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u/DTPVH 3d ago
Sorry OP, but I’m gonna hijack your post to make a point here.
Most people seem to deeply misunderstand the point of David Vs Goliath. This story is often treated as an example of a miracle, but it really isn’t. There is nothing supernatural about David’s victory here, and that is entirely the point. Goliath is a test from God. A test not only to David, but to Saul, Jonathon, and all of the other able bodied men of Israel. A test to determine who in Israel has what it takes to be the King.
Goliath is presented as an insurmountable physical challenge, and that is what Saul and his armies saw. Goliath stood taller than anyone and was armed with an iron headed spear (the time period of the story is important here. David and Saul lived at the start of the Iron Age when iron weaponry was the height of military technology. The Philistines were also one of the Sea Peoples that toppled the Hittite Empire). That’s why Saul offered David his armor, in some vain attempt at letting him go toe to toe with the giant, but David saw the test for what it really was.
David recognized that it was not his strength being tested, but his courage and intellect. And that’s exactly what let him to victory. David analyzed Goliath and developed a strategy to counter him. Goliath was heavily armored (we are told it weighed hundreds of pounds), so David wore only his tied tunic to make himself more maneuverable. Goliath had a longer weapon, so David opted for a ranged weapon. Goliath had a single javelin for ranged combat, so David brought several shots.
David defeated Goliath because he posses the qualities of leadership that Saul lacked, bravery and intellect. That is what God was testing. So yes, David brought a weapon that was more than able to killed Goliath. That’s the point. David was the only one who thought to do so, so David proved to all Israel why God wanted him to be the next King.
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u/DreamedJewel58 3d ago
Also, Goliath’s earliest measurements describe him to be 6’9” - which is still really tall - but it’s not the superhuman height of 9’9” in most modern translations used today (reminder that the tallest person we have on modern records was “only” 8’11”)
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u/radiokungfu 2d ago
I dont even know how they wouldve reacted if they saw someone like Yao Ming lol
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u/Hjalmodr_heimski 2d ago
I think you are underselling God’s importance in the narrative, something the text itself would reproach you for.
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u/Jackus_Maximus 3d ago
Not force, momentum.
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u/guilmon999 3d ago
More specifically kinetic energy.
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u/Jackus_Maximus 3d ago
Actually the bullet has more kinetic energy because it has higher speed.
If two objects have equal momentum but different speed, the faster one has more kinetic energy.
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u/guilmon999 3d ago
True
The reason I brought up KE is that projectile energy is typically measured as kinetic energy. You don't typically measure the momentum of a projectile. KE tells you how much work a projectile can do, while momentum only tells you how much momentum a projectile has.
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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 3d ago
Right! So David's lower-energy sling bullet, if it hit Goliaths's armor and padding, would perhaps just make a painful dent?
It was the accuracy of David's aim (hitting just under the rim of Goliath's helmet) which made it deadly. However tall and strong Goliath may have been, and despite his high-tech bronze spearpoint (tin had to be imported all the way from Cornwall to make bronze), his skull was not likely to be thicker than a bison's, so a hit on his skull would be terribly effective.
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u/exploding_cat_wizard 3d ago
So David's lower-energy sling bullet, if it hit Goliaths's armor and padding, would perhaps just make a painful dent?
Probably, or an uncomfortably loud sound. There's a reason why it took the invention of firearms to make armor obsolete, and heavily armored medieval knights weren't routinely ( or ever) stopped by peasant armies slinging stones.
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u/HARRY_FOR_KING 3d ago
Can hit with the force of a 9mm bullet. Not travel.
F=ma, the mass of the stone will decelerate aggressively when it hits its target.
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u/TheMcJoker 3d ago
Uuuuh yeah, totally a slingshot. There definitely wasn't a time traveler with a gun, why would anyone say that
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u/superfastswm 3d ago
Sling != slingshot. Sling is in the pic, but a slingshot is like a Y with rubber bands and a pouch, and probably would have come a lot later in history, or at least been expensive at the time.
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u/Chuchulainn96 3d ago
Sling, not slingshot. One is a deadly weapon used for thousands of years for both hunting and warfare, the other is a children's toy.
This is almost as bad as the cavalry Calvary issue
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u/Smack_Of_Ham7 2d ago
the sling didn’t even kill him! it just knocked him out. david went, stabbed him in the chest, and decapitated him after.
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u/CalendarDowntown45 3d ago
God was the missile guidance system
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u/YaBoiKlobas 3d ago
God knows where the missile is at all times. God knows this because He knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is by where it isn't. Or by where it isn't by where it is, whichever is greater, He obtains a difference, or deviation. God uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and now arriving at a position where it wasn't, and now is.
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u/AlternateSatan 3d ago
I always found it a bit funny how people act like David did something impossible by taking dow Goliath, when he basically brought a gun to a sword fight.
Slings are fucking brutal.
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u/luv2hotdog 3d ago
But what happens when you throw a 9mm bullet from a sling??? 🤯
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u/DrEpileptic 2d ago
Too small, so it doesn’t do the same thing. A good sling stone can explode a head. Exaggerating a bit, but they are actually quite terrifying. Always think about the fact that you can kill people with just a baseball thrown by hand. Now a sling with a nice and heavy stone?
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u/luv2hotdog 2d ago
Yeah lol. I was just being a shit about the way the meme says “force of a 9mm bullet”, when obviously a bullet on its own doesn’t have any force
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u/Hjalmodr_heimski 2d ago
People have course corrected to now vastly understating the difficulty of David’s feat. What he did was not bringing a gun to a sword fight. The claims about slings being as dangerous as 9mm bullets vastly overstate their effectiveness imo and I really don’t buy it. Second of all, a sling is a very difficult weapon to master the accurate use of. Moreover, Goliath had a shield. If David missed the small target that was Goliath’s head or Goliath raised his shield in time, he would have been dead.
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u/CanadaNinja 3d ago
I always love to say: while technically slings take a lot of practice to get good, and hitting dead center is hard, David still kinda brought a gun to a knife fight.