describe what he was going to do to Goliath.
The story of “David and his plan-for-beating-Goliath-that-impressed-his mum” has strictly limited appeal; its motivational value is only marginally higher than “David getting-ripped-to-pieces-by-a-professional-killer-because-he-shot-his-mouth-off”.
David did not hurt Goliath, warn him off or generally aggravate him – he killed him.
Goliath on his part was probably waiting for David to present himself according to his understanding of how this was going to go down:
David would be right in front of him (where he could be seen), and they would do this thing.
Goliath was probably used to this type of arrangement, and was confident of his ability to quickly dispatch anyone who presented this way.
David on the other hand was having none of this and promptly fired a rock at 300mph into Goliaths kisser, and when Goliath lay down (as people tend to do in these circumstances), David walked over, picked up his sword and cut off his head.
The End.
There you have it, a nice little motivational story that we tell to our children that ends in massive blunt force trauma and decapitation.
David gets to be King because he was brave, athletic, shrewd, daring and if Michelangelo is to be believed, good looking to boot (just like you and me). Not only does he prevail, he gets to inflict horrible carnage on his opponent. Goliath is deserving of this fate because he represents the tyranny of oppression, faceless bureaucracy, bullies, and people that need a good ass-whupping in general.
As appealing as it may be (or not) to think that you can get ahead in life by smashing someone’s face in with a rock and then cutting off their head, there are other parts of this story that offer less violent encouragement.
Let’s look again at David, He turns up to feed his brothers and someone says “If you kill Goliath, you will be king”. Situations in your life are seldom presented to you in such a black and white fashion. Quite often, situations present themselves in exactly the same way that we always see them, in the context of our lives. These can be an onerous obligation, a scary decision, yet another in a daily series of choices. Things like “It’s tax time again”, “I’m facing a divorce”, “My car just broke down”, “I’ve been made unemployed”, “I hate my job”, “We’re pregnant”, “I don’t have enough money”.
The opportunity to fight Goliath probably came at David among a whole mélange of other ‘opportunities’, ideas and problems. The natural succession of thoughts is typically “What does this mean to me?” We frame this in terms of past events, and the greater the opportunity for personal loss, the more likely we’ll frame it in terms of things that we fear. This type of thinking immediately constrains our options. It’s also thinking in terms of the immediate properties of the situation that presents itself, when you are hungry, it’s easy to think of food, when you are poor it’s easy to think of money.
As well as thinking about the immediate properties of the situation, these thoughts are not happening in isolation, other thoughts and feelings are going on too -
your projections about what could happen,
your fear of not knowing enough,
your immediate desire to start fixing or avoiding the situation,
your fear of the process of finding out information,
your disposition to believe that when you dig in and start learning something, you’ll find out that it is worse than it at first appears,
your inability to know where to find something out, and that time spent doing this could be wasted – you could be doing ‘something’.
If you are busy dealing with everything in your life, and have carefully arranged it so that what you have to deal with marginally outstrips the resources (time, money, brainpower) you have to deal with them, it’s easy for anything to present itself in this environment as ‘more stuff to deal with’.
An alternative perspective is that instead of everything being ‘something that needs to be dealt with” and the onerous obligation that this implies, it could be that a great deal of what you have to deal with carries within it the seed of opportunity.
If all that David did was to turn up at the Israeli camp, drop off his brothers food, and then stride out onto the field of battle, then his bravery surpasses all normal measure and maybe borders on something else entirely.
What it means for you though is that in your daily interactions, and this includes important decisions (like mortgage, health care, schooling, job, marriage) you are like David. Each time you do this, you are taking a heroic action. You are facing a new challenge with the knowledge you have gathered so far. If you are ever curious about why things in your past didn’t always turn out the way you planned them, then one of the reasons could be that you didn’t know enough. You are older now; you have more experience to draw upon. You might not be engaged in life or death struggles regularly, but any new or important situation that you face might well benefit from a little more information.
David venturing out into the countryside to get information is you using the skills you already have (field craft). The skills you have at your disposal for getting information are certainly less labor intensive and risky – you began learning them at 5 when you started school. You don’t have to camp out in hostile territory to get information, all you have to do is log on, go to the library, or pick up the phone.
Another fact to consider is that there are nearly 7 Billion people on the face of the planet, and in the (roughly) 5000 years since writing was invented anyone who has ever lived may have taken the time to write down their experiences. It’s entirely possible that the things that you want to do have been done before. It does not matter who did them, because they all carry a common trait – they are people, just like you. If they did it, then so can you.
Now, before you get all fired up and decide to quit your job to hone your natural born talents for sitting on the couch and bingeing on pop and nachos in front of the TV and waiting for this singular skill set to catapult you to fame and lead your people to freedom, consider the following – David ONLY had to convince a king. In your immediate sphere, there are probably much more influential individuals (i.e. your spouse, family, boss, people who own the deed on your house etc.). The zeal that drives every fiber of your being to embark on this fabulous new journey should minimally extend to explaining it those bewildered individuals around you. David did not just stride onto the field and beat the snot out of Goliath; he had to square it with the king first for the simple reason that if he lost (besides some pretty stiff personal penalties,) all of Israel would be in bondage (best to check this kinda thing out in advance, don’tcha think?).
The consequences of your actions might not be as far reaching, but could very well affect the people that you care about. At the very least you owe it to them to explain what you are up to, you never know – part of this process could actually help you refine your plan – make it better. At the very minimum, their reaction (be this enthusiastic support or otherwise) won’t be a complete surprise.
Finally, once you’ve identified your golden opportunity, thought it through, done a little research and chewed it over with the significant other you actually have to execute.
We all have things we need to deal with every day; we all want to be David. If your fears prevent you from dealing with them, they will overwhelm you – Goliath will win. If you are unprepared and cannot see the problem clearly, you are Goliath.
Peter Yarrow 2005
