Seeing David approach, he came forward, preceded by his shield-bearer. But perceiving only this fresh-faced stripling in his skin garment, he was filled with contempt at such an antagonist.
"Am I a dog," he cried, "that thou comest to me with staves?"
Cursing the youth by his heathen gods, he shouted: "Come to me, and I will give thy flesh to the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field."
Calmly David answered:
"Thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of
the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
"This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand; and I will smite thee, and take thy head from thee; and I will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the assembly may know there is a god in Israel."
Enraged at this insolence, the Philistine champion hastened forward to smite down this boaster with one blow.
But David ran towards him. And as he ran he took one of the stones and placed it in his sling. Whirling it about, he hurled it so shrewdly that the stone struck Goliath full in the forehead, burying itself in the skull.
Down crashed that giant bulk to earth. The shield-bearer fled aghast back to his own lines. Running up to his prostrate adversary, the youth drew the giant's sword from his sheath, and, while the multitude looked on in awed silence, he hewed the Philistine's head from his body.