characters in the story of david and goliath
Goliath Saul and the Israelites are facing the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. Twice a day for 40 days, morning and evening, Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, comes out between the lines and challenges the Israelites to send out a champion of their own to decide the outcome in single combat, but Saul is afraid. David, bringing food for his elder brothers, hears that Goliath has defied the armies of God and of the reward from Saul to the one that defeats him, and accepts the challenge. Saul reluctantly agrees and offers his armor, which David declines, taking only his staff, sling and five stones from a brook.
History of Jerusalem According to the Bible, the Israelite history of the city began in c. 1000 BCE, with King David's sack of Jerusalem, following which Jerusalem became the City of David and capital of the United Kingdom of Israel.[11] According to the Books of Samuel, the Jebusites managed to resist attempts by the Israelites to capture the city, and by the time of King David were mocking such attempts, claiming that even the blind and lame could defeat the Israelite army. Nevertheless, the masoretic text for the Books of Samuel states that David managed to capture the city by stealth, sending his forces through a "water shaft" and attacking the city from the inside. Archaeologists now view this as implausible as the Gihon spring – the only known location from which water shafts lead into the city – is now known to have been heavily defended (and hence an attack via this route would have been obvious rather than secretive). The older[citation needed] Septuagint text, however, suggests that rather than by a water shaft, David's forces defeated the Jebusites by using daggers rather than through the water tunnels coming through the Gihon spring. There was another king in Jerusalem, Araunah, during, and possibly before, David's control of the city, according to the biblical narrative,[15] who was probably the Jebusite king of Jerusalem.[16] The city, which at that point stood upon the Ophel, was, according to the biblical account, expanded to the south, and declared by David to be the capital city of the Kingdom of Israel. David also, according to the Books of Samuel, constructed an altar at the location of a threshing floor he had purchased from Araunah; a portion of biblical scholars view this as an attempt by the narrative's author to give an Israelite foundation to a pre-existing sanctuary.[17]