A Dangerous Journey by Hauser Thomas;

Author:Hauser, Thomas; [Hauser, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610756761
Publisher: Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)

Katie Taylor once told me that she’d love to be able to go back in time, meet David, and discuss with him what it was like to fight Goliath.

David vs. Goliath

The Biblical battle of David vs. Goliath has endured for thousands of years as an inspiration for underdogs in one-on-one combat. But few people have written about that storied confrontation in more intriguing fashion than Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell authored a collection of essays published under the title David and Goliath (Little Brown and Company). The book examines nine individuals from various disciplines who battled powerful forces in contemporary times. The introduction to the book explores the original David vs. Goliath.

Three thousand years ago, the Bible tells us, an army of Philistines was seeking to militarily divide the Kingdom of Israel into two parts which would then be vulnerable to conquest. The warring armies faced each other from opposite sides of a ravine. Neither army dared attack since doing so would require descending into the ravine and being assaulted from above.

Finally, Gladwell writes, “The Philistines sent their greatest warrior down into the valley to resolve the deadlock one on one. He was a giant, six-foot nine at least [six cubits and a span] wearing a bronze helmet and full body armor. He carried a javelin, a spear, and a sword. An attendant preceded him, carrying a large shield. The giant faced the Israelites and shouted out, ‘Choose you a man and let him come down to me. If he prevail in battle against me and strike me down, we shall be slaves to you. But if I prevail and strike him down, you will be slaves to us and serve us.”

David, a shepherd boy who had come to the field of battle to bring food to his brothers, accepted the challenge. King Saul sought to dissuade him, warning, “Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him for thou art but a youth and he is a man of war.”

But David was insistent.

You know the rest. At least, you think you do.

“We consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong,” Gladwell writes. “We misinterpret them. Giants are not what we think they are.”

Or phrased differently, in Gladwell’s eyes, David vs. Goliath wasn’t an evenly-matched fight. David had several crucial advantages.

“Goliath was expecting a warrior like himself to come forward for hand-to-hand combat,” Gladwell explains. “It never occurred to him that the battle would be fought on anything other than those terms. To protect himself against blows to the body, he wore an elaborate tunic made up of hundreds of overlapping bronze fishlike scales. He had bronze shin guards protecting his legs with attached bronze plates covering his feet. He wore a heavy metal helmet. He had three separate weapons, all optimized for close combat.”

All David had was a shepherd’s staff, a sling, and five smooth stones.

“Am I a dog that thou comest to me with sticks?” Goliath demanded of his young adversary. “Come to me and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.

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