(44) Come to me.--In similar terms Hector addresses Ajax--

"And thou imperious! if thy madness wait

The lance of Hector, thou shalt meet thy fate.

That giant corse, extended on the shore.

Shall largely feed the fowls with fat and gore."--

Iliad, xiii. 1053.

17:40-47 The security and presumption of fools destroy them. Nothing can excel the humility, faith, and piety which appear in David's words. He expressed his assured expectation of success; he gloried in his mean appearance and arms, that the victory might be ascribed to the Lord alone.And the Philistine said to David, come to me,.... He seems to have stood still, disdaining: to take another step towards such a pitiful combatant, and therefore bids him come up to him, and he would soon dispatch him; unless he said this, because David was light and nimble, and he heavy and unwieldy because of his bigness, and the burden of armour on him, and therefore could not make such haste as he wished to destroy his adversary, of which he made no doubt:

and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field; the wild beasts he means; though Jarchi thinks he spoke improperly, since it is not the way of the beasts of the field, as sheep, oxen, &c. to devour a man, or even to eat any flesh; and therefore he observes, when David comes, he uses another word, which signifies the wild beasts of the earth, and so we render it, 1 Samuel 17:46; but Kimchi shows that even these are comprehended in the word here used, see Isaiah 18:6.