3. And who declared unto my Lord! He, the Lord, He heard all things.
4. He sent His angel, and He took me from my father’s sheep; He anointed me in mercy with His unction.
5. Great and goodly are my brethren: but with them the Lord was not well pleased.
6. I went to meet the stranger: and he cursed me by all his idols.
7. But I smote off his head with his own drawn sword: and I blotted out the reproach of Israel.
This simple and beautiful psalm does not exist in Hebrew, but is found in Greek, in some psalters of the Septuagint version, headed “A Psalm of David when he had slain Goliath.” S. Athanasius mentions it with praise, in his address to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms, and in the Synopsis of Holy Scripture. It was versified in Greek in A. D. 360, by Apollinarius Alexandrinus.[656]
The subjoined shield of David is given in a Hebrew book on the properties and medicaments of things. It is said to be a certain protection against fire. A cake of bread must be made, and on it must be impressed the seal or shield of David, having in the corner the word ט״יר, and in the middle אנ״לא (Thou art mighty to everlasting, O Jehovah); and it must be cast aside into the fire with the words of Psalm cvi. 30, “Then stood up Phinees and prayed; and so the plague ceased;” and also Exod. xii. 27, “It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our homes.”[657]