The Battle Is the Lord's: David, Goliath, and the Covenant King
Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 24 — Jun 15–21 — 1 Samuel 17–18; 24–26; 2 Samuel 5–7
David and Goliath: Faith as the True Weapon
The David and Goliath encounter in 1 Samuel 17 is the most famous story in the Hebrew scriptures, and it is easy to read it as a story about courage, cleverness, or the advantage of mobility over armor. But David himself explains what the story is about before the first stone leaves his sling:
1 Samuel 17:45–47
“Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied… This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand… that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 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's declaration is the theological program of his entire life and kingship. The battle is the LORD's. Not David's. Not Israel's. The weapons that matter are not Goliath's sword or David's sling; they are the name and the presence of the LORD of hosts. David is not being naive about military realities; he is locating the source of victory correctly. He has already tested this in the wilderness with the lion and the bear (1 Samuel 17:34–36): the deliverer in those cases was not his own skill but the LORD who delivered him. Goliath is another lion. The LORD will deliver again.
The specific purpose David names is also striking: “that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.” David understands that this battle is not only about Israel and the Philistines. It is a statement to the watching nations about the nature of Israel's God. The same concern — that the nations might know who God is — motivates the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, Solomon's prayer at the temple dedication, and ultimately the mission of Israel to the world. The covenant people are always, in some sense, living before an audience they cannot see.
Goliath falls. The Philistines flee. And the young shepherd boy from Bethlehem — the one who was forgotten at the sheep while his brothers paraded before Samuel — becomes the hero of Israel. He has not sought this; he came to the valley to bring food to his brothers. His presence at the battle was an errand of domestic service. But the anointing that came upon him when Samuel poured oil on his head in the obscurity of his father's house has already begun to do its work.
The Covenant Friendship of David and Jonathan
Immediately after Goliath's defeat, 1 Samuel 18:1 records: “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” What follows is one of the great covenant friendships of scripture. Jonathan, the crown prince of Israel, the man who by every law of succession should be the next king, makes a covenant with David that removes all claim to status and power.
Jonathan gives David his robe, his armor, his sword, his bow, and his girdle (1 Samuel 18:4). This is a symbolic act of extraordinary significance: he is stripping himself of the royal insignia and conferring them on David. He knows the prophecies. He may already understand that his father's kingdom will not pass to him. And he chooses, freely, without bitterness, to covenant with the man God has chosen over himself.
The friendship between David and Jonathan is tested by Saul's increasingly dangerous jealousy. Jonathan repeatedly protects David, intercedes for him, warns him of plots. He does this at personal cost — Saul turns on Jonathan himself in fury: “Do I not know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother's nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be established” (1 Samuel 20:30–31). Saul is right about the political reality. Jonathan knows it. He protects David anyway.
Jonathan's covenant friendship is a type of covenantal loyalty that transcends self-interest. He does not ask “what is best for me?” He asks “what has God purposed?” and aligns himself with that. It costs him everything: his claim to the throne, his father's favor, eventually his life on the hill of Gilboa alongside Saul. David's lament at his death is among the most moving passages in the Bible: “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26).
David Spares Saul: The Doctrine of the Lord's Anointed
First Samuel 24 and 26 record two separate occasions when David has Saul entirely in his power and refuses to harm him. In chapter 24, David is hiding in the cave of En-gedi when Saul enters to relieve himself. David's men whisper: “Behold the day of which the LORD said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand” (1 Samuel 24:4). David creeps forward and cuts off the skirt of Saul's robe. And immediately his “heart smote him” (1 Samuel 24:5). He regrets even this small act of defiance against the anointed.
When Saul leaves the cave, David calls after him and shows him the skirt of the robe. His statement to Saul is the doctrinal core of both episodes:
1 Samuel 24:10
“The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD'S anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD.”
In chapter 26, Saul is asleep in his camp with his army around him. David and Abishai creep in at night. Abishai says: “God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at once” (1 Samuel 26:8). David refuses absolutely. His reasoning: “The LORD forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the LORD'S anointed: but, I pray thee, take thou now the spear that is at his bolster, and the cruse of water, and let us go” (1 Samuel 26:11). They take the spear and the water jug as evidence of their presence and depart without harm.
The doctrine here is one of the most difficult in political theology: respecting the authority of those God has placed in office, even when they abuse that office, even when they have personally wronged you, even when you have both the opportunity and perhaps the right to remove them. David does not claim that Saul is a good king. He claims that Saul is God's anointed, and that God — not David — is the appropriate judge and remover of kings.
This principle runs through the New Testament and the Restoration. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matthew 22:21). “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake” (1 Peter 2:13). The Doctrine and Covenants repeatedly instructs that even fallen officers of the priesthood should be dealt with through proper process rather than private retaliation. The principle is not that authority is never to be challenged; it is that the challenge to authority must take its proper form, and that personal vindication is not the same as covenant justice.
The Davidic Covenant: The Throne That Endures Forever
David is now king of all Israel. He has captured Jerusalem and made it his capital. The Ark of the Covenant has been brought to the city with great celebration. And David, sitting securely in his palace, turns to Nathan the prophet and expresses a desire that will shape the messianic hope for millennia:
“See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains” (2 Samuel 7:2). David wants to build God a house. The wish is generous and genuine. Nathan's initial response is approving. But that night God speaks to Nathan with a reversal: David will not build God a house. Instead, God will build David a house.
2 Samuel 7:12–16
“And when thy days be fulfilled… I will set up thy seed after thee… He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son… And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.”
The Davidic covenant is the foundation of the entire messianic hope of the Old Testament. God promises David three things that transcend any human fulfillment: a house (dynasty), a kingdom, and a throne established forever. The immediate reference is to Solomon, who will build the temple. But the language exceeds any historical king of Judah. No human dynasty lasts forever. No earthly throne is established for eternity.
The New Testament sees Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of this promise. The angel Gabriel tells Mary: “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32–33). The covenant made to David on a night in Jerusalem is fulfilled in the annunciation to a young woman in Galilee a thousand years later. “I will be his father, and he shall be my son” — in Christ, this becomes literally, not merely figuratively, true.
The Davidic Covenant Fulfilled in Christ
- Luke 1:32–33 — The angel promises David's throne and an eternal kingdom to Jesus
- Acts 2:30–31 — Peter says David, knowing God's oath, prophesied the resurrection of Christ
- Hebrews 1:5 — “I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son” applied to Christ
- Revelation 22:16 — Jesus calls himself “the root and the offspring of David”
David's response to the covenant is one of the most beautiful prayers in scripture (2 Samuel 7:18–29). He sits before the LORD and begins: “Who am I, O Lord GOD? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” (2 Samuel 7:18). The shepherd from Bethlehem, the youngest son overlooked at the sheep, the boy who killed Goliath with a stone, the fugitive from Saul's court — sitting in the house of the king of all Israel, receiving a covenant from God that will reach to eternity — asks: Who am I?
The question is not rhetorical false modesty. It is the authentic cry of a man who has lived long enough with God to know the gap between what he is and what God has made possible through him. This is the posture of the great covenant servants of every dispensation: not the self-aggrandizement of a great man claiming credit, but the astonishment of a small man who has learned what God can do through a heart that seeks him.
Synthesis: The Covenant King and the King of Kings
These chapters from 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel move from the dramatic (Goliath) through the covenantal (Jonathan's friendship, David's respect for Saul's anointing) to the eternal (the Davidic covenant). They constitute a complete theology of covenant kingship: what it means to lead in God's name, to protect those in your care, to refrain from vindicating yourself when God is the true judge, and to receive with astonishment and gratitude the covenant promises that exceed all deserving.
David is not presented as sinless. His great failures — Bathsheba, Uriah, the census — lie ahead. But in these chapters he is the model of covenant kingship: brave without arrogance, loyal beyond self-interest, reverent toward authority even when abused, and overwhelmed with gratitude when God makes promises that no human merit could earn. “The battle is the LORD's” is not just a battle cry; it is the summary theology of a life lived in the understanding that all the good that happens happens because God is in it, and all the honor belongs to him.