The Five (Smooth) Rocks were also Christ

As regular visitors to terra incognita will probably have gathered, I've been spending a lot of time in 1 Samuel these days.  The other day it was Chapter 17, the most famous giant-bout in recorded history, immortalized in monumental marble masterpieces and children's coloring pages alike.  I lingered for a moment over the scene where David selects five smooth stones from the stream, and I was reminded of this post over at Richard Beck's very good blog called Experimental Theology.

The question here is quite simple: if David was indeed trusting YHWH in his square-off against Goliath, why did he take five stones.  Wouldn't one stone have been a far more dramatic gesture of faith?  Moralistic Sunday School lessons, of course have a ready, allegorical answer:  the stones are symbolic of the disciplines of the godly life (by turns, "courage, humility, prayer, effort, love of duty" (this is one I found online this morning), or "spiritual renewal, kingdom generosity, church revitalization, church planting, authentic evangelism" (this is a more elaborate (and grown up) one I found at a random on  a church website)).

But then, these "answers" just illustrate the problem. If we are indeed trusting YHWH to win the battle for us, why do we so quickly and easily point to our own efforts--our courage, our duty, our giving, our church planting-- as the deciding factor.

But here's the intriguing thing (and again, credit where credit's due: Richard Beck first put me on the scent of this trail).  In 2 Samuel 21:15-22, it describes the on-going skirmishes with the Philistines under David's rule.  Here we meet four imposingly large "descendants of Rapha in Gath":  Ishbi-Benob (Abishai, the son of Zeruiah took him out), Saph (Sibbekai, the Hushathite took him down), a "huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot"  (Jonathan son of Shimeah killed him), and "the brother of Goliath the Gittite" (Elhanan Son of Jair got him (see 1 Chron 20:5)).

Of course, if one of these four sons of Rapha was the brother of Goliath, then that would make Goliath himself the fifth son of Rapha.  There were, it turns out, five giants in Gath:  Goliath and his four goliathine brothers. 

After reading 2 Samuel 21:15-22, it doesn't take much speculation (Richard Beck points out) to figure out why David would have taken five stones; it just takes some simple math.  David took five stones because there were five giants in Gath, and he was gearing up to whip the whole lot of them.  So confident was David in YHWH's salvation, that he before the battle with Goliath even began he was already looking past it to God's victory over all the giants in Gath. 

Suddenly these five stones have become a profound reminder to us, whenever we stand in Goliath's shadow, that not only does the battle belong to the Lord; so too the entire war. 

And, at the risk of wringing hermenutical blood out of exegetical stone here, they have become a little cairn, marking out the ultimate battleground of God's victory: the cross of Christ.  Because whatever else it means, a pouch-full of pebbles in a battle against a crew of gigantic Philistine champions reminds us that when God does win the victory, it will be on his impossible terms, our best efforts be damned: a smooth stone, a small still voice, a pregnant virgin, a crucified Messiah.

In 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul reminds the Church how God saved Israel in the desert by bringing water from the Rock. "That Rock" he says, setting the precedent for all subsequent Christological readings of the Old Testament, "That Rock was Christ."  Without wanting to put words in his mouth, I would hasten to add:  "So too were the five smooth stones."