Goliath ( ) is a legendary Philistine warrior of giant stature attested to in the Biblical narratives of 1 and 2 Samuel.
The scholarly consensus holds that, of the two accounts of Goliath in Biblical scripture, the older text depicts Goliath as being killed by Elhanan, son of Jaare-oregim, as described by the author of 2 Samuel 21:19. In 1 Samuel 17 Goliath plays a more expansive and pivotal antagonistic role within the biography of King David. According to this narrative, Goliath challenges the Israelites to send forward a champion to defeat him in single combat. David, then a young shepherd, takes up the challenge. He fells Goliath with a stone slung from a sling before beheading the fallen giant with his own sword. The narrative crediting David with the feat in 1 Samuel has become the more popular and well-known, but the account in 2 Samuel 21 crediting Elhanan is generally considered to be the older, source text that the author of 1 Samuel drew from to fold Goliath into David's own legendary origin story to serve as both foil to David and symbol of King Saul's unfitness to rule, as Saul did not take up the giant's challenge himself.
The phrase "David and Goliath" has taken on a broader, metaphorical meaning denoting an underdog situation, a contest wherein a smaller, weaker opponent faces a much bigger, stronger adversary. "used to describe a situation in which a small or weak person or organization tries to defeat another much larger or stronger opponent: The game looks like it will be a David and Goliath contest." Some modern scholars now believe that the original slayer of Goliath in the text may have been Elhanan, son of Jair, who features in 2 Samuel 21:19, in which Elhanan kills Goliath the Gittite, and that the authors of the Deuteronomistic history changed the original text to credit the victory to the more famous figure of David.
Biblical accounts
In 1 Samuel 17, Saul and the Israelites are facing the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. Twice a day for 40 days, morning and evening, Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, comes out between the lines and challenges the Israelites to send out a champion of their own to decide the outcome in single combat, but Saul is afraid. Eventually, David accepts the challenge. Saul reluctantly agrees and offers David his armour, but he declines, taking only his staff, sling, and five stones from a brook.
David and Goliath confront each other, Goliath with his armor and javelin, David with his staff and sling. "The Philistine cursed David by his gods", but David replies:
David hurls a stone from his sling and hits Goliath in the center of his forehead, Goliath falls on his face to the ground, and David cuts off his head. The Philistines flee and are pursued by the Israelites "as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron". David puts the armor of Goliath in his own tent and takes the head to Jerusalem, and Saul sends Abner to bring the boy to him. The king asks whose son he is, and David answers:
Composition of the Book of Samuel The Books of Samuel, together with the books of Joshua, Judges and Kings, make up a unified history of Israel which biblical scholars call the Deuteronomistic History. The first edition of the history was probably written at the court of Judah's King Josiah (late 7th century BCE) and a revised second edition during the exile (6th century BCE), with further revisions in the post-exilic period. Traces of this can be seen in contradictions within the Goliath story, such as that between 1 Samuel 17:54, which says that David took Goliath's head to Jerusalem, although according to 2 Samuel 5 Jerusalem at that time was still a Jebusite stronghold and was not captured until David became king.
Structure of the David and Goliath narrative The Septuagint text contains a significantly shorter version of the David and Goliath story than the Masoretic text. Critical scholars disagree over whether the Septuagint is the original narrative, arguing that the Masoretic redactors incorporated the separate additions later (the Addition Hypothesis), or whether the Masoretic is the original narrarive, arguing that the Septuagint redactors excluded redundant or superfluous elements (the Omission Hypothesis).
Septuagint (short) The Israelites and Philistines face each other; Goliath makes his challenge to single combat; David volunteers to fight Goliath; David selects five smooth stones from a creek-bed to be used in his sling; David's courage strengthens others and eventually others defeat four other giants, possibly brothers, but relatives, reference 2 Samuel 21:15–22. David defeats Goliath, the Philistines flee the battlefield.
Elements in Masoretic not in Septuagint (long) David is sent by his father to bring food to his brothers, hears the challenge, and expresses his desire to accept; Details of the account of the battle; Saul asks who David is, and he is introduced to the king through Abner.
Textual considerations Goliath's height
The Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel from the late 1st century BCE, the 1st-century CE historian Josephus, and the Septuagint all give Goliath's height as "four cubits and a span" (), whereas the Masoretic Text has "six cubits and a span" ().Ehrlich, C. S. (1992). "Goliath (Person)". In D. N. Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 2, p. 1073). New York: Doubleday Many scholars have suggested that the smaller number grew in the course of transmission (only a few have suggested the reverse, that an original larger number was reduced), possibly when a scribe's eye was drawn to the number six in line 17:7.
Goliath and Saul The underlying purpose of the story of Goliath is to show that Saul is not fit to be king (but that David is). Saul was chosen to lead the Israelites against their enemies, but when faced with Goliath, he refuses to do so; Saul is a head taller than anyone else in all Israel (1 Samuel 9:2), which implies he was over tall and the obvious challenger for Goliath, yet David is the one who eventually defeated him. Also, Saul's armour and weaponry are apparently no better than Goliath's:
David's speech in 1 Samuel 17 can be interpreted as referring to both Saul and Goliath through its animal imagery. When this imagery is considered closely, David can be seen to function as the true king who manipulates wild beasts.
Elhanan and Goliath In 2 Samuel 21, verse 19, the Hebrew Bible tells how Goliath was killed by "Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite". The fourth-century BC 1 Chronicle 20:5 explains the second Goliath by saying that Elhanan "slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath". This is thought by biblical source critics to have constructed the name Lahmi from the last portion of the word "Bethlehemite" ("beit-ha'lahmi"). Regardless, the Hebrew text at Goliath's name in 2 Samuel 21 makes no mention of the word "brother". Most scholars dismiss the later 1 Chronicles 20:5 material as "an obvious harmonization".
Goliath and the Greeks The armor described in 1 Samuel 17 appears typical of Greek armor of the sixth century BCE; narrative formulae such as the settlement of battle by single combat between champions has been thought characteristic of the Homeric epics (the Iliad) rather than of the ancient Near East. The designation of Goliath as a , "man of the in-between" (a longstanding difficulty in translating 1 Samuel 17) appears to be a borrowing from Greek "man of the ()", i.e., the space between two opposite army camps where champion combat would take place.– See also – For a brief online overview, see Other scholars argue the description is a trustworthy reflection of the armaments that a Philistine warrior would have worn in the tenth century BCE.
A story very similar to that of David and Goliath appears in the Iliad, written –710 BCE, where Nestor in order to encourage the Greeks to meet a challenge to single combat by Hector recalls when, as a young man, he fought and conquered the giant Ereuthalion.Homer, Iliad Book 7 ll.132–160. Each giant wields a distinctive weapon—an iron club in Ereuthalion's case, a massive bronze spear in Goliath's; each giant, clad in armor, comes out of the enemy's massed array to challenge all the warriors in the opposing army; in each case the seasoned warriors are afraid, and the challenge is taken up by a stripling, the youngest in his family (Nestor is the twelfth son of Neleus, David the seventh or eighth son of Jesse.) In each case an older and more experienced father figure (Nestor's own father, David's patron Saul) tells the boy that he is too young and inexperienced, but in each case the young hero receives divine aid and the giant is left sprawling on the ground. Nestor, fighting on foot, then takes the chariot of his enemy, while David, on foot, takes the sword of Goliath. The enemy army then flees, the victors pursue and slaughter them and return with their bodies, and the boy-hero is acclaimed by the people. However, some scholars question whether the biblical writers would have ever had access to the Iliad, and argue that the similarities between both tales are also present in other ancient Near Eastern accounts of duels.
Goliath's name Tell es-Safi, the biblical Gath and traditional home of Goliath, has been the subject of extensive excavations by Israel's Bar-Ilan University. The archaeologists have established that this was one of the largest of the Philistine cities until it was destroyed in the ninth century BC, an event from which it never recovered. The Tell es-Safi inscription, a potsherd discovered at the site, and reliably dated to between the tenth to mid-ninth centuries BC, is inscribed with the two names ʾLWT and WLT. While the names are not directly connected with the biblical Goliath (, GLYT), they are etymologically related and demonstrate that the name fits with the context of the late tenth- to early ninth-century BC Philistine culture. The name "Goliath" itself is non Semitic and has been linked with the Lydian king Alyattes, which also fits the Philistine context of the biblical Goliath story.Tell es-Safi/Gath weblog and Bar-Ilan University; For the editio princeps and an in-depth discussion of the inscription, see now: Maeir, A.M., Wimmer, S.J., Zukerman, A., and Demsky, A. (2008). "A Late Iron Age I/Early Iron Age II Old Canaanite Inscription from Tell eṣ-Ṣâfī/Gath, Israel: Palaeography, Dating, and Historical-Cultural Significance". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. A similar name, Uliat, is also attested in Carian inscriptions.Vernet Pons, M. (2012). "The etymology of Goliath in the light of Carian Wljat/Wliat: a new proposal". Kadmos, 51, 143–164. Aren Maeir, director of the excavation, comments: "Here we have very nice evidence [that] the name Goliath appearing in the Bible in the context of the story of David and Goliath... is not some later literary creation."
Based on the southwest Anatolian onomastic considerations, Roger D. Woodard proposed *Walwatta as a reconstruction of the form ancestral to both Hebrew Goliath and Lydian Alyattes. In this case, the original meaning of Goliath's name would be "Lion-man," thus placing him within the realm of Indo-European warrior-beast mythology.
The Babylonian Talmud explains the name "Goliath, son of Gath" through a reference to his mother's promiscuity, based on the Aramaic גַּת (gat, winepress), as everyone threshed his mother as people do to grapes in a winepress (Sotah, 42b).
The name sometimes appears in English as Goliah.For example in Shakespeare:
Later traditions Judaism