Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 17:12-30
Forty days the two armies lay encamped facing one another, each advantageously posted, but neither forward to engage. Either they were parleying and treating of an accommodation or they were waiting for recruits; and perhaps there were frequent skirmishes between small detached parties. All this while, twice a day, morning and evening, did the insulting champion appear in the field and repeat his challenge, his own heart growing more and more proud for his not being answered and the people of Israel more and more timorous, while God designed hereby to ripen him for destruction and to make Israel's deliverance the more illustrious. All this while David is keeping his father's sheep, but at th…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 1 Samuel 17:18
carry these ten cheeses to the captain--to enlist his kind attention. Oriental cheeses are very small; and although they are frequently made of so soft a consistence as to resemble curds, those which David carried seem to have been fully formed, pressed, and sufficiently dried to admit of their being carried.
take their pledge--Tokens of the soldiers' health and safety were sent home in the convenient form of a lock of their hair, or piece of their nail, or such like.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 17:18
Carry these ten cheeses - Cheeses of milk, says the margin. In the East they do not make what we call cheese: they press the milk but slightly, and carry it in rush baskets. It is highly salted, and little different from curds.
John Gill on 1 Samuel 17:18
And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand,.... Their chiliarch or colonel, who had the command of 1000 men, and under whom Jesse's sons fought; Jarchi thinks this was Jonathan, who had 1000 men with him at Gibeah, and so now, 1 Samuel 13:2, these cheeses were sent by Jesse to the captain, to be distributed among his men, or a present to himself, that he might use his sons well who were under his command:
and look how thy brethren fare; whether in good health, in good spirits, and in safety:
and take their pledge; that is, if they had been obliged for want of money to pawn any of their clothes, or what they had with them to buy food with, that he would redeem and take u…
