This is Week Three of Giford's Bible Study Programme.

Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

2 Samuel 21:19

Length: 2/5

Controversy: 3/5

Simple enough, surely? The slaying of Goliath is one of the most famous OT stories outside the Book of Genesis, and at first glance this verse seems to have only a tangential bearing on it. But in fact closer study shows it to be directly relevant, and opens a whole vipers' nest of problems for a plain reading of the Bible.

The trouble is that the phrase 'brother of' simply does not appear in the Hebrew text; it was inserted by the translators to avoid a contradiction with the better-known story of David killing Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:49-51. Some translations¹ omit this phrase and state outright that Elhanan killed Goliath.

The fact that these two stories both appear in a single book² strongly indicates that this is not the work of one single author - indeed, modern scholarship regards the Books of Samuel as being a complex mosaic of earlier documents (though this should not be confused with the Documentary Hypothesis, which applies only to the first few Books of the Old Testament). To make matters more complicated, 1 Chron 20:5 says that 'Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam.' (The Book(s) of Chronicles are widely regarded as being late in origin, and in Jewish scripture they are placed last in the canonical order in acknowledgement of this. 'Lahmi' is likely a mistranslation of 'Bethlehemite' - i.e. Elhanan son of Jair the Bethlehemite slew the brother of Goliath.)

So we appear to have two possibilities - either Samuel originally meant that Elhanan slew Goliath's brother and the text has inexplicably been changed over the years; or we have contradictory stories in Samuel and an attempt by the Chronicler to rewrite history in order to resolve them. In either event, there are problems with the text; the second option seems both more likely and more problematic to the integrity of the text.

Other Problems with the Goliath Story

We will return to David's story in future weeks. As a side note, Samuel is also slightly confused as to whether David slew Goliath outright with the slingstone³ or a sword⁴. Again, one possible solution to this is that there are multiple sources for this story, brought together by an editor who tried to include them all. Another partial explanation is that a later editor added the name 'Goliath' to the David story to attribute to the hero David the deeds of the unknown Elhanan.

There are other problems with this section also. Although the standard texts give Goliath a height of around 2.9m (9 feet 6), some of the earlier manuscripts give 2m (6 feet 9). For anyone wondering whether Elhanan's father was called Jair or Jaareoregim, the answer is simple: the Samuel version of the name uses 'weaver' as part of the surname in an obvious scribal error. And let's not forget the unlikelihood of a superior army offering one-on-one combat as a means of resolving their dispute. Oh, or giants existing.

One thing is for certain: the text here is a mess of errors and certainly should not be taken at face value.

Christian / Jewish Responses

There have been numerous attempt to harmonise these verses. The most usual is an insistence that the Chronicles verse justifies the alteration to the Samuel verse (acknowldegement that the text is imperfect and corrupt in Samuel presumably being the lesser of two evils). At least one source says that the contradiction in the two ways David slew Goliath is 'not important' - which again may be true, but does not change the fact that the Bible is in error about something here.

Others suggest that Elhanan is David, or that there were several giants called Goliath.