Of Kings and Prophets – episode three

David has a much more violent duel with Goliath than usual, in 'Lest I Sleep the Sleep of Death'.

Sep 20, 2022

Season 1, Episode 3 — ‘Lest I Sleep the Sleep of Death’
I Samuel 17-18

Synopsis. The Israelite and Philistine armies are facing each other across a valley. The Philistine giant Goliath dares the Israelites to fight him in the valley, and kills them one by one as they do. Eitan threatens to take his troops out of Saul’s army if Saul doesn’t send one of his sons to fight Goliath personally. Saul learns that Ishbaal tried to assassinate Samuel, and, fearing that this is why God has turned away from him, he sends Ishbaal to fight Goliath. Ishbaal is wounded but survives. The women of the royal family leave Gibeah for safety, but Michal takes a horse and rides to the front. Jesse sends David to the front with provisions. David challenges Goliath to a fight, and kills him. The Israelite army overwhelms the demoralized Philistines. Merav tells Ahinoam she knows about Ahinoam’s tryst with David, and Rizpah overhears their conversation. Saul announces, in a public ceremony, that he is going to reward David for the defeat of the Philistines by giving him Merav’s hand in marriage.

Editing Samuel. This episode is primarily about the stand-off between Goliath and the Israelites (I Samuel 17), though it also ends with Saul announcing that he will give Merav to David as a reward for killing Goliath (I Samuel 18:17). The episode also mentions that people are chanting David’s name after his victory against Goliath (I Samuel 18:6-7), but it does not—yet—show Saul being jealous about this.

The stand-off between Goliath and the Israelites—culminating in his duel with David—is significantly re-written for dramatic purposes. The biblical Goliath dared the Israelites to send him a single champion whose fate would determine the fate of both armies, but the Goliath of this episode kills one Israelite soldier after another, such that David ends up being the fifteenth person to answer his challenge. What’s more, David isn’t even the first person to survive an encounter with Goliath; Ishbaal does it first, when he runs back to the camp after suffering a fairly slight wound.1

And when David does finally confront Goliath, they have a lengthy fight with various weapons—they even take turns choking each other—before David finally kills Goliath with multiple rocks: the giant deflects the first three, but the fourth one gashes his knee, and then the fifth one hits him in the forehead and knocks him to the ground. This is all much more complicated than the biblical narrative, where David seems to kill Goliath with his first stone and the two combatants never get close enough to touch each other. The biblical David even says, before fighting Goliath, that God will save the Israelites without weapons like swords or spears (I Samuel 17:47).

David slings five different stones at Goliath, using whatever rocks happen to be available on the ground. The biblical David picked “five smooth stones” from a stream before going to fight the giant (I Samuel 17:40), and he appears to have killed the giant on his first attempt; he may have picked five stones, but he only needed one in the end.

Interestingly, some of the more hostile rhetoric attributed to David in the Bible is given to Ishbaal in this episode. Ishbaal calls Goliath “that uncircumcised animal” (cf David’s words in I Samuel 17:26, 36)—Joab echoes this when he calls the Philistines “those uncircumcised bastards”—and, before fighting Goliath, Ishbaal recites a prayer about God’s warrior ways that echoes Psalms attributed to David (see below).

Goliath doesn’t wear a whole lot of armour—he’s basically bare-chested—and he seems pretty confident in his body’s brute physical strength. The biblical Goliath had a bronze helmet and wore a coat of bronze armour weighing over 100 lbs (I Samuel 17:5). The Goliath of this episode is also pretty inconsistent in his use of a shield bearer; sometimes he goes into combat without one, and, when he goes to face David, he walks slightly ahead of his shield bearer before dismissing him—which kind of defeats the whole point of having a shield bearer. The biblical Goliath’s shield bearer seems to have walked ahead of him fairly consistently (I Samuel 17:7, 41).

This episode does not depict the part of the biblical story where Saul tries to get David to wear his armour for the fight, and David turns it down (I Samuel 17:38-39).

Goliath says to David, “Come forward, Israelite dog!” The biblical Goliath taunted David by saying, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” (I Samuel 17:43)

Goliath says to David, “I’ll make pieces of you and feed you to the birds!” The biblical Goliath said he’d give David’s flesh “to the birds and the wild animals” (I Samuel 17:44), and the biblical David replied that he would give the entire Philistine army’s bodies “to the birds and the wild animals” (I Samuel 17:46). The David of this episode does not return that specific taunt of Goliath’s the way the biblical David did.

David holds Goliath’s head on a stick until he passes out during the big battle with the Philistines. The biblical David was still holding Goliath’s head when he went to see Saul after the battle (I Samuel 17:57). The text says David took Goliath’s head to Jerusalem (I Samuel 17:54), but that must have happened years later, as Jerusalem did not become an Israelite city until after David became king (Joshua 15:63, Judges 1:21, II Samuel 5:1-12)—in which case it would seem that David, or someone else, held on to Goliath’s head as a sort of trophy for the rest of Saul’s reign, and beyond.

David gives Goliath’s sword to Saul in a formal ceremony. The biblical David put Goliath’s weapons in his own tent after the battle (I Samuel 17:54), but the sword was eventually kept by the priests at the Tabernacle in Nob (I Samuel 21:9), so it makes sense that David might have given the sword to someone else along the way.

The previous episode ended with David coming home and being surprised that the prophet Samuel was waiting to anoint him there. This episode begins with David’s father Jesse puzzling over the fact that God chose David and not “one of your brothers, perhaps. Eliab maybe.” This echoes how the biblical Jesse presented all of David’s older brothers to the prophet, starting with Eliab, before finally presenting David himself (I Samuel 16:5-13).

Speaking of which, this episode introduces us to Eliab, who is a soldier with the Israelite army, and who complains that David is shaming the family by not serving in the army. The biblical Eliab complained that David had abandoned their father’s flocks and had come to the camp “only to watch the battle” (I Samuel 17:28), so the fraternal friction is true to the story, at least. Also, the biblical Eliab was one of three older brothers of David’s who were serving in Saul’s army (I Samuel 17:13).

When we first see Eliab, he is encouraging the Israelite troops and telling them to ignore Goliath’s taunts, because “the Creator Elohim” is protecting them. The biblical Eliab says nothing of the kind, and merely resents David’s presence. The biblical David, on the other hand, tells people not to lose heart on account of Goliath (I Samuel 17:32) and says God will work through him to save them (I Samuel 17:37). This may be another example of how the biblical David’s dialogue has been given to different characters within the series.

Other scriptures. The episode’s title comes from Psalm 13:3.

Faced with the possibility that he may have to send one of his sons to die at the hands of the Philistine giant, Saul prays to God and says, “Like Abraham, you ask me to lay my son on the altar.” He is referring to the story about God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22—a story that ended with God sparing Isaac.

Saul says he will use “divining stones” to determine which of his sons faces Goliath. These may be the Urim and Thummim, two stones that the Israelite priests had been using to determine God’s will since the time of Moses (e.g. Exodus 28:30), though no priests are involved in this episode. The Urim and Thummim do not figure in the biblical version of the Goliath story, but Saul did use them sometimes (I Samuel 14:41, 28:6), and there is reason to believe David used them too (e.g. I Samuel 23:1-6).

Ishbaal prays, as he prepares to fight Goliath: “In faith you will empower me, in anger you will give me strength to trample nations, to smash the heads of those who stand against you. ... You are a God of war. You bring me forth as a warrior. You bid me to bathe my feet in the blood of your enemies as you ride your chariot to victory.” Ishbaal does not appear to be quoting any specific text, but some of the ideas in his prayer are certainly found in the Hebrew Bible, e.g. the head-smashing and blood-wading are both mentioned in Psalm 68:21-23 (re: the blood-wading, see also Psalm 58:10).

This episode introduces Goliath’s brother Lahmi, who is mentioned in I Chronicles 20:5 but not in I or II Samuel. There’s actually a complicated history behind this: I and II Samuel have two stories about someone from Bethlehem killing a giant named Goliath from Gath. In I Samuel 17, the killer of Goliath is David; in II Samuel 21:19, the killer of Goliath is someone named Elhanan. I Chronicles 20:5 changes the latter story so that Elhanan kills Lahmi the brother of Goliath instead—and some scholars think the author of I Chronicles took the name “Lahmi” from II Samuel’s description of Elhanan as a “Bethlehemite” (in Hebrew, “bêṯ-hallaḥmî”). So was it an innocent scribal mistake? Or did the author of I Chronicles deliberately create Lahmi to draw a sharper distinction between David’s story and Elhanan’s story? Either way, Lahmi does appear in the text, so the writers have incorporated him into this series.

Fictitious elements. This episode establishes that several characters have dead parents:

David was 12 years old when his mother was murdered. David’s older brother Eliab says David is a coward because he was hiding when the murder happened.
Rizpah is a former princess whose parents were killed by the Edomites.2
An earlier episode established that Michal’s mother was a concubine of Saul’s. In this episode, we learn that Michal’s mother is dead, too.

Eitan demands that Saul send one of his own sons to fight Goliath, otherwise Eitan will remove his men from Saul’s army. It’s a curious request, as Eitan’s daughter Sarah was betrothed to Saul’s son Jonathan as part of a treaty uniting the tribes of Israel just one episode ago. If Saul sent Jonathan, and Jonathan died, is Eitan saying the tribes would still be united even without the marriage part of the treaty?

Philistine culture. When David kills Goliath and the Philistines run in fear, some of them shout, “Dagon has abandoned us!” Like the Israelites, the nations surrounding Israel interpreted success as a sign that their gods were with them, and failure as a sign that their gods had abandoned them. (Cf the Mesha Stele, which says the Moabites were oppressed by the Israelites in the 9th century BC—roughly 200 years after this episode takes place—because the god of Moab was angry with them.)

Geography. Achish says “Saul was clever to take the higher ground.” I Samuel 17:3 says the Israelites and Philistines were both camped on hills across a valley from each other, and that seems to be the case here—so I guess the Philistines are on a lower hill, and would have to walk uphill more than the Israelites would to mount an attack.

Timeline. Ishbaal says the Israelites and the Philistines have been facing each other across the valley for 40 days. This agrees with the biblical text, which says Goliath taunted the Israelites for 40 days (I Samuel 17:16), but it would mean that over a month has passed since the events of the previous episode—and this episode seems to begin more or less right after that episode, with Jesse talking about Samuel’s visit at the end of that episode as though it had happened very recently.

Women. Queen Ahinoam flees Gibeah with her daughters Merav and Michal, and with her husband’s concubine Rizpah, in case the Philistines win the upcoming battle.

Rizpah tells the princesses that she, too, used to be a princess until her parents were murdered (and, in her mother’s case, raped) by the Edomites, and she was sold into slavery, which is how she ended up being acquired by Saul for his harem.

The fact that Michal’s mother was a concubine comes up a few times. Merav apologizes to Michal for calling her one of the “concubines’ children”. And when Rizpah calls herself a “whore”, Michal disagrees with the use of that word but says that, if it does apply, then evidently even a whore can give birth to a princess like her.

(It is not stated which kingdom Rizpah’s father ruled, or what sort of background Michal’s mother came from before she was one of Saul’s concubines.)

When Michal realizes that her mother is trying to run away from the Philistine threat, she turns around and goes straight to the military camp. There, she speaks to David—and her words play a significant part in motivating David to challenge Goliath.

Queen Zaphra is the first Philistine to realize that something is wrong when they see Goliath’s head at the edge of the forest after his fight with David.

Merav lets Ahinoam know that she’s aware of Ahinoam’s tryst with David, and Rizpah—who is spying on Saul for the Philistines—overhears their conversation.

Sex and/or nudity. Joab says David’s brother Eliab “needs a good grind.”

Violence. Goliath has killed over a dozen Israelites and put their bodies on display, some of which are pecked at by vultures. David visualizes, rather graphically, what his death at Goliath’s hands might look like. Eventually David kills Goliath and holds his head on a stick, while the Israelite army chases the Philistines and cuts them down.

God talk. David’s challenge to Goliath is strikingly devoid of God-talk. The biblical David explicitly challenged Goliath in the name of Israel’s God, making at least six references to “God” or “Yahweh” in the space of three verses (I Samuel 17:45-47), but there are no such references when David challenges Goliath in this episode.

As noted above, in this episode it is David’s brother Eliab, not David himself, who tells the Israelite soldiers to ignore the giant’s taunts because God will protect them.

Jesse still can’t believe that the prophet Samuel anointed David, the one son of his “whose faith resides in wine and women”, to be king. Jesse says sarcastically that his “righteous and resolute God” must also have a sense of humour.

Miscellaneous. The cast for this episode includes another Bible-movie veteran:

Francis Magee (Lahmi) — Saul in The Bible (2013), Levi in A.D. The Bible Continues (2015)

It’s particularly amusing that Lahmi, Goliath’s brother, is being played by a former King Saul, while the Philistine king, Achish, is being played by a former King David (Nathaniel Parker, the star of 1997’s The Bible Collection: David).

At one point Saul prays in a forest, and asks God, “Why won’t you speak to me?” Ray Winstone, who plays Saul, had a very similar scene as Tubal-Cain in 2014’s Noah.

TV show recaps:
Prophet Joseph | The Bible | A.D. The Bible Continues | The Chosen

Movie scene guides:
Risen | The Young Messiah | Paul, Apostle of Christ | Mary Magdalene

Goliath kills the first thirteen Israelites, then lets Ishbaal get away, and is then defeated outright by David. A more cynical observer might think that Goliath died not because of any special skill on David’s part, but because the Israelites were tiring him out.

The biblical Rizpah’s father was named Aiah (II Samuel 3:7; 21:8, 10, 11).

Thoughts and Spoilers

Discussion about this post