Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh Gym in Judah. They pitched some tents at the squat rack, between the Smith machine and the barbell rack.
Saul and the Israelites camped on the treadmills and drew up their battle line to show the Philistines who was the most jacked. The Israelites occupied one side and the Philistines another, with the bench press between them. A champion named Broliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp.
He was jacked, bro. He was six cubits and a span tall. He was a pillar of muscle, wrapped in a tiger, with bulges like Western Germany. He was decked out in a bronze track suit and wife beater with matching wrist and ankle weights. He carried with him a benchpress bar. His spotter went before him.
Broliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Isreal, “Bro do you even lift? Am I not a Philistine and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he can outbench me, we will become your subjects; but if I am more brolic than he you will become our subjects and serve us.” Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us get swole.” On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and ran to the mirror to remind themselves how ripped they were.
For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.
Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this bunch of bananas and pre-workout for your brothers and hurry to their camp. Take along these 10 gallons of Muscle Milk to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some love from them. No homo. They are with Saul and all the bros of Israel in the gym, lifting against the Philistines.”
Early in the morning David left his flock in the care of a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and asked his brother how they were. As he was talking with them, Broliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.
Now the Israelites had been saying, “Bro did you see that guy? He comes out to defy Israel. The king said he would totally make rich the bro who can out bench him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and some sweet gym gear and pay for his membership at the king’s personal gym.” David asked the men standing near him, “Wait will be done for the man who can outlift this disgrace from Israel? Who is this protein guzzling uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
They said, “Bro I just told you.”
When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why are you even here? And if you’re here who’s with the sheep? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to sneak in some quick gains.” “Now what have I done” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.
David said to Saul, “Let no one lose gains on account of this Philistine; your servant will defeat him.” Saul replied, “No way bro, you’ve got little chicken wing arms and you don’t even have any stubble. This monster’s been curling sheep since he was 8.”
But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been tending his gains. When a lion or bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its bitch hairs, donkey punched it, and then killed it. Your servant has made a bitch of both the lion and the bear; this meathead Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the Living God. The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the bench of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “A’ight bro, it’s your funeral. Good luck with your roadkill biceps.”
Then Saul dressed David in his own lift gear. He put gym pants on him and a headband on his head. David strapped on the lift gloves and wrist supports of Saul and tried a couple of warmup lifts because he was not used to them.
“I can’t lift in this,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.”
So he took them off. Then he took his trusty barbells, chose some weight from the nearby rack and approached the Philistine.
Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his spotter in front of him, kept coming closer to David. He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health but lacking in definition and he despised him. He said to David, “What are those, 20s? What do you do with those, chase your sheep with them? You don’t even have a spotter!” And the Philistine cursed David by his Gods. “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your sweat and blood to the birds and the wild animals!”
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with a mountain of muscle and weight but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the weight trainer of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands, and I will see you cut down and your head cut off. This very day I will give the gains of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sheer might or biceps work that the LORD saves; for the gains and the strength are his. The LORD will spot for me.”
So the Philistine immediately set to his bar, stretching his great chest, watching as David did the same. When both were ready, they each loaded weights of 10,000 shekels on either end of their bars. As they did the armies of Philistine and Israel gathered around the benches of the men. The Philistine said, “Are we to lift only this weight? Can not a man of Israel who would challenge me withstand a greater challenge?” As he spoke he added weights of 5,000 shekels to both ends of his bar. David said, “I am not afraid in my LORD’s gym.” Then he added weights of 10,000 shekels to the ends of his bar. Broliath shouted, “I do not fear a weight a man of Israel can lift!” He added 5,000 more shekels to his bar and positioned himself to lift. “Come child, let us prove who is most ripped!”
Then David and Broliath did lift their weights off the rack at the same moment, their bars straining with their muscles. As they reached their tenth rep the Philistine’s arms began to weaken. His spotter reached out his arms to aid the giant but his arms failed him and the bar came crashing down on the neck of Broliath, severing his head from his body. On hearing the death of the Philistine, David was heartened to push his weight back on its rack for his final rep. David ran and immediately picked up the head of Broliath. When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines out of Sokoh Gym to the entrance of Gath. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath. When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their lockers.
David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem; he put the Philistine’s lifting gear in his own tent. As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, the commander of the army took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine’s head.
“Whose lifting buddy are you, young man?” Saul asked him.
David said, “I am the lifting budding of the LORD.”