David and Goliath, 1 Samuel 17:47 Wall Art

After the stone

David stands on the left with his back half turned to us, a boy with short curly hair in a plain cream tunic, a red sash across his chest and sandals laced up his calves. His sling hangs loose from his right hand. He is not celebrating; he is simply looking.

A few paces away lies Goliath, flat on his back in bronze scale armor, arms flung out. His crested helmet has rolled off beside a huge round shield, and his long sword lies on the dust. Beyond them a dry, rocky valley stretches between two ridges, and on the right a column of soldiers with raised spears lines the hillside. The words above are brief: “the battle is the LORD's”.

The meaning of 1 Samuel 17:47

The story is set in the Valley of Elah, west of Bethlehem, where the armies of Israel and the Philistines faced each other from opposite hills. For forty days Goliath of Gath, described as six cubits and a span tall, came out to challenge any Israelite to single combat. No one went, until David arrived with food for his brothers.

Verse 47 is the end of what David says to Goliath just before the fight. The whole sentence in the King James Bible reads: “And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands.” David had refused Saul's armor and taken only five smooth stones from the brook. The point he makes is not that small people can beat big ones by cleverness, but that the outcome was never in the weapons.

The phrase became a proverb in Israel. A king named Jehoshaphat hears almost the same words centuries later, in 2 Chronicles 20, facing an army far larger than his own.

For a boy's room or a Sunday school wall

Children love this story, and the painting tells it without anything frightening. It fits a boy's bedroom, a playroom or a classroom, and it is a strong baptism gift for a son or grandson. Grown men choose it too, for an office or a locker room wall, as a reminder that the hard thing in front of them is not theirs alone to carry.