We learned the story of David and Goliath when we were kids. It took place at a time of conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines. The Philistines had a giant named Goliath who taunted the Israelites to a one on one battle. No-one in the Israelite army took up the challenge until David, a young shepherd boy, did.

David found five smooth pebbles and with a slingshot downed Goliath with a rock to the head. This inspired the Israelites who realized they could defeat the Philistines against all odds. It showed that even the smallest and seemingly weakest can accomplish great things; that we can be victorious even in the face of insurmountable obstacles.

The Philistines were ancient Israel’s enemies whose home base was on the Mediterranean coast. In 135 CE the Romans changed the name of ancient Judaea which they conquered to “Syria Palaestina” or Palestinian Syria in an attempt to obliterate the connection between the Jews and their ancestral homeland.  Palaestina referred to the Philistines, the Hebrew word for their land is the similarly sounding “Pleshet”.

In 1948, the artist Paul Konrad Hoenich drew upon the story of David and Goliath to create a series of ten woodcuttings that parallel David with the army of the newly created State of Israel as it was fighting seven invading Arab armies during the War of Independence. Hoenich was born in Austria, studied art in Vienna, Florence and Paris, and moved to Palestine in 1935.

In this piece, Hoenich shows David loading his sling with a stone, and the artillery of the newly formed Israel Defense Force. 

One of the cannons used by Israel in the War of Independence was the Davidka (named after David Leibowitch who was primarily responsible for its creation). The Davidka was wildly inaccurate but created large, loud explosions that scared enemy soldiers and demoralized them as they felt they were being attacked by weapons more powerful than Israel actually possessed.

Like the biblical David, the underdog Israel prevailed in the War of Independence, in part due to a weapon named after a David.  

The slingshot that David used to defeat Goliath is the inspiration for the name of Israel’s current “David’s Sling” missile defense system. It is designed to intercept enemy planes, drones, ballistic missiles and long range rockets. The system was used extensively during the Iranian attacks on Israel in 2024 and 2025.

King David was a man of war. He was followed by his son King Solomon who was known to be wise and also a man of peace (his Hebrew name Shlomo is a derivation of the word shalom-peace). Solomon’s reign was the golden age for the nation of Israel, which lived in peace through the entirety of his kingship.

Perhaps David, Goliath and Solomon aren’t only bible stories, but share an important message for us today- that in one generation we can move from war to peace, that a wise leader can make that transition happen, and that another golden age for Israel could be the result.

For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove

Treasure Trove is a program of The Herzl Project.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)