Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons: and the man was an old man in the days of Saul, stricken [in years] among men.
"Ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand"  (1 Samuel 17:18). "The Hebrew word for `thousand' here is [~'eleph], which may also refer to some division of the army."[12] In this fact may lie the solution to the problem of many of the numbers given in O.T. accounts which appear in the eyes of some scholars to be `exaggerated,' or `unrealistic.'