Goliath and Golgotha

 

From The Rectory

 

We recently had BBC comedy writer and stand-up theologian James Cary come and perform his excellent show: God, The Bible and Everything in 60 Minutes. jamescary.co.uk/ Of course we didn’t do any of those three components exhaustively in an hour. But because the Bible (written by about 40 human authors over hundreds of years) has a single divine author, it is possible to speak of its plot and a single coherent message.

The good news of the Bible is first proclaimed in chapter three of book one. Sin enters the world via the snake in the Garden of Eden and in Genesis 3, God mercifully promises that the seed of the woman (a human child) will crush the head of the Satanic-serpent. That is, a human being will triumph over evil and the great Enemy of God and his people. Sin and judgement will not have the last word. Victory and deliverance are coming. The Fall of humanity will be overcome. The rest of the Bible is the search for the Serpent-Crusher.   

And of course Jesus, the God-Man, born of Mary, proves to be that Serpent-Crusher. But as James pointed out, Jesus is cleverly foreshadowed in his great ancestor, King David of Bethlehem. You know the story: unlikely lad kills the giant.

In the Bible, Pharoh, the king of Egypt who enslaves God’s people, is snake-like (check out the picture). And David’s terrifying opponent Goliath is similar. He wears scaley armour (1 Samuel 17:5), like that of a fish or snake. The Hebrew word for bronze, nehoshet, sounds like the word for serpent, nehesh. David crushes Goliath’s head with a stone from his shepherd boy slingshot and the threatening warrior falls dead to the dust in which the serpent had been condemned to crawl way back in Genesis 3. David cuts off Goliath’s head and takes it back to Jerusalem (1 Samuel 17:54).

What became of that scull? Who knows, but maybe it would have been put up on a pole outside the city, rather as the heads of traitors would be displayed in London. And then perhaps that unclean head of the foreigner might have been buried in that marginal place, without the city wall. This is speculation, but maybe the head of Goliath of Gath might have been buried at Golgotha, “the place of the scull”, Mount Calvary, where Jesus was crucified.

Jesus is the nahesh nahoshet - the bronze serpent of John 3:14 – lifted up on the cross. And all who look to him will live. For he has crushed the serpent’s head, died and risen.

Isn’t the Bible a weird and wonderful book? It deserves your time and attention. Jesus is patterned, pictured, prophesied and predicted in countless ways in the Bible. We can never exhaust it or him. But its one great message can be summed up quite simply like this: look to Jesus (crucified and risen) and you can know wholeness and life everlasting. One glance to Jesus, with faith, with trust, dependence and the spark of a desire to take him as your Lord will save and transform you for ever. Take a look! And perhaps reflect on John’s Gospel chapter 3.

See further the work of Dr Rick Shenk at: bcsmn.edu/david-and-goliath/

The Revd Marc Lloyd