1 Samuel 17
July 28, Year 1
[40] Then he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd’s pouch. His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine.
Goliath is six cubits and a hand-span tall.
He is one of only two people whose height is given as a metric in the Bible.
David notes his blasphemous statements: “For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
For these reasons, I think the number six is important here again: tyranny, beastliness, human rebelliousness.
But the smooth stones are a greater symbol:
David refuses Saul’s man-made armor. Partly because it doesn’t fit, but also providentially:
God made and shaped the stone.1
We have seen their importance before, in the case of altars and monuments—uncut stones.
And we have also seen stones taken from the riverbed.
“… that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand.” [47]
The distinction is not because the stone isn’t a weapon of war; we have seen that it is.
And sling “stones” were often fabricated of fired clay or lead.
But this is a weapon of the LORD’s fabrication, not humans’.2
Why specifically “five”? I have long puzzled over it, and even asked Jonathan Pageau, who thinks they relate to Goliath’s four limbs and head, and the stone slung is like a “seed” in his head, which is then cut off—their champion removed. My own best thought recently about “five,” however, is this: One stone each for the five Philistine lords.
Compare this kingdom-destroying image:
As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces…. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. [Daniel 2:34-35]