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David, Goliath, and the Navajo Tribal Police

David, Goliath, and the Navajo Tribal Police

Last updated on: June 9, 2026 at 8:29 pm by Dan Peterson

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David, Goliath, and the Navajo Tribal Police 2026-06-09T20:29:26-06:00 Dan Peterson

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“David Slaying Goliath,” by Peter Paul Rubens (ca. 1616)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image

A new item went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation where, as was accurately prophesied many years ago, nothing new ever goes up. The new item is “Come, Follow Me — Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps (2026): June 15-21: 1 Samuel 17-18; 24-26; 2 Samuel 5-7 — “The Battle is the Lord’s”“

As he has been generously doing now for years, Jonn Claybaugh provides a concise set of notes for students and teachers of the Come, Follow Me curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I think it obvious that — setting aside the spiritual and religious value of the Bible and thinking only about its importance in “secular” terms — at least some basic familiarity with the major stories of the Old and New Testaments is essential to being a well-educated person living in the West. The story of David and Goliath offers a case in point; even those who know little more about it than this should recognize it as a fruitful (albeit sometimes somewhat tired) metaphor for an underdog taken on a favored (often because much larger) opponent.

Many years ago, between high school and my freshman year in college, I participated in a six-week tour of Europe for recent high school graduates. It was my first visit to Europe. (I’m so grateful to my parents for that formative experience. My mother, at that point in her life, had never yet been to Europe. My father had been only once before, albeit for an extended stay — as a guest of the United States Army during the Second World War.)

In one European museum — it may have been the Louvre in Paris, but I’m not sure — some of us found ourselves standing before a painting that depicted a young boy with a sling who was confronting a gigantic armored adversary in the no-man’s land between two massed ancient armies. (It was definitely not the Rubens canvas shown above.) The people with whom I was standing were trying to figure out what was going on the painting. I said that it was clearly showing David and Goliath. “Who?” one of them asked. I was incredulous. But he really did appear to be completely unaware of the story. And yet the ancient tale of David and Goliath seems to me one of those bits of knowledge that absolutely belong to essential “cultural literacy.”

Looking out over Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Missouri (LDS.org)

And please don’t miss the twentieth installment of Becoming Brigham, which went up yesterday: “Becoming Brigham, Episode 20 — Why Are the Heavens Silent?” Have you been calling these videos to the attention of others — family, friends, neighbors, ward members, co-workers, and random passersby — who might be interested or who might benefit from them? The epis0des are available for free, you know. And they don’t require a huge investment of time.

Shiprock (Tsé Bitʼaʼí), Navajo Nation, New Mexico, is a volcanic “plug” that probably formed about twenty-seven million years ago (or perhaps a little more) at about 2500-3000 feet below the surface of the earth and then gradually “rose” (relatively speaking) because of erosion.

I am, and I freely admit that I am, a complete wimp when it comes to colds. On Sunday evening, freshly back from our expedition to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, I was ready — nay, eager — to get to work on a number of important and pressing projects. But I began sensing that I was coming down with something, and by Monday morning I was undeniably, miserably, sick.

And utterly without the slightest energy. So I napped a lot, and couldn’t get past feeling sleepy. And I surfed cable television — on the whole, confirming my conviction that television, even with the vast number of channels that are now available to me, really is a wasteland. I also began to read Anne Hillerman’s Shadow of the Solstice: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel (2025). I’ve read a few of her late father Tony’s Navajo Nation Police novels, which she is continuing, but this is the first of hers that I’ve read.

Today has been just a bit better, but I nonetheless want to whine and to beg for your sympathy. Can anybody possibly have suffered more than I am?

I’m still only about half way into Shadow of the Solstice — as I say, I’m feeling terribly tired and lethargic — but, thus far, it’s plainly about scam rehabilitation centers that have sprung up to defraud the government and to exploit the Native Americans — which makes it seem rather timely (“Minnesota Officials Ignored Warnings of Rampant Welfare Fraud as Early as 2019, Report Finds” [National Review]) and I suspect that a secondary background theme is going to concern corrupt, ecologically reckless, and harmful uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation during the Cold War. And, of course, there’s an as-yet unsolved murder that very likely has some connection to the rehab scams or (more likely) to uranium mining or to both. In any case, it’s been an entertaining read, to the extent that anything is actually able to distract me from my general malaise, and it has helped me to pass the time. I’ve enjoyed these Hillerman novels for, among other things, their ability to provide me a little bit of a second-hand glimpse into a very foreign culture that sits almost at my doorstep.

Elder Gerrit W. Gong
We first met as undergraduates at BYU.

“AI Can Further, Not Replace, Human Relationships, Elder Gong Teaches in New Video: “Platforms and technologies cannot substitute for authentic divine and human connection,” Elder Gong says in a gospel workshop video”: Although the article provides helpful introductory and summary materials here, you can, if you so choose, proceed directly to the video here: “Faith, Dignity and Human Flourishing: Hearing God’s Voice in an Age of Artificial Intelligence” The video is almost precisely an hour long. But if that sounds too daunting, it’s divided into six episodes plus some additional “insights” at the end. In other words, it can be watched in installments.

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