These of the sons of Gad were captains of the host: he who was least was equal to one hundred, and the greatest to one thousand.
And so these guys had practiced throwing with the sling with both hands. In case one hand gets injured or something then you use the other, keep going at it. And they... to throw the sling with the left hand was sort of a special kind of an art in those days. The guys were sort of set apart, and they developed with practice, they developed great accuracy with the sling.A sling is an interesting little weapon, actually, and you can develop quite a bit of accuracy with a sling. And of course, the stone that you can use in a sling is much larger than a stone in a slingshot. If you're using a slingshot, then you need small, little stones like marbles. But with a sling, you can actually... the best stones are about so big around. And so you can do a lot more damage with a sling than you can with a slingshot, and you can become extremely accurate. Because you get your two leather strips, and of course, you have a leather pouch in which you set your stone, about the size of your hand. And you set the stone in that leather pouch. And then one of your leather straps is longer than the other. And you take the longer one and wrap it around your hand and you hold it with your three fingers. And the other leather strap is long enough that you hold it with your two fingers like so. And then you get this thing swinging, and of course, the longer your straps, the greater distance you can actually throw these rocks in. You can throw these rocks a huge distance if you get these, get some really long straps and get a big enough rock it will get that thing swinging out there. You get the momentum going as you swing it around in the air. And then on the last swing, you take it around and you let it fly over your head, and you bring it with an overhand thrust. And you let go when you bring it over your head, with the overhand thrust; you let go of these two fingers, the finger and the thumb. You let go of the one strap, and I'll tell you, that rock shoots out of there. And you can throw them just a long distance, three hundred feet or more, these huge stones with the sling. So it is quite a weapon. And these fellows would practice not only with their right hands, they practice throwing with their left hands, too, these slings. And so it was really a very effective weapon in battle, because you could start wiping out your enemy much further than you could throw a rock. And so, of course, it was with the sling that David wiped out the giant.Now these men that came to David were skilled with the use of the sling and also with shooting arrows. And then also came to David while he was in the land of the Philistines, in verse eight, those from the tribe of Gad.