In 1 Samuel 17:48 between the slow movements of the heavy-armed Philistine and the quick run of the shepherd, whose' feet were as hind's feet' (Psalm 18:33). Agility and confident alacrity were both expressed. His feet were shod with the preparedness of faith.' Observe, too, the impetuous brevity of the account in 1 Samuel 17:49, of the actual fall of Goliath. The short clauses, coupled by a series of ands,' reproduce the swift succession of events, which ended the fight before it had begun; and one can almost hear the whiz of the stone as it crashes into the thick head, so strangely left unprotected by all the profusion of brass that clattered about him. The vulnerable heel of Achilles and the unarmed forehead of Goliath illustrate the truth, ever forgotten and needing to be repeated, that, after all precautions, some spot is bare, and that there is no Armour against fate.'
The picture of the huge man-mountain' fallen upon his face to the earth, a huddled heap of useless mail, recalls the words of a psalm, When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell' (Psalm 27:2). Is it fanciful to hear in that triumphant chant an echo of Goliath's boast about giving his flesh to the fowls and the beasts, and a vision of the braggart as be tottered and lay prostrate! Observe, too, the contemptuous reiteration of the Philistine,' which occurs six times in the four verses (1 Samuel 17:48-51). National feeling speaks in that. There is triumph in the sarcastic repetition of the dreaded name in such a connection. This was what one of the brood had got, and his fate was an omen of what would befall the rest. The champion of Israel, the soldier of God, standing over the dead Philistine, all whose brazen Armour had been useless and his brazen insolence abased, and sawing off his head with his own sword, was a prophecy for the Israel of that day, and will be a symbol till the end of time of the true equipment, the true temper, and the certain victory, of all who, in the name of the Lord of hosts, go forth in their weakness against the giants of ignorance, vice, and sin. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'
