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David and Goliath
One passage. Several ways in.
1 Samuel 17:38-50 · KJV
Five questions on the story most children can already tell, and the details almost everyone gets wrong.
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About David and Goliath
Most children meet this story as a small boy, a giant, and one lucky stone. The chapter itself is more interesting than that, because it spends its time on what David refused rather than on what he threw. Saul dresses him in a king's armour, a brass helmet and a coat of mail, and David takes all of it off again. His reason is plain and worth reading aloud: he had not proved it. He would not walk into the valley wearing equipment he had never used.
What he took instead was what he knew. A staff, a sling, and five smooth stones out of the brook — the tools of the job he had been doing all along, out with his father's sheep. He had already fought a lion and a bear over a lamb, and he says so to Saul before the fight rather than afterwards. Whatever nerve he had, he had built it keeping sheep.
The line the chapter builds to is the one children remember least. Goliath lists his sword, his spear and his shield. David answers with a name: he comes in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. Then verse 47 says what the whole story is for — the battle is the LORD's. The stone lands two verses later, and the writer is careful to add that there was no sword in the hand of David.
Read it with a child and the question worth asking is why he would not wear the armour.
Written and checked against the King James text by Random Bible. Last reviewed September 23, 2026.
David and Goliath: common questions
Is this Bible quiz suitable for children?
Yes. The questions are written for readers around eight and up, every answer names its verse, and nothing in the quiz goes past verse 50 — the beheading in verse 51 is outside the passage.
How tall was Goliath?
Six cubits and a span, which the King James Version gives in 1 Samuel 17:4. That works out around nine feet nine inches, though the oldest Greek and Hebrew manuscripts disagree with each other about the number.
Why did David take five stones if he only needed one?
The chapter does not say. It says he chose five smooth stones out of the brook and used one. Some readers point to 2 Samuel 21, where four more giants of Gath are killed and one of them is named as Goliath's brother; others say David was simply being careful. Neither reading has more support in the text than the other.