WHO KILLED GOLIATH?

by

Joe Deweese

“And there was again war with the Philistines at
Gob; and Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim the Beth-lehemite
slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like
a weaver’s beam” (2 Samuel 21:19).

“And there was again war with the Philistines; and
Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath
the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s
beam” (1 Chronicles 20:5).

The record of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) clearly
speaks of the defeat of the giant of Gath by the shepherd boy.
This story is used to emphasize faith and faithfulness to the
young from their earliest ages. However, some have alleged a
discrepancy between the account in 1 Samuel and two other
passages (2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5). According to
2 Samuel 21:19, it appears that Elhanan killed Goliah; yet 1
Chronicles 20:5 states that Elhanan killed Lahmi the
brother of Goliath. The question, then, is who did
Elhanan kill?

First, we must recognize who Elhanan was not.
According to 1 Chronicles 20:5, Elhanan was the son of Jair.
This was not the same man as Elhanan the Bethlehemite, son of
Dodo (2 Samuel 23:24; Keil and Delitzsch, 1996, 2:681).
Furthermore, it appears that Jair and Jaareoregim actually are
the same person (Barnes, 1998, 2:120). Barnes, as well as the
editors of The Pulpit Commentary, noted that the
difficulty may have begun when oregim, the Hebrew word
translated “weaver” in this passage, ended up being placed on
the wrong line by a copyist—something that has been known to
happen in several instances (see Spence and Exell, 1978,
4:514). Therefore, Jair, combined with oregim, became
Jaare-oregim in order to make it fit with proper Hebrew
grammar (Spence and Exell, 4:514).

Second, the phrase “Lahmi the brother of” is absent in 2
Samuel 21:19. The King James Version inserts the phrase “the
brother of” between “Bethlehemite” and “ Goliath.”
Furthermore, in the Hebrew, eth Lachmi (a combination
of “Lahmi” and the term “brother”) appears to have been
changed into beith hallachmi (Beth- lehemite). With
this simple correction, the two texts would be in clear
agreement (Clarke, n.d., p. 369). In other words, “the brother
of” and the name “Lahmi” likely were combined by a copyist to
form what is translated in English as “Beth-lehemite” in 2
Samuel 21:19. This, however, caused the difficulty when the
passage was paralleled with 1 Chronicles 20:5.

In his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties,
Gleason Archer used the same scenario mentioned above to
explain this difficulty, and then summed up the situation by
noting: “In other words, the 2 Samuel 21 passage is a
perfectly traceable corruption of the original wording, which
fortunately has been correctly preserved in 1 Chronicles 20:5”
(1982, p. 179). A fair, in-depth examination of the alleged
difficulty shows that there actually is no contradiction at
all, but simply a copyist’ss mistake.

REFERENCES

Archer, Gleason L. (1982), Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).

Barnes, Albert (1998 reprint), Barnes’s Notes: Exodus to
Esther (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).

Clarke, Adam (no date), Commentary and Critical Notes on
the Old Testament: Joshua to Esther (New York, NY:
Abingdon).

Keil, C.F., and F. Delitzsch (1996), Commentary on the
Old Testament: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson).

Spence, H.D.M., and Joseph S. Exell, Eds. (1978), The
Pulpit Commentary: Ruth, I & II Samuel (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans).

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