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 17:20
David left the sheep with a keeper--This is the only instance in which the hired shepherd is distinguished from the master or one of his family.
trench--some feeble attempt at a rampart. It appears (see Margin) to have been formed by a line of carts or chariots, which, from the earliest times, was the practice of nomad people.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 17:19
Fighting with the Philistines - See at the end of the chapter, Sa1 17:58 (note).
John Gill on 1 Samuel 17:21
For Israel and all the Philistines had put the battle in array,.... Both sides prepared for it, and drew up in line of battle:
army against army; rank against rank, battalion against battalion, the right wing of the one against the left of the other, &c.
Keil & Delitzsch on 1 Samuel 17:1-54
A war between the Philistines and the Israelites furnished David with the opportunity of displaying before Saul and all Israel, and greatly to the terror of the enemies of his people, that heroic power which was firmly based upon his bold and pious trust in the omnipotence of the faithful covenant God (Sa1 17:1-3). A powerful giant, named Goliath, came forward from the ranks of the Philistines, and scornfully challenged the Israelites to produce a man who would decide the war by a single combat with him (Sa1 17:4-11). David, who had returned home for a time from the court of Saul, and had just been sent into the camp by his father with provisions for his elder brothers who were serving in th…
