Mopping Up the Giants Text: 1 Chronicles 20:4-8
Introduction: The Long Defeat of the Serpent's Seed
The book of Chronicles is, in many ways, a book about true worship. It retells the history of Israel, from Adam down to the return from exile, with a laser focus on the Davidic throne and the Levitical priesthood. The goal of all history, the Chronicler tells us, is the establishment of God's kingdom where God is rightly worshiped. But we must never forget that true worship is established in a world that hates the true God. Worship is warfare. From the moment God declared war in the garden between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, history has been a battlefield. And on every battlefield, there are skirmishes, decisive victories, and the necessary work of mopping up the remaining pockets of resistance.
Our modern sensibilities, softened and feminized as they are, tend to recoil from passages like this one. We are embarrassed by the violence. We are confused by the giants. We treat them as though they were oddities, curiosities in the biblical museum that are best left behind a velvet rope. But the Bible does not treat them this way. The Bible presents the giants as a genuine and terrifying threat. They are the seed of the serpent, a rival claim to the land, a physical embodiment of arrogant rebellion against the living God. They are not just big; they are a theological statement. Their presence in the land is an affront to the promises of God. Therefore, their destruction is a necessary part of establishing the kingdom.
This short passage is more than just an appendix to David's wars. It is a final report from the front lines, showing us the faithfulness of God through his covenant king and, by extension, through his covenant people. David's great victory over Goliath was the decisive blow, the turning of the tide. But the war was not over. Here we see the "end game." These are the final skirmishes, the cleaning out of the last enemy strongholds. And in this, we are given a picture of our own task. Christ, the greater David, has won the decisive victory at the cross and resurrection. He crushed the serpent's head. But he has left to us, his servants, the glorious task of mopping up. He allows us to participate in his victory. This passage, then, is a lesson in covenantal warfare and a great encouragement for our own battles against the giants of unbelief in our day.
The Text
Now it happened afterwards, that war broke out at Gezer with the Philistines; then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Sippai, one among those born of the giants, and they were subdued. And there was war with the Philistines again, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. Then there was war at Gath again, and there was a man of great stature who had twenty-four fingers and toes, six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot; and he also had been born to the giants. And he reproached Israel, so Jonathan the son of Shimea, David’s brother, struck him down. These were born to the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.
(1 Chronicles 20:4-8 LSB)
Corporate Covenantal Victory (v. 4)
The first skirmish is recorded in verse 4:
"Now it happened afterwards, that war broke out at Gezer with the Philistines; then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Sippai, one among those born of the giants, and they were subdued." (1 Chronicles 20:4)
The battle takes place at Gezer, a key strategic city. The enemy is specified as the Philistines, the perennial thorn in Israel's side. But the real target is one of the "sons of the giant," a man named Sippai, also known as Saph in the parallel account in 2 Samuel 21. The hero of this encounter is not David, but one of his mighty men, Sibbecai the Hushathite. This is a crucial point. The victory over the giants is not a one-man show. It is a corporate effort. David, the covenant head, sets the pattern with Goliath, and his men, operating under his authority and in his spirit, carry on the work.
This is how the covenant works. The head wins the foundational victory, and the body extends that victory. Christ is our federal head. He alone defeated sin, death, and the devil. But He has commissioned us, His body, the Church, to carry that victory into every corner of the world. We are called to disciple the nations, to tear down strongholds, to subdue the remaining giants of secularism, paganism, and every other "-ism" that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. The victory is His, but the fighting is ours. And because the victory is His, our fighting is never in vain.
Notice the result: "and they were subdued." The fall of the champion leads to the submission of the people. This is the logic of representative warfare that we first see with Goliath. When the head falls, the body is demoralized. Our task in the Great Commission is precisely this: to strike at the head, to challenge the foundational lies of a rebellious culture with the truth of the gospel. When the intellectual and spiritual giants of a system are toppled, the system itself begins to crumble.
The Brother of the Original Giant (v. 5)
The second battle highlights the connection to David's most famous exploit.
"And there was war with the Philistines again, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam." (1 Chronicles 20:5 LSB)
Here another of David's men, Elhanan, confronts a giant named Lahmi. The text is explicit: he is the brother of Goliath the Gittite. This is not a coincidence. The seed of the serpent continues. The family resemblance is not just genetic; it is spiritual. The description of his spear, "like a weaver's beam," is the exact same description given to Goliath's spear in 1 Samuel 17. This is Goliath 2.0. The enemies of God are not original. They recycle the same old blasphemies, the same old threats, the same old intimidating hardware.
Some skeptics, who love to poke holes in the Scripture wherever they can, point to the parallel account in 2 Samuel 21:19, which seems to say that Elhanan killed Goliath himself. But the Chronicler, writing later under the inspiration of the Spirit, clarifies the matter for us. The text in Samuel has a likely copyist error, but here it is made plain: it was Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. The Word of God is self-correcting and entirely coherent. But the theological point remains. The spirit of Goliath, the spirit of arrogant defiance against the armies of the living God, had to be defeated again and again. And it was defeated, not by David this time, but by a man who had learned from David that giants can fall.
Faith is reproducible. Courage is contagious. David's faith created a culture of giant-killers. This is what faithful leadership does. A faithful pastor, a faithful father, a faithful statesman does not just win his own battles; he trains up the next generation to win theirs.
Unnatural Rebellion, Covenantal Justice (v. 6-7)
The third giant is perhaps the most striking.
"Then there was war at Gath again, and there was a man of great stature who had twenty-four fingers and toes, six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot; and he also had been born to the giants. And he reproached Israel, so Jonathan the son of Shimea, David’s brother, struck him down." (1 Chronicles 20:6-7 LSB)
This unnamed giant from Gath is marked by two things: his taunts and his anatomy. First, "he reproached Israel." Like Goliath before him, his warfare was verbal before it was physical. He defied the covenant people. To reproach Israel is to reproach Israel's God. This is the essence of blasphemy. He is a walking, talking embodiment of the serpent's hiss from the garden.
Second, he is physically abnormal. He has six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. This is not just a random biological quirk. In Scripture, physical deformity is often a picture of spiritual and moral deformity. It is a sign of being outside the created order, a departure from the "very good" that God established. The number six in scripture is the number of man, the number of that which falls short of God's perfect seven. This man is a six-fingered, six-toed man. He is man in his rebellion, man in his arrogant fallenness, squared. His body is a visible sermon on his spiritual state: unnatural, disordered, and opposed to the perfection of God's creation.
And who brings him down? Jonathan, the son of David's brother Shimea. This is David's nephew. The giant-killing mantle is being passed to the next generation of the covenant family. The family of the king is leading the charge. This is a family business. The fight for the kingdom is not something we delegate to professionals. It is the personal responsibility of every member of the household of faith.
The Summary of Victory (v. 8)
The passage concludes with a summary statement that ties it all together.
"These were born to the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants." (1 Chronicles 20:8 LSB)
This is the capstone. It identifies the origin of these enemies: they were the offspring of the giant in Gath. This was a cursed line, a nest of serpents that had to be cleaned out. And it identifies the agents of their demise: "they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants."
Notice the beautiful interplay here. It was David, and it was his servants. The victory is credited both to the king and to his men. This is federal theology in a nutshell. The victory belongs to the head, but it is accomplished through the hands of the body. You cannot separate them. Without David's initial victory and ongoing leadership, his servants would have fled. Without the faithful hands of his servants, the victory would not have been extended throughout the land. It is both/and.
So it is with us. Every victory we have over sin, every soul won for the kingdom, every stronghold of unbelief that is pulled down, falls "by the hand of Jesus and by the hand of his servants." He gets all the glory, for He is the king. And we get all the joy, for He invites us to be his instruments, his hands and feet in the world.
Conclusion: Too Big to Miss
So what do we do with this bloody little snapshot from the history of Israel's wars? We are to see it as a profound encouragement. The world is full of giants. The challenges facing the church can seem immense, insurmountable. We face the giants of a godless state, a decadent culture, a compromised academy, and a timid church. They reproach us. They mock our God. They are intimidating.
But this passage reminds us of three crucial truths. First, our giants are a defeated foe. Christ, our David, has already landed the fatal blow. The head of the serpent is crushed. We are not fighting for victory; we are fighting from victory. We are on mopping up duty.
Second, this mopping up is our job. It is not a task for a spiritual special forces team. It is the duty of every servant of the king. God has given us weapons for this warfare, and they are not carnal. They are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. They are the Word, the water, the bread, and the wine. They are prayer and praise and faithful obedience in our ordinary lives.
And third, the size of our opposition is part of the point. God grows his people by pitting them against giants. He wants us to learn the same lesson Sibbecai, Elhanan, and Jonathan learned. We are not to look at the giants and whine about how big they are, concluding they are too big to fight. We are to look at them through the eyes of faith and rejoice that they are too big to miss.
The seed of the serpent still rears its ugly, six-fingered head. But the seed of the woman has come. He has conquered, and He is conquering. And He has promised that the gates of Hell, for all their intimidating size, will not prevail against His church. Therefore, let us take up our slings and stones, in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and get on with the business of giant-killing.