Because the story of David and Goliath is so familiar to us—and perhaps because the children’s department has claimed it as the ultimate children’s Bible story—believers tend to miss the fact that this beloved Bible story is messianic prophecy Jesus fulfills. It is prophecy in story form!

As much as we love and need to teach this story to children, it is not primarily a children’s story. So, let us put to the side the children’s version and tone of this story—and even the immediate spiritual application to our own lives and our “giants” for now—and instead ready our minds to be on the lookout for patterns and similarities to other stories, persons, and events in the Bible. 

Flashbacks and foreshadowing are the building blocks of Bible prophecy. Flashbacks to the past often open prophetic portals that foreshadow or build something in the future. Embedded within the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) are three important flashbacks to past stories and persons. These flashbacks foreshadow the messianic future.

1) Giant Fear: The First Flashback

This first flashback is signaled to us by verse 11: “On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all Israel lost their courage and were terrified.” By the time we reach this verse, our minds are supposed to have revisited another incredibly significant time in Israel’s history where Israel’s mighty military men were once again camped out to confront giant enemies but completely lost their courage to cowardice. The literary connection between these two stories has lots of theological implications. In fact, it has everything to do with redemption. But, because there’s a lot to unpack, I am going to have to point readers to my book to understand why the biblical author ties these two stories together.

2) A Life-Changing Errand: The Second Flashback

In 1 Samuel 17, David’s father sends David, the youngest brother, on an errand to check on the “shalom” or wellbeing of his older brothers in the army.

Who else in Israel’s history was the youngest son sent by his father to check on his older brothers’ well-being (shalom) and bring back word—and, I might add, whose life was forever changed through this task?

Joseph (see Genesis 37).

These two stories are parallels because this is the point where Joseph’s and David’s life takes a drastic and providential turn. With this purposeful flashback to Joseph in David’s story, the author is now asking us to read David (and especially what happens next in 1 Samuel 17) with Joseph and his story in the back of our minds. David’s life, too, will encounter a drastic—and deadly—turn of events by this simple errand. Ironically, even though Joseph and David are both sent to check on the “shalom” (peace, well-being, harmony) of their brothers, what unfolds is the exact opposite of shalom.

What we come to see is that David’s storyline in 1 Samuel 17 (and chapter 16) is being recorded and recited to us according to Joseph’s storyline.

Samuel’s royal anointing of David (1 Sam 16) and Jacob’s adorning of Joseph with the royal robe (and the dream of rulership) both immediately precede their life-changing errand. And in both plots, a negative exchange with jealous brothers immediately follows the errand.

Coincidence? No, it’s literature. It’s the creative genius behind good literature. We are meant to catch the connections between Joseph and David. These key servants of the Lord are both despised in the eyes of their brothers who are envious of the youngest son’s chosenness and anointing.

Eventually, what develops out of these narratives are the very themes of Isaiah 53, the great prophecy of another Joseph-like David who

• is chosen by God,

• is rejected and despised by his own brothers,

• is oppressed and condemned to death by the leadership of his day,

• victoriously conquers his sufferings,

• lavishly pardons unthinkable betrayal (like Joseph),

• saves many lives (like both Joseph and David)

• rules as king in Israel like David and a Savior over the nations like Joseph in Egypt.

So, when Jesus—the ultimate suffering servant and Joseph-like David—fulfills the great chapter of Isaiah 53, he is in fact fulfilling a lot more of the Bible. He is showing how the stories of Joseph and David bear witness to him!

3) Three Ancient Promises: The Third Flashback

In the third flashback, there are really a few prophetic flashbacks that all get compacted into a few sentences. Moreover, these trace all the way back to the Garden of Eden. David utters some of the most prophetic words when he famously declares to Goliath,

“You come against me with a dagger, spear, and sword, but I come against you in the name of YHWH of Hosts, the God of Israel’s armies—you have defied Him. Today, the Lord will hand you over to me. Today, I’ll strike you down, cut your head off, and give the corpses of the Philistine camp to the birds of the sky and creatures of the earth. Then all the world will know that Israel has a God, and this whole assembly will know that it is not by sword or by spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord’s. He will hand you over to us.” (1 Sam 17:45–47, HCSB, emphasis mine)

In these bold promises, David identifies two different groups of people who will experience two different “knowings.” He first addresses 1) all the world (or nations) who will come to know that Israel has a God, or rather, the one and only true God. Then he delivers a message to 2) “this assembly,” Israel, saying “all this assembly will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves” (17:47, HCSB).

These declarations by God’s chosen servant and king are loaded with strong messianic prophecy, but you’ll have to just buy the book to find out what those are because they are complex and require serious space for proper delineation.

The third promise is 3) a powerful message to the enemies of God.

David makes a bold promise to Goliath, one that is packed with prophecy: to “cut off [his] head” (1 Sam 17:46).

The cutting or crushing of the head is popular biblical imagery that not only feeds us future information about the profile of the Messiah, but this brief flash of four words takes us back through time and history all the way to Genesis 3, where it originates.

Perhaps you already guessed it, but this imagery reminds the reader of the famous, prophetic words God delivers to the serpent in Genesis 3:15 just after the fall of humankind: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Scholars describe Genesis 3:15 as the first hint or “announcement” of the gospel—in seed-like form. Or, in other words, it is the gospel’s very first ripple. The promise of an offspring belonging to the woman who will crush the head of God’s enemies begins a ripple effect within Israel’s history. David is not the first to partially fulfill and prophetically foreshadow this “head-crushing” business on the enemies of God’s people, although it does climax drastically in him as God’s first messiah in 1 Samuel 17. But this prophetic ripple existed in other stories of Israel long before David.

Interestingly, in many other places where we see this “head-crushing” imagery in the Bible, it is women who are doing it, or if they are not themselves performing it, they are involved in a very central and indispensable way like Eve, whose head-crushing offspring is intentionally described as belonging to and coming from her (“her offspring,” as opposed to the far more common biblical emphasis on patriarchal lineage/seed).

These head-crushing women include:

• Jael/Yael in the times of the Judges (5:24, 26,)

• and unnamed woman who drops an upper millstone on the head of king Abimelek (Judges 9:52–53)

• Judith (in extrabiblical literature) who beheaded the Assyrian general Holofernes with his own sword (Judith 12–13) just as David beheaded Goliath with Goliath’s own sword (1 Sam 17:41–58).

Significantly, the above women are repeatedly praised and called “blessed” for crushing Israel’s enemies.

• “Most blessed of women be Jael” (Judges 5:24).

• “Then Uzziah said to her, “O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on earth, and blessed be the Lord God, who created the heavens and the earth, who has guided you to cut off the head of the leader of our enemies” (Judith 13:18, NRSVUE).

These “blessed” women and this head-crushing imagery all develop and grow to ultimately foreshadow and find fulfillment in the truly most blessed of women: Mary (Miriam). The praises given to the above women align with the familiar praise Elizabeth gives to Jesus’ mother: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:42). She is blessed because in her, the ancient, head-crushing prophecy of Genesis 3:15 will be fulfilled. Her offspring will be the ultimate seed who will crush the ultimate enemy of God and save his people.

You see, Mary is the new Eve or the better Eve. She is the most developed ripple of a woman participating in God’s head-crushing business. Jesus, her offspring, is the second or last Adam, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:45–49. Salvation and the head-crushing seed came into the world through Mary, who stands in redeeming contrast to Eve. Just as Eve brought sin and death into the world by obeying the serpent, Mary would birth salvation into the world, the Davidic defeat of sin, Satan, and death. And he will usher in everlasting peace, eternal shalom to all Israel and into all the world.

A head-crushing wife who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.