[obloquy]

Originally Posted by alatar

I think that Essex was using a colloquialism; Regardless, your argument (I assume) was that David had God on his side, and so even if he were smaller and weaker than Goliath, it was God that actually did battle with Goliath. My question is, did not Goliath have God (or gods) on his side as well? If we take the celestial out of it, you end up with an unarmored boy killing an armored soldier.

If you "take the celestial out of it" you end up with a meaningless myth. In the Old Testament, gods other than the Hebrew God Yahweh are false gods; powerless, and therefore only pagan symbols, not real beings. If you imagine that Goliath had any real gods backing him, you deprive the story of its relevance, since it is relevant only as an expression of the sole divinity of Yahweh. It was never a story of the weak overcoming the strong; it was always a story of Yahweh protecting his chosen people from the surrounding pagans. If you don't share that Hebrew monotheism, there's no reason to believe it ever happened, and there's no lesson to be learned from it. Whether you believe the story or not it is completely misapplied in this discussion.

To me, when someone points to this event, it is to mean that the seemingly weak overcome the strong, nothing more.

I never said Biblical misunderstanding and misapplication is uncommon.

I'm sorry; I'm at a loss here. Do you mean that it was Merry's blade, not Merry?

Yes, it was Merry's blade. The blade was imbued with the power of its anonymous maker, which was power enough to undo the protective power over the W-K. How much part Providence played in these circumstances is a pretty wide-open discussion.