You may know about David and Goliath: the story of an Israelite youth who accepted a Philistine giant’s challenge and won. Some understand it as a legend rather than a true event, but there’s a detail in the Bible text that shows how this story contains historical truth.
The Philistine nation had dominated the Israelites for years and Saul, Israel’s first king, made it his priority to free his people from this warlike people. One day he found himself and his army in a valley facing the menacing Philistine host, when the Philistine champion Goliath strode out and issued a challenge to Israel: they should select an Israelite champion to face him in one-to-one combat, and the outcome would decide which nation would serve the other (1 Samuel 17:8–10). The young shepherd boy, David, agreed to the contest and slew the 3 metre (9’9”) giant with a single slingshot. Then the Philistine army fled.
The fascinating detail is that the record incidentally mentions that Goliath came from Gath. Other passages confirm that there were men like Goliath in Gath, with giant-like physiques (for example 2 Samuel 21:20–22).
Giants from Gath
The casual remark about Gath as Goliath’s home city may not seem significant. Yet the Bible provides two other mentions of the people of Gath that lead us to a better understanding of its importance.
Five hundred or so years earlier, when the Israelites were still on their wilderness journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, Moses sent spies to report on the state of the territory they were set to conquer. The spies returned with a report that the inhabitants were giants, of the ‘descendants of Anak’. The people were so huge that the spies felt like grasshoppers in comparison (Numbers 13:28, 33).
The man who finally led the Israelites into the Promised Land, Joshua, wiped out the Anakim (descendants of Anak), with just a few exceptions. It is those exceptions that are so intriguing:
‘And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain’ (Joshua 11:21-22).
So, the only Anakim who remained were found in three cities, one being Gath. This gives consistency to what we read about, several centuries later, when a huge warrior (Goliath) is there to trouble Israel, a man who comes from one of the cities Joshua hadn’t conquered, Gath. It might not prove that David and Goliath were real characters who once fought each other, but small details like this contribute to its historical integrity.
JOAN LEWIS
*Adapted from Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences by J J Blunt.