ooted eagerness of
the young champion, or the rapid whizz of the stone ere it crashed into
the thick forehead; the prostrate bulk of the dead giant prone upon the
earth, and the conqueror, slight and agile, hewing off the huge head
with Goliath's own useless sword;--all these incidents, so full of
character, so antique in manner, so weighty with lessons of the
impotence of strength that is merely material, and the power of a living
enthusiasm of faith in God, may, for our present purposes, be passed
with a mere glance. One observation may, however, be allowed. After the
victory, Saul is represented as not knowing who David was, and as
sending Abner to find out where he comes from. Abner, too, professes
entire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, "with the head
of the Philistine in his hand," he is asked, "Whose son art thou, young
man?" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable
contradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was
close intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly," and
gave him an office of trust about his person. Suppositions of
"dislocation of the narrative," the careless adoption by the compiler of
two separate legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. But it
may at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming
discrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it is
not wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in
his paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that
a man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his
mental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, an
incipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the
"captain of the host" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he could
concerning a probable formidable rival. There is no need to suppose he
was really ignorant, but only that it suited him to say that he was.

With this earliest deed of heroism the peaceful private days are closed,
and a new epoch of court favour and growing popularity begins. The
impression which the whole story leaves upon one is well summed up in a
psalm which the Septuagint adds to the Psalter. It is not found in the
Hebrew, and has no pretension to be David's work; but, as a _resume_ of
the salient points of his early life, it may fitly end our
considerations of this first epoch.

"This is the autograph psalm of David, and beyon