A few weeks ago, as my family was getting ready for supper in our Ramat Bet Shemesh home, we heard a very loud boom. The house shook. There had been no warning, no siren. We ran to our safe room and waited.
It turned out that Hezbollah had landed a missile in the Emek HaElah Satellite Station — an array of large satellite dishes just down the valley from where David fought Goliath. Few people were hurt, many were frightened, and Hezbollah proudly announced they had struck a “satellite station belonging to the communications and cyber defense corps of the Israeli enemy army, in the Elah Valley.”
As it happens, the station has little visible security and can be looked up on Google Maps. Not exactly a precision intelligence triumph.
But I am not interested in mocking Hezbollah’s aim. I am interested in where the missile landed.
The Elah Valley. Of all the places in Israel, of all the valleys and hilltops and military installations across this country — the missile landed there. I won’t claim this was G-d’s intention. But it does sound like a gentle reminder.
At the time of the attack, Israeli and American warplanes had been flying sorties over Iran together for weeks. Many people — here in Israel and around the world — were allowing themselves to feel something close to invincibility. When Israel and America and the nice Arabs defeat Iran, the thinking goes, peace and prosperity will follow for everyone. It almost feels as though David and Goliath have joined forces to defeat the neighborhood bully.
Then a missile lands in the Elah Valley, and I remember what that valley actually teaches.
Our security does not come primarily from advanced arms and alliances. Even with all our fighter jets and tanks, it takes only a few political realignments for Israel to find itself back in a new Elah Valley — holding a flimsy slingshot against the combined might of its enemies. That is not pessimism. That is three thousand years of Jewish history.
David knew this better than anyone. His words to Goliath before the fight are some of the most audacious in all of Scripture:
David was no fool. He knew Goliath was stronger. A sword and spear beat a slingshot by any reasonable military calculation. But David extended the calculation one step further. If Goliath’s power exceeded David’s, then G-d’s power exceeded Goliath’s. Simple arithmetic — with infinite consequences. As David himself wrote in Psalms: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we invoke the name of our G-d.” (Psalms 20:8)
This is not a call to passivity. David did not stand in the valley and pray Goliath to death. He picked up a stone from the Elah Stream and threw it. He did the one act of war he knew how to do, and he trusted G-d with the rest. That combination — human effort offered in humility, with genuine faith in the One who controls outcomes — is the formula that has sustained the Jewish people through every empire that tried to destroy them.
We must invest in the best chariots and horses. Israel should maintain its military edge, its alliances, its technological superiority. None of that is in question. But when the missiles land in the valley where David stood, the message is worth hearing: salvation does not ultimately come from the strength of our coalition. It comes from turning to G-d in sincerity.
You who stand with Israel understand this perhaps better than most. You have read these verses. You know this valley. When you pray for Israel, you are participating in something far older and more powerful than geopolitics.
May this generation, like David’s, see great miracles.
