ContradictionsReading order 248Bible context 2 min read
How did David kill Goliath?
Adjacent verses first say David killed the Philistine without a sword, then say he killed him after drawing the Philistine's sword.
- Textual conflict
- Interpretive tension
- The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
- Importance
- Supporting
- A supporting event, teaching, or biographical claim.
The stone and sword are each credited with killing Goliath, although a summary followed by fuller action can explain the doubled endpoint without two deaths.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
David kills the Philistine with a sling and stone
And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.
1 Samuel 17:49-50
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
Read the full chapter:1 Samuel 17
David kills the Philistine with the fallen man's sword
Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.
1 Samuel 17:51