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The Stones: A Novel of the Life of King David

By Eleanor Gustafson

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[Keep in mind that this is Asaph’s dream, not the Goliath story that we know.]

I dreamed of Goliath last night, strangely enough, considering it was Joab, David’s general, who died yesterday. Perhaps emotion was the link—the Israelites’ joy half a century ago when David killed the giant, and mine today when I saw Joab dead on the altar steps.
In my dream, I was trying to question Goliath as I have so many others in compiling this story of David. The picture was silly enough: I, Asaph—all one hundred and forty spineless, Levitical, musical pounds of me, standing eye to navel against this wool-bellied monster who had challenged not only the army of Israel, but the God of Israel, as well. When I talk with people, I try to engage their eyes, but Goliath’s head towered high and remote within its crested helmet. The bloated, belch-rumbling bulge of his middle forced me to bend backwards in an attempt to see around it.
Goliath was striding about, his eye on a flurry of activity across the brook. King Saul, tall against his own countrymen but a twig next to the Philistine, was talking with a young lad who had come upon the scene of the face-off. What were they saying? Why was the boy trying on Saul’s armor, walking as though to test its feel, then shaking his head and removing it? Watching this, Goliath worked his shoulders under his own scale armor and stamped his legs to settle bronze greaves in place.
“Goliath, my lord,” I called. “A few questions, if I may.” I trotted beside him, taking five steps to his one. “What are you thinking of in these minutes before your death? I know that’s pretty personal, but—”
“Whose death?” A reasonable question, but he said the words absently, his attention fixed on the knot surrounding the king and the red-haired boy.
“I see you’re watching David over there. He’s the one who will kill you, you know. I know the end of the story.”
The giant’s shaved jowls hung thick and lumpy, his teeth poked brown and rotten between inch-thick lips. His cropped mane added to the illusion of a naked, weak-eyed pimple atop a furry lump of brutishness. I began to understand that my insolent questions got no answers because Goliath’s mind was big enough only to size up an enemy. His left eye circled dangerously. Like another eye I knew.
Joab’s eye.
David headed downstream where he knelt by the brook to sort through stones, measuring their heft and smoothness. My dream’s eye saw him in simple shepherd’s garb, no armor, carrying only his staff and sling. He splashed across the thin stream and faced the giant, intentions clear.
Goliath stiffened, and when his mind caught up with the implications of what his eyes saw, he expanded another foot and turned black with rage. With a mighty whirl that sent his armor-bearers sprawling, he spit his injured pride in the direction of the Israelite king, who was watching from his vantage point upstream. “Look a’ me,” the giant roared, thumping a four-foot chest. “Some sorta dog you see? No, you see I Goliath. I gnaw warrior bones for supper, but here you serve up sticks. By the mighty power of Dagon and Asherah, I strip feathers and flesh from this stork and feed him to rats!”
“Goliath!” David shouted from below. “Never mind the king.” He stood with legs apart and arms akimbo, head cocked rakishly. The first fuzz of manhood sketched red along a face that was fresh, strong, handsome, fully alive. His voice warbled unpredictably between man and boy.
“That tree trunk of a spear,” the lad called. “I wouldn’t mind having it or the sword your armor-bearer is playing with.” His words were light, but his eyes never left the giant.
“Goliath, you’ve been a lion against sheep till now. But today I come against you in the name of Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, whom your people say is stuck in a box. The God of Israel will act, and you’ll be the one who’ll fatten rats. The world will know from this day on that Yahweh saves, not by sword and spear, not by size and fear, but by his power alone. I’ve killed lions and bears, you know. Their teeth and claws are sharper than yours.”
David’s voice cracked, provoking laughter. Under its cover David laid aside his staff and drew a stone from his pouch. The Philistine armor-bearers danced in anticipation of action at last. Goliath’s left eye began circling again. His face darkened, his arms took on the fur and claws of a bear. A snout, round, fur-flanked and vaguely familiar, poked through his facial armor. Now closer to nineteen feet tall than nine, he reared and roared and was no longer Goliath but a bear-like Joab, David’s loathsome commander-in-chief. With weapons carriers and shield bearer tight to him, he thundered down the slope toward the shepherd boy. But the lad, to my alarm, appeared to shrivel even as the giant grew. The Joab bear raised his arms, and the updraft sucked my robe until I felt myself being drawn toward the great beast’s maw. David and I both cowered before him. As those claws descended, the armor-bearer (whom I also recognized but couldn’t name) sprang from under the shield with the giant’s own sword. With a mighty, two-handed stroke he cut off the great beast’s head. Then he stuck the sword into the ground and leaned on the haft, gasping for breath.
Goliath’s armor-bearer was Benaiah.

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