⁴ A challenger who represented the Philistines came out from the camp of the Philistines. He was named Goliath of Gath. He was nine feet, six inches tall.^{[a] 5} He had a bronze helmet on his head, and he wore scaled body armor, which was made of more than one hundred pounds^[b] of bronze. ⁶ He had bronze greaves on his shins and a bronze spear slung between his shoulders. ⁷ The shaft^[c] of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spearhead was made of fifteen pounds^[d] of iron. His shield bearer went out ahead of him.

⁸ He would stand up and shout to the armies of Israel, “Why have you come out to line up in battle formation? I am a Philistine, and you are servants of Saul, aren’t you? Choose a man to represent you, and let him come down to me. ⁹ If he is able to fight with me and kill me, we will be your servants. But if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our servants, and you will serve us.” ¹⁰ The Philistine would say, “I defy the ranks of Israel today! Give me a man, and we will fight each other!” ¹¹ When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they lost their courage and were terrified.

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³² David said to Saul, “Do not let anyone lose heart because of this Philistine! Your servant will go and fight him.”

³³ But Saul said to David, “You cannot go against this Philistine to fight with him, because you are just a boy, and he has been a warrior since he was a youth.”

³⁴ David said to Saul, “Your servant has been taking care of his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, ³⁵ I went after it and struck it and rescued the lamb out of its mouth. When the lion reared up against me, I grabbed it by its mane, struck it, and killed it. ³⁶ Your servant struck both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has defied the ranks of the living God.” ³⁷ David added, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

Saul said to David, “Go then! May the Lord be with you.” ³⁸ So Saul dressed David in his own gear.^[a] He placed a bronze helmet on his head and dressed him in scaled body armor. ³⁹ David strapped his sword over his gear. David tried to walk around in them, since he had never trained with this kind of equipment before.

David said to Saul, “I cannot go in these, because I have never trained with them.” So David took them off.

⁴⁰ Then David took his staff in his hand and picked five smooth stones out of the stream bed and put them into the pouch of his shepherd’s bag. He took his sling in his hand and approached the Philistine.

⁴⁵ Then David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of Armies, the God of the ranks of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶ Today the Lord will hand you over to me. I will strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth. Then all the earth will know that there is a God in Israel, ⁴⁷ and all those gathered here will know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear, for the battle belongs to the Lord, and he will deliver you into our hand.”

⁴⁸ Then, when the Philistine started advancing to attack David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. ⁴⁹ David put his hand into his bag, took a stone from it, shot it from his sling, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown to the ground.