And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock:
David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep. The purport of the reply was that, though a raw and undisciplined youth, he was not untried in deeds of valour, and agility, and strength.
There came a lion, and a bear. The lion which anciently infested Palestine and the whole of Western Asia (Jeremiah 49:19; Zechariah 11:3) is thought to have been the Persian variety, which is described by Olivier ('Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines') as neither so fierce nor so powerful as its African congener, and as prone to capture its prey rather by cunning than by violence. On laying hold of a sheep, he makes off with it with the utmost expedition, but often abandons it to save himself on the approach of a man, though it is known in many instances to have exerted itself vigorously to retain it. The bear must have been the Syrian bear, which is believed to be a distinct species, or perhaps a variety of the brown bear. Bears, though inhabiting generally the cold latitudes of the north, are found also in the more genial climes of the south. Dr. Shaw mentions them in Barbary, and Thevenot saw them in the desert south of Palestine.
And took a lamb out of the flock х zeh (H2088), "this", instead of seh (H7716), "lamb or sheep". This erroneous reading has disfigured the Hebrew text in most of the editions of the Hebrew Bible that have been printed subsequently to the second edition of Bomberg, in 1525. It is found in no Hebrew manuscript, nor in any previous printed edition; and it must have originated with the compositor in Bomberg's printing-office, who confounded the two words by reason of the similarity of the sound of the two sibilant letters. It deprives the passage of all meaning, and it has accordingly been corrected in the various translations; but, with the exception of a few editions in which the correct reading is given, it continues still to keep its place in the recent beautiful and commodious German Polyglot Bible (Black's 'Exegetical Study of the Original Scriptures).] Those youthful feats of David seem to have been performed with no weapon more effective than the rude staves usually carried in the hand of an Eastern shepherd, particularly the iron-headed club (Psalms 23:4), which is used for repelling the attacks of wolves and other ravenous animals (Amos 3:12). 'I have known,' says Dr. Wilson ('Lands of the Bible,' 1:, p. 321), 'a shepherd in India encounter with it a tiger which he found mangling one of his goats. It is ranch in use among the Fellahin of Wady Musa, and the Arabs in general.'