1 Chronicles 20

Today’s Passage: 1 Chronicles 20

The chapter opens in the season of war, with Joab leading the army against the Ammonites, besieging and demolishing their capital at Rabbah, after which David comes to take its crown and its plunder. From there the Chronicler turns to three short, hard-fought skirmishes with the Philistines, and in each one a towering descendant of the giant clan of Rapha, the same fearsome stock that Israel had dreaded since the days of the spies, is struck down by one of David’s men. Among them falls Lahmi the brother of Goliath, and a man of enormous size with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. Set within the larger story of the house David longed to build for God, this brief chapter shows the old terrors of the covenant people being subdued one after another, the ground cleared and the kingdom made secure under the LORD’s hand.

As you read, hold this: The giants that once terrified God’s people fall one by one, for no enemy stands too tall when the LORD fights through His servants.

1 Chronicles 20:1–3 (BSB)

¹ In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war, Joab led out the army and ravaged the land of the Ammonites. He came to Rabbah and besieged it, but David remained in Jerusalem. And Joab attacked Rabbah and demolished it.

² Then David took the crown from the head of their king. It was found to weigh a talent of gold and was set with precious stones, and it was placed on David’s head. And David took a great amount of plunder from the city.

³ David brought out the people who were there and put them to work with saws, iron picks, and axes. And he did the same to all the Ammonite cities. Then David and all his troops returned to Jerusalem.

The account moves quickly, as if to press the eye toward the one thing that matters: the crown of a hostile king lifted from his own head and set upon David’s. That golden weight had rested on the brow of a nation that once mocked and defied Israel, and now it belongs to the LORD’s anointed. There is a quiet grandeur in it, the plunder gathered, the enemy cities subdued, the troops brought home to Jerusalem in peace. The kingdom that God had promised to establish is being made firm, its borders secured, its old adversaries broken. Every stone of Rabbah demolished was a proof that the God who raised David would not leave His purposes half-finished.

1 Chronicles 20:4 (BSB)

⁴ Some time later, war broke out with the Philistines at Gezer. At that time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai, a descendant of the Rephaim, and the Philistines were subdued.

Now the Chronicler turns to the giants, and the first falls at Gezer. Sippai was a son of the Rephaim, one of that towering clan whose very name had once made Israel’s courage melt. Yet he is struck down not by the king himself but by Sibbecai the Hushathite, a man remembered chiefly for this single deed. Mark the word that closes the verse: the Philistines were subdued. The enemy that had loomed over the covenant people is here reduced to a name in a list of the defeated, and the one who felled him was simply a faithful servant sent into the fight. When the LORD is the one who gives the victory, the size of the foe means nothing against the smallest of His men.

1 Chronicles 20:5 (BSB)

⁵ Once again there was a battle with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

The second giant carries a name that stirs the memory of the whole nation, for Lahmi was the brother of Goliath, the champion whose defiance had once frozen the armies of Israel on the field. His spear, like his brother’s, had a shaft like a weaver’s beam, a weapon no ordinary man could lift, the very emblem of a foe too great to challenge. And yet he too is killed, this time by Elhanan son of Jair. The house of Goliath, that dynasty of dread, is being cut down branch by branch. What David once did to the giant in the valley, his servants now do to the giant’s kin, and the terror that gripped a generation is answered blow for blow.

1 Chronicles 20:6–8 (BSB)

⁶ And there was also a battle at Gath, where there was a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all. He too was descended from Rapha,

⁷ and when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of David’s brother Shimei killed him.

⁸ So these descendants of Rapha in Gath fell at the hands of David and his servants.

The last of the three is the strangest and the most vividly drawn, a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, an image of monstrous excess meant to make him seem all the more fearsome. Like Goliath before him, he taunts Israel, hurling defiance at the people of God, and like Goliath he is answered, this time by Jonathan, a nephew of David. The closing verse gathers the whole chapter into a single sentence: these descendants of Rapha (רָפָא) Rapha, pronounced raw-FAW. Strong's H7497, Rapha, ancestor/name of the Rephaim, a race of giants. The name gathers up the whole race of the Rephaim, the men of great stature whose descendants stood among the Philistines as living reminders of an old and lingering fear. To be “descended from Rapha” was to belong to the stock of giants, the enemy Israel had once judged unbeatable when the spies returned from the land and said the people there were too strong. Here, three times over, a son of Rapha is named only to be struck down, until the very word that once carried terror becomes a word for the defeated. The giants of Rapha fall because the God who fights for His people is greater than the largest foe, and the fear that a name can carry is undone the moment the LORD lifts His hand for those who trust Him. in Gath fell at the hands of David and his servants. The giants that once terrified are now simply the fallen, and the ones who felled them were David and the ordinary men who stood with him. No enemy proved too tall, no taunt too bold, because the battle was never truly theirs to win alone. The LORD who had raised up the king was clearing the land of its last great terrors, one giant at a time.