As a child, much of what little I knew of the Old Testament I knew through the medium of, of all things, Hollywood, and the movies. Movie moguls are attracted to King David: he was the most charismatic as well as the mightiest of all the kings of Israel. The movies showed us how, as a boy, David took a stone to his sling and took down a Philistine champion. The interpretation of the Bible is controversy du jour in the naked public square. People grope for a verse or two with little regard for its context or even its explicit meaning. Today, we’ll do a close reading of the David and Goliath story, looking at Goliath’s size (“six cubits and a span”), David’s age (“you’re only a boy…”), and how David took Goliath down (“the stone struck the Philistine on his forehead”). We’ll see that even this very familiar Bible passage is one we only thought we knew.
Jun23
