94. Did David (1 Samuel 17:23, 50) or Elhanan (2 Samuel 21:19) kill Goliath?

(Category: copyist error)

The discrepancy as to who killed Goliath (David or Elhanan) was caused by copyist or scribal error, which can be seen clearly.

The text of 2 Samuel 21:19 reads as follows:

"In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod."

As this stands in the Hebrew Masoretic text, this is a certainly a clear contradiction to 1 Samuel and its account of David's slaying of Goliath. However, there is a very simple and apparent reason for this contradiction, as in the parallel passage of 1 Chronicles 20:5 shows. It describes the episode as follows:

"In another battle with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod."

When the Hebrew for these sentences is examined, the reason for the contradiction becomes quite obvious and the latter 1 Chronicles is seen to be the true and correct reading. This is not simply because we know David killed Goliath, but also because of the language.

When the scribe was duplicating the earlier manuscript, it must have been blurred or damaged at this particular verse in 2 Samuel. The result was that he made two or three mistakes (see Gleason L. Archer, _Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties_, page 179):

1. The sign of the direct object in 1 Chronicals was '-_t_ which comes just before "Lahmi" in the sentence order. The scribe mistook it for b-_t_ or b-y-_t_ ("Beth") and thus got BJt hal-Lahmi ("the Bethlehemite") out of it.
2. He misread the word for "brother" ('-h , the h having a dot underneath it) as the sign of the direct object ('-_t_) right before g-l-y-_t_ ("Goliath"). Therefore he made "Goliath" the object of "killed" instead of "brother" of Goliath, as in 1 Chronicles.
3. The copyist misplaced the word for "weavers" ('-r-g-ym) so as to put it right after "Elhanan" as his family name (ben Y-'-r-y'-r--_g_-ym, ben ya'arey 'ore-_g_im, "the son of the forest of weavers", a most improbable name for anyone's father). In Chronicles the ore-_g_im ("weavers") comes straight after *men\r *("a beam of") - thus making perfectly good sense.

To conclude: the 2 Samuel passage is an entirely traceable error on the part of the copyist in the original wording, which has been preserved in 1 Chronicles 20:5. David killed Goliath.

This testifies to the honesty and openness of the scribes and translators (both Jewish and Christian). Although it would be easy to change this recognized error, this has not been done in favour of remaining true to the manuscripts. Although it leaves the passage open to shallow criticism as Shabbir Ally has shown, it is criticism which we are not afraid of. An excellent example of human copying error resulting from the degeneration of papyrus.

> “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’s mistake.

Problem: First Samuel 17 records the dramatic story of how David the son of Jesse killed the giant Goliath. However, 2 Samuel 21:19 says clearly: “Elhanan ... killed Goliath the Gittite.” But both texts cannot be right.

Solution: The 2 Samuel text is probably a scribal error in copying the manuscript and should read “Elhanan ... slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite.” This conclusion is supported by a parallel report of the story in 1 Chronicles 20:5 which has the missing highlighted phrase “Lahmi the brother of,” thus showing it was the brother of Goliath that Elhanan killed and not Goliath, whom David slew just as 1 Samuel 17 reports.