1 Samuel 17:39

1Sa 17:39 And David girded his sword upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved [it]. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved [them]. And David put them off him.

Ver. 39. I cannot go with these.] If Saul’s coat be never so rich, and his armour never so strong, what is David the better if they fit him not? It is not to be inquired how excellent anything is, but how proper. If we could wish another man’s honour, when we feel the weight of his cares, we should be glad to be in our own coat. {a}

For I have not proved them.] Or, Been accustomed to them. He had been Saul’s armourbearer for a short while, but never in any battle with him; he had led a rural and pastoral life; and for arms he could not well wield them, and was therefore soon weary of them. Press some people to the exercise of prayer, or any other piece of the armour of God, and they must say, if they say truly, as here, I cannot do in addition, for I have not been accustomed to it. Or if they have taken up such a custom, it may well be said of them as Sidonius saith {b} of King Theodoricus, that he so served God as that any man might see, quod servet illam pro consuetudine potius quam pro religione reverentiam, that he did it more of course, and of custom, than of conscience, or any good affection to God’s work.

{a} Dr Hall.

{b} Epist. i., lib. i.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Sa_17:39

I cannot go with these.

I have not proved them.

Suitable equipment

The words recall to you at once the whole vivid story of the combat between the stripling David and the Philistine giant Goliath. It is a simple tale from the memories of border warfare in an early and somewhat rude time. There are two ways in which David might have forfeited his victory.

I. First he might have forfeited it by a careless neglect of the simple opportunities of a boy. He had only to keep the sheep. It would have been boy-like to have gone after play or after comrades and leave the flock. It would have been the different but equally fatal mistake of a gifted nature to dream away the hours with his back on the turf and his face to the sky, building air castles of future exploits, the while the beasts preyed on the straying sheep. David avoided the one mistake and the other. He had his play, indeed; that skill which sends the stone like bullet to the Philistines brow will not have come to such perfection without many a shot at passing quarry or jutting rock; but it was play which made him fitter for work, training him in the free use of the favourite weapon of his tribe; making his arm suppler and stronger, and his eye more keen. And he had his battle, too, in his own way; he was watchful to detect and bold to face the prowling and preying beast. And though these may seem simple things, yet to the doer of them there was a strong sense and clear knowledge that there was a power with him in them, and if his conflict with the lion and the bear prepared him to face Goliath by steadying his nerve and strengthening his self-reliance it did so much more by giving him proof of the supporting and protecting presence of his God. Is it not the fact that one of the most frequent, causes of waste and loss here is to be found in what I may call the adjournment of responsibility? I am not thinking of the man who wants to taste the pleasures of sin for a time; nor of the man who shirks all his work and fails in his examinations. I am thinking of men who take things as they come and do not look beyond; who interpret the phrase sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof as a charter for postponing troublesome thoughts of future responsibility; who think that it will be time enough to attend to those things when they come.

II. But David had a second danger to avoid: it was the danger of unproven armour. We can feel that a twofold instinct guided him right; the royal armour was grand, but he knew that he would be uneasy in it; and meanwhile his fingers twitched on the sling strings with the half-conscious sense of how they could hurl against that blustering front. What is the danger of unproven armour for any of us? It is not difficult to see; and it may seem to be the very opposite of that which we have considered. It is the danger of those who look forward, not too little, but too confidently, and who do so because they believe themselves amply ready to face life. They feet full armed with well-appointed mail and weapons; it may be with all the adaptable resources of high academical and social culture; it may be with the keen thoughts, and bright ideals, social and philanthropic, which they deem to characterise their generation. Or, most probably of all, it may be with confidence in the strength of Divine truth and a Divine system, which they have themselves embraced, and in the strength of which it would be faithless to doubt that they will succeed with others. Far be it to speak disparagingly of such as these, they have much in them of the mettle of the future warrior: the day was to come when David too would do valiantly with sword and spear. But they have much to learn. The shield and sword, the spear and armour of God and of His Church are not for the first comer to wield with mastery. Doctrine the most true, arguments the most convincing, ideas the most lovely, will somehow be found not to strike home; and it will be well for the user if hampered and perhaps wounded he is not tempted in reaction of disheartenment or cynicism to cast them all aside and turn his back upon the battle. We have, then, here another danger, and opposite though it seems, it may really be combined, and often is combined with the other. The man who adjourns responsibility will think that he can put on the whole armour at pleasure in the future, and that in the strength and completeness of a professional outfit he could be a match for any enemy. There are giants in these days, and surely to defy Israel are they come up: evils which are monstrous in their proportions and which have the peculiar note of scornful and cruel defiance towards God and man. There is the giant of sensuality in all its forms. There is the giant of worldliness: the domineering power of prevailing fashion, or of so-called public opinion, or of stolid indifference to every higher call. And third brother to these there is the giant of unbelief. These are giants, and now as then we want men to meet them. And not seldom it is to the stripling that the task should fall. He is not dazed and weary with the daily bellowing of the giants challenges. He comes with a fresh eye, with an unbroken nerve, with a quick fire of zeal. Place for the young man against the giant! But at that moment all will depend upon what he is and what he brings. They must be well proved, he must be master of them, and they may have in them an unsuspected force of swift and piercing strength. What, to drop the figures, will this mean? It will mean first that a man who is to do good service against public evils must have first fought his own fights. He will have known, perhaps, in very plain reality, what it is to have the beasts come up against him. To meet the lion and the bear is specially the young mans task. It is from the wilderness of temptation that David and Davids Lord go forth to the help of the Lord and His people against the mighty. And then next, the men who are to be champions must bring with them genuine, first-hand, realised truth. We want men who have put things to the proof and can speak of that they do know: who can not only repeat, but testify, who can wield the great appeal experto crede. It is not much truth of which to a young man at the outset of experience this can be true: it may be only as the few smooth stones out of the brook: but, believe me, these may be enough. But what I mean is this: that while a man may fairly start by taking on trust many parts of that which he believes, there must be some part in it, some aspect of it, which he has proved for himself. It has been truly said that it is unchristian to assert that to rightly understand the faith one must have passed through doubt. But it is Christian in modesty and truthfulness to say that in a real and adequate sense a man can hardly be a champion who has not felt the stress and strain upon his faith of the mysteries and difficulties round about us, whose imagination they have never awed, whose reason they have never puzzled, whose sympathies they have never wrung. But there is one thing which must yet be said, for it underlies the whole. The victory of David was won not only by the sling and stone, but by the proved and trusted presence of God. Theirs is the strength which speaks in words which we have not yet learnt to separate from David. The Lord is my strength in whom I will trust. By Thee I have run through a troop and by my God I have leaped over a wall. It is God that girdeth me with strength. (E. S. Talbot, D. D.)

Impossible armour

The armour was good armour. Sword, and helmet, and coat of mail, each was faultless--true metal, excellent temper, perfect workmanship. And it was a great honour to wear it: it was the kings own, the king lent it, and the king put it on. What was wanting? At first there is compliance. To refuse such honour seems ungracious or seems impossible. Saul armed David with his armour--put a helmet of brass upon his head--armed him with a coat of mail: David girded the sword upon the armour, and assayed to go--assayed, but went not. Why? He had not proved it. David said to Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them--and he put them off him. Anything better than the unproved. Better no armour than the awkward encumbrance of the unwonted and the untried. There is a warfare between all and each of us. It has two chief departments--but we need not stay to separate them very carefully--the faith, and the life. For each of these there is an equipment--call it preparation, call it education, or what you will: only remember that it is not all preliminary--it is lifelong, it is daily, it is new every morning. Most young men have someone who offers them his armour. In these days the schoolmaster is abroad even for the poorest. In all days the parent, for better or worse, is present in the homo. The Church is, or ought to be, at hand everywhere, with its instructing and educating influences. All these may be described as offering to arm the young mind and the young soul for the battle of that life which has death in front of it. It is scarcely a reflexion upon this offer to say that it largely resembles Sauls offer to David. We hardly see how it could be otherwise. Parents and teachers must educate out of their own stores of experience. They cannot and they ought not to ask the child or the pupil what he has, and advise him to make the best of it. To a large extent he must be clothed upon with faiths and principles to be taken at first on trust. Any attempt to lay down rules of conduct in circumstances necessarily future, or to warn against evils not yet developed, whether because the age for them is not yet, or because the opportunity is not yet, must more or less partake of the character of arming David with Sauls coat of mall: the person addressed cannot yet have proved it, and yet the instructor durst not take the responsibility of deferring into an indefinite future the counsel or the warning which may at any moment become vital to the hearer when the voice which now speaks will be silent. Yet all the time he knows that he is uttering that which can scarcely be impressive, because it necessarily lacks the personal proving. What pains ought to be taken to enable the receiver to prove everything--so to bring down and bring home the instruction as that it may be, at least in its germ, fruitful at once, operative, on the smallest scale, in the young life! But what shall we say when we pass from matters of conduct into matters of faith? Must there not here at least, be an offer of helmet and sword which cannot by the nature of the case have been yet proved by the receiver? Great indeed is the responsibility of arming others, young or old, in our armour. Well were it if those who have the charge of minds would think more of it. Have they proved their own armour? Can they give a reason, to themselves and to God, for the faith with which they thus preoccupy another? Am I my brothers keeper?--always a solemn question--has no graver or more momentous application than to this matter of the transmission of religion. Yet not to transmit it is to be worse than an infidel. There must be an arming of one by another with the Christian panoply if Christianity itself is not to die out of the earth which it has re-made. We must prove, but we must assert when we have proved, the mighty verity, without which good were it not to have been born, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. We pass to a later thought, and one more practical still. The helmet and the sword and the coat of mail of the Christian faith were first put upon us by others. We thank and we bless God for it. Never could we have forged them, never could we have found them, never could we have put them on, for ourselves. The armour put on must be proved afterwards. The faith of the childhood must be proved by the man. Risk not the battle of life--risk not the discharge from it--in unproved armour. Prove all things, St. Paul said. Prove the spirits, St. John wrote--meaning the professed inspirations of men who came saying, I have a message unto thee, O man, from God. Prove your own selves, St. Paul said again--always the same word, though with seven various renderings in the English Bible. If I were on a platform, arguing with atheists, I should adopt one course. There I should be speaking to men not yet pledged, or pledged the other way. And upon them I should urge one argument, not always pressed as it ought to be--All questions must be argued in their appropriate region. I do not take the telescope to a leaf, nor the microscope to a star: I do not listen to a face, nor look at a voice: I do not taste a colour, nor smell a book. In the same way, if I am asked to believe that Christ died for me, or that God forgives me, or that prayer is heard, or that death is the gate of life, I do not consult Euclid or algebra about it; I know quite well that, true or false, that could not help the decision: no, I remind myself that I am a whole made up of many parts--conscience, feeling, affection, quite as really constituents of my whole being as memory, or intellect, or the critical faculty, cold and bald and naked; and that, if God has spoken, He is sure to have spoken not to one element but to the whole of me; and that therefore I must bring myself, the whole of me, to listen whether He has spoken; and if heart and soul find themselves powerfully affected by a professed revelation--if it seem to exercise an elevating and softening and sweetening influence upon the temper, and the conduct, and the intercourse with others, of those who believe and live it--if, in proportion as a man tries to live the Gospel, the life, the spirit, the man, is evidently ennobled and beautified--if he really finds the day, the separate day, made this or that, happy and bright and useful, or else heavy and slovenly and miserable, according as it is begun, continued and ended in communion with God through Christ, or the contrary--I see there a proof, real, if not by itself conclusive, that that revelation is from Him who made me. But now, speaking from a pulpit, and in a congregation of persons worshipping on the faith of Christ, the application of the call to prove all things takes a slightly different form. It bids us to bring to the proof the armour of Christian profession--which has been put upon us by education or tradition, by common consent or social propriety, or whatever else--by seeing whether it will or will not do for us what we have just now supposed it to do for those whose experience we have spoken of as evidence; whether it can make our lives pure and humble and noble; whether it will bear the strain put upon it by the particular trials which beset us in the course of daily life. O, if one half of the trouble were taken in proving ourselves that is bestowed upon challenging the legality of a dress or a posture, or making some preacher or writer an offender for a word, we should grow apace in that real Christianity which is first humility, and then patience, and then charity. The only, only question then is, Has the armour been proved? has it borne the brunt of trial? has it been kept buckled and kept burnished by a living heart-deep communion with the Author and the Finisher, with the Lord and Giver of Life? (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)

Gods fighters not to take the weapons of the world

Gods fighters have often been its germ, fruitful at once, operative, on the smallest scale, in the young life! But what shall we say when we pass from matters of conduct into matters of faith? Must there not here at least, be an offer of helmet and sword which cannot by the nature of the case have been yet proved by the receiver? Great indeed is the responsibility of arming others, young or old, in our armour. Well were it if those who have the charge of minds would think more of it. Have they proved their own armour? Can they give a reason, to themselves and to God, for the faith with which they thus preoccupy another? Am I my brothers keeper?--always a solemn question--has no graver or more momentous application than to this matter of the transmission of religion. Yet not to transmit it is to be worse than an infidel. There must be an arming of one by another with the Christian panoply if Christianity itself is not to die out of the earth which it has re-made. We must prove, but we must assert when we have proved, the mighty verity, without which good were it not to have been born, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. We pass to a later thought, and one more practical still. The helmet and the sword and the coat of mail of the Christian faith were first put upon us by others. We thank and we bless God for it. Never could we have forged them, never could we have found them, never could we have put them on, for ourselves. The armour put on must be proved afterwards. The faith of the childhood must be proved by the man. Risk not the battle of life--risk not the discharge from it--in unproved armour. Prove all things, St. Paul said. Prove the spirits, St. John wrote--meaning the professed inspirations of men who came saying, I have a message unto thee, O man, from God. Prove your own selves, St. Paul said again--always the same word, though with seven various renderings in the English Bible. If I were on a platform, arguing with atheists, I should adopt one course. There I should be speaking to men not yet pledged, or pledged the other way. And upon them I should urge one argument, not always pressed as it ought to be--All questions must be argued in their appropriate region. I do not take the telescope to a leaf, nor the microscope to a star: I do not listen to a face, nor look at a voice: I do not taste a colour, nor smell a book. In the same way, if I am asked to believe that Christ died for me, or that God forgives me, or that prayer is heard, or that death is the gate of life, I do not consult Euclid or algebra about it; I know quite well that, true or false, that could not help the decision: no, I remind myself that I am a whole made up of many parts--conscience, feeling, affection, quite as really constituents of my whole being as memory, or intellect, or the critical faculty, cold and bald and naked; and that, if God has spoken, He is sure to have spoken not to one element but to the whole of me; and that therefore I must bring myself, the whole of me, to listen whether He has spoken; and if heart and soul find themselves powerfully affected by a professed revelation--if it seem to exercise an elevating and softening and sweetening influence upon the temper, and the conduct, and the intercourse with others, of those who believe and live it--if, in proportion as a man tries to live the Gospel, the life, the spirit, the man, is evidently ennobled and beautified--if he really finds the day, the separate day, made this or that, happy and bright and useful, or else heavy and slovenly and miserable, according as it is begun, continued and ended in communion with God through Christ, or the contrary--I see there a proof, real, if not by itself conclusive, that that revelation is from Him who made me. But now, speaking from a pulpit, and in a congregation of persons worshipping on the faith of Christ, the application of the call to prove all things takes a slightly different form. It bids us to bring to the proof the armour of Christian profession--which has been put upon us by education or tradition, by common consent or social propriety, or whatever else--by seeing whether it will or will not do for us what we have just now supposed it to do for those whose experience we have spoken of as evidence; whether it can make our lives pure and humble and noble; whether it will bear the strain put upon it by the particular trials which beset us in the course of daily life. O, if one half of the trouble were taken in proving ourselves that is bestowed upon challenging the legality of a dress or a posture, or making some preacher or writer an offender for a word, we should grow apace in that real Christianity which is first humility, and then patience, and then charity. The only, only question then is, Has the armour been proved? has it borne the brunt of trial? has it been kept buckled and kept burnished by a living heart-deep communion with the Author and the Finisher, with the Lord and Giver of Life? (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)

Gods fighters not to take the weapons of the world

Gods fighters have often been tempted to don Sauls armour, and it has always hampered them. It may have shielded them from some assaults, but it has robbed them of elasticity, and half stifled them. They are stronger far without than with it. As surely as the Church yields to the falsehood that it must be clothed with worldly power and wealth in order to fight worldly power, it surrenders its freedom and capacity to attack, though it may obtain a sort of defence. And it is not only in churches which are called established that the temptation of fighting the world with worldly weapons has been yielded to. Wherever Christian individuals or communities rely upon anything but the power of the indwelling Christ to make their work successful, and seek to eke out the one weapon which God gives into their hand, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with others borrowed from the armoury of the world, they trammel themselves and invite defeat The world laughs, just as Goliath no doubt chuckled to see the stripling walking ungainly and stiff, in Sauls armour. It likes nothing better than to reduce Christians to impotence by getting them to arm themselves out of its stores, and to fight with weapons of the pattern of its own. Goliath had long practice in using sword and javelin; David had none. It is folly to fling aside the weapons that we are used to, and to take up with new ones, on the eve of a fight. Jesus taught us how His soldiers are to be attired if they are to conquer, when He said, Tarry ye . . . till ye be clothed with power from on high. (A. Maclaren, D. D)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Sa 17:39. David girded his sword upon his armour — Literally, above, upon his vestments. He assayed to go — יאל ללכת, joel lalecheth. The learned translate these words different ways, but nearly to the same sense, Voluit ire, tentavit ire, conatus est incedere; he willed, wished, tried, or endeavoured to go; that is, to walk or march. As he had never worn such things before, not being used to go armed, he wished to try how he could walk in them; and finding that they were likely rather to encumber him than facilitate his enterprise, he begged leave to lay them aside. “David marched with difficulty, as not accustomed to these; therefore he said to Saul, I cannot go with these arms, for I am not accustomed to them; and David put them off.” — Houb.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Or, assayed.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 39. I cannot go with these] In ancient times it required considerable exercise and training to make a man expert in the use of such heavy armour; armour which in the present day scarcely a man is to be found who is able to carry; and so it must have been then, until that practice which arises from frequent use had made the proprietor perfect. I have not proved them says David: I am wholly unaccustomed to such armour and it would be an encumbrance to me.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

39. assayed] i.e. endeavoured. The word is derived from Old Fr. asaier, “to try, put to the proof,” and this from Lat. exigere, “to weigh.”

for he had not proved it] He made the effort in ignorance, because he had never tried a suit of armour, and did not know what an encumbrance it would be to one unaccustomed to the use of it.

David put them off him] “Expeditissimus ille ad prœlium procedere cupiebat; fortis non in se sed in Domino; armatus non tam ferro quam fide.” “He desired to go forth to the battle in the lightest possible armour: strong in the Lord not in himself: armed not with steel but with faith.” Augustine, Serm. XXXII. God would show, as in the case of Gideon (Jdg_7:2), that the victory was His alone. Compare Maurice, Prophets and Kings, p. 46.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And David girded his, sword upon his armour,.... Which Saul also perhaps furnished him with:

and he assayed to go; made an attempt, and had a mind to go thus accoutred; he at first showed an inclination to go in such an habit, but afterwards would not:

for he had not proved it; as warriors were wont to do; so Achilles did (i); he never made trial of such armour before, he had not been used to it, and knew not how to behave in it, or walk with it on him; it was an encumbrance to him: Abarbinel renders it, "but he had not proved it"; he would have gone with it but for that reason; the Targum is,"because there was no miracle in them;''because if he had made use of this, there would have been no appearance of a miracle in getting the victory over the Philistine, as was by using only a sling and stones:

and David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them; he thought fit to acquaint Saul with it that he could not go thus accoutred, and his reason for it, lest he should be offended with him:

and David put them off him; took off the helmet from his head, ungirt the sword upon his armour, and stripped himself of his coat of mail, and went forth entirely unarmed.

(i) Homer. Iliad. 19. ver. 384, 385. so Theocrit. Idyll. 10. ver. 61.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Armour. Hebrew, "he tried to go." Symmachus, "he went lame." Septuagint, "he laboured in walking once and twice." (Calmet) --- Salien supposes that the armour was not made for Saul, as he was much more bulky than young David. Yet we find that the latter could use the sword of the giant without difficulty. (St. Chrysostom, &c.) (Haydock)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

I have not proved them; I have no skill nor experience in the management of this kind of arms.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Proved them - I have no skill or experience in the managements of this kind of arms.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

his sword on his armor

"Saul's sword on the armor"

his staff in his hand

Here "his" refers to David.

His sling was in his hand

A sling is a weapon for throwing stones.

translationWords

David

sword

armor

Saul (OT)

staff

shepherd

Philistines

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

But he did not want to go out. Targum Yonoson renders "and he did not want to go." There are words which have two opposite definitions, as in "will cut off [מְסָעֵף] a branch," [derived from סָעִיף, a branch]. [Also,] "and he will uproot you [וְשֵׁרֶשְׁךְ] from the land of the living," [derived from שׁוֹרֶש, a root].

For he was not accustomed. I.e., because he was not accustomed.

For I am not accustomed. [Targum renders] 'for their is no miracle [נֵס] in them,' [meaning] there will be no praise for the miracle in this manner. Another explanation of,וַיאֶׁל לָלֶכֶת is, 'he wanted to go, and to try [wearing Shaul's battle garments],' but when he saw that they were too heavy for him, he took them off.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.