Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Hence again St. Augustine on Psalm 33, discourse 4: “That David,” he says, “laid low Goliath, is Christ who slew the devil. And what is Christ who slew the devil? Humility slew pride.” And soon: “For he made a way for us by humility, because we had departed from God by pride, and could not return to God except by humility, and we had no one to set before us for imitation. For all the mortality of men had swelled with pride. And if there arose some man humble in spirit, such as were the Prophets, the Patriarchs, the human race disdained to imitate humble men. Lest, then, man should disdain to imitate a humble man, God was made humble: that even so the pride of the human race might not disdain to follow the footsteps of God.”
42. HE DESPISED HIM: FOR HE WAS A YOUTH, RUDDY AND OF A COMELY COUNTENANCE.—Goliath “despised” David, because he was a youth, and almost unarmed, and handsome. He despised, then, his age, arms and beauty. He esteemed him unwarlike, because he was so handsome. For warlike men are wont to have a martial and fierce countenance, not an elegant and beautiful one.
Whence Isidorus Clarius: “He despised him,” he says, “because he was not a warlike man, and accustomed to fights, for he saw him a youth, ruddy, and of comely countenance, such as Martial men are not wont to be, whom the rays of the sun and continual fatigue render deformed.”
Hence Tertullian, book 4 Against the Jews, chap. 9, proves that the war of the Messias, of whom it is said in Psalm 44, verse 4: “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O thou most mighty,” will be spiritual, not corporal, because there precedes verse 3: “Thou art beautiful above the sons of men.” “It is very absurd,” says Tertullian, “if one whom he girded with a sword for war was flattered with the seasonableness of beauty and the grace of the lips.” Whence Seneca in the Hippolytus: “How pleasing,” he says, “is a stern look in a man.” Aristotle in the Ethics says that the first part of beauty is “that the body be fit to bear labours”; and adds that a certain fierceness in the “countenance” is required, “that he may seem terrible to enemies,” such as Rhodiginus teaches was in Alexander the Great, book 9, chap. 24, such as Cicero, book 1 On Duties, calls “manly dignity,” and that such was in David; and that it grew with age and the wars which he waged continually is not doubtful, as is plain from this conflict with Goliath, and will be plainer from what follows. “The most excellent beauty,” says Euripides, “is worthy of empire.” For as deformity in Julian the Apostate, as St. Gregory Nazianzen relates, oration 4 against him, and in Caligula, Otho, Galba and the like, as Suetonius relates, not obscurely betrayed that they would be the worst Emperors, so plainly the dignity and liberality of form foretold that they would rule best. For of Julius Caesar: “He was of fair colour, with well-rounded limbs, a rather full face, and keen eyes”; of Augustus: “He was of exceptional beauty, and most graceful through all the stages of life”; of Titus Vespasian: “Of distinguished beauty, in whom was no less of authority than of grace,” Suetonius testifies in their Lives. Plutarch writes the same of Alexander. Polybius, book 4, praises Philip king of Macedon, father of Alexander, for his appearance and distinguished mien, adding that it was not easy to find a king adorned with more gifts of nature. And of Scipio Plutarch in his Life: “Scipio,” he says, “was greatly excelling in mind and other virtues, but was conspicuous also for the more outstanding beauty of face and form of his whole body, with a cheerful and joyful brow, which avail much to win favour.” Pacatus in the Panegyric to Theodosius: “Every most august appearance,” he says, “is believed to have much of heaven in it.” And he adds: “Thy virtue deserved the empire, but beauty added its vote to virtue; the one provided that it was fitting for thee to become prince, the other that it should be becoming.”
43. AM I A DOG?—as if to say, …still to be among the sheep, and to chase certain dogs; and so against me, as against a dog, hast thou come to battle equipped with those instruments?
Thou wilt learn at once by experience that thy war is not with a common man.”
But truly Goliath was a dog by impudence, unfaithfulness and filthiness; and therefore like a dog he was struck with a stone by David. Hear St. Paulinus, Natalis 5:
That giant fell by the sling of the boy shepherd, like a dog.
AND THE PHILISTINE CURSED DAVID BY HIS GODS,—saying, for example: May our gods destroy thee, may our Dagon smite thee. Moreover David, says Basil of Seleucia, oration 15, took from this courage and an omen of victory, saying: “I will curse the tongue of the enemy; I hold a pledge of victory;” both because God is wont to punish the cursers, and because He humbles the gods of the Gentiles together with their worshippers.
45. THEN DAVID SAID TO THE PHILISTINE: THOU COMEST TO ME WITH A SWORD, AND WITH A SPEAR, AND WITH A SHIELD: BUT I COME TO THEE IN THE NAME OF THE LORD OF HOSTS.—Hence it is plain that David, impelled by God, undertook this duel; for otherwise a young man would have rashly set himself against a giant, unarmed against armed, unwarlike against warlike. So Josephus, Theodoret and others. God, therefore, put into him courage as well as strength, and sure hope of victory. Whence David adds:
Therefore I meet thee plainly unarmed, thou armed, to show that I rely on God alone, and place in Him all hope of victory, namely that He Himself will, thee, so elated, smite and slay by my hand. “Thus, thus,” says St. Augustine, sermon 5 On the Words of the Apostle, “otherwise not, wholly otherwise not, is the enemy overthrown. He who fights by his own strength is overthrown before he fights.” These words won victory and kingdom for the unarmed David. Whence Basil of Seleucia, oration 15, exclaims: “O words full of divine love, victory gained even before the victory! O thou who hast made plain that faith needs no arms for battle! O thou who hast shown in thyself the power of faith! such souls grace knows how to choose: wherefore it called him from the care of the flock, though weighed down, to the kingdom.”
Hear St. Chrysostom, in the homily On David and Goliath: “… thou trustest in the sword, I in God; thou fightest with earthly things, I fight with heavenly; thou in the lance, I in faith; thou in human strength, I in the most mighty Father. Finally thy arms shall be turned upon thee, thy sword shall be drawn against thee; for this fight is God’s, and God’s shall be the victory itself.”
Moreover Josephus, book 6 of the Antiquities, chap. 10, says that David said to Goliath: “Thou invadest me trusting in thy spear, and breastplate, and sword; but for me God is the armour, who today is about to destroy thee and thy army by our hands.” Note: “but for me God is the armour.” “If God be for us, who is against us?” Rom. chap. 8.
UPON THE EARTH.—The Chaldee: He smote the Philistine upon the house of his eyes, and the stone was fixed in the house of his eyes, and he fell upon his nose to the ground. Goliath, then, had covered his head with his helmet, but not his forehead, especially since he despised David as if unarmed; or if he had covered it, David, strengthened by God, hurled the stone so strongly that it broke through the helmet.
Hence it is plain, first, that David was an excellent slinger: and he aimed at the forehead of Goliath, because, that being broken, the brain of Goliath, from which all spirit, motion and sense flow, was injured; and so it made him fall to the ground as if lifeless and stupefied. It is plain, secondly, that this stroke of David was so strong that the stone pierced the forehead of Goliath and struck the brain; for thence, as if bereft of motion and sense, he fell. So Abulensis and Prudentius in the Psychomachia:
And it pierced through the forehead with a hollow wound.
Thirdly it is plain that Goliath fell at the stroke of one stone at first. Less well therefore do the Gloss and Hugh think that Goliath was laid low by David with three stones and strokes, to represent the threefold repulse and victory of Christ tempted by the devil. The Chaldee, the Rabbis and Philo, or rather Pseudo-Philo in the Biblical Antiquities, add that David inscribed on the stone with which he struck Goliath the name of God and of the Patriarchs. More truly Pantaleon, Cartophylax of the Church of Chonae, in the homily On St. Michael (extant in Surius on the feast of St. Michael), asserts that the Archangel Michael, as president of the Synagogue and protector of Israel, as well as of King David, struck Goliath through him.
Mystically St. Augustine, sermon 197 On the Season: “See, brethren,” he says, “where David struck Goliath, in the forehead surely, where he had not the sign of the cross. For as the staff bore the type of the cross, so also that stone with which he was struck figured Christ the Lord. For He is the living stone, of which it is written: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.” And below, bringing a tropological sense: “That he was struck on the forehead signifies what is now done with our candidates, because when the catechumen is signed on the forehead, the spiritual Goliath is smitten and the devil put to flight.”