1 Samuel 17:16

(16) And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.

Surely the Lord overruled the desire of this giant, and somehow or other overawed his mind, to restrain him from attacking Israel: otherwise he, and his army at his heels, would not have rested satisfied with this parade of mere threats, for forty days together. Reader! remark this, as you go on in your spiritual warfare. Have you never found the enemy advancing, threatening, and as the Psalmist saith, being ready to swallow you up: and yet deliverance hath come, unexpected, and unthought of? Psalms 56:1.