Goliath

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Goliath is the Philistine giant of the Book of Samuel, and his name has outlived almost every other enemy in the Bible. Today the phrase "David and Goliath" turns up in headlines about boxing, business, politics, and even a tiny spider catching larger prey.

  The man behind the phrase is far less settled than the phrase itself. The oldest surviving manuscripts disagree about how tall he stood. A different verse in the Bible gives credit for killing him to someone else entirely. His very name may not have begun as Hebrew.

  So who wrote this story down, and why did the authors need a giant? Was the duel a memory of real Philistine warfare, or a tale borrowed from Greek poetry? And how did one fallen warrior become a rabbi's villain, a Quranic oppressor, and a muscle-bound film hero?

  282542

• 2. The Valley of Elah

  ›

  Twice a day for 40 days, morning and evening, Goliath strode out between the Philistine and Israelite lines in the Valley of Elah. He was the champion of the Philistines, and his demand was simple. Let Israel send one man to fight him, and the result would settle the war.

  King Saul and his army were afraid. David, a young shepherd, accepted the challenge. Saul reluctantly agreed and offered his own armour, but David declined it. He took his staff, his sling, and five stones gathered from a brook.

  Goliath came armed with armour and a javelin. The text says he cursed David by his gods. David answered that the Lord would hand the giant over, that the dead Philistines would feed the birds and wild beasts, and that God saves "not with sword and spear".

  The fight itself is brief. David slung a stone that struck Goliath in the center of his forehead, and the giant fell on his face. David then cut off his head. The Philistines ran, and the Israelites chased them "as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron".

  David placed Goliath's armour in his own tent and took the head to Jerusalem. Saul, the king who had been afraid for 40 days, then sent Abner to bring the boy to him and asked whose son he was. David replied: "I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite."

  324

• 3. A Test for Saul

  ›

  In 1 Samuel 9:2, Saul is described as a head taller than anyone else in Israel. That detail implies a man of more than 6.2 ft, and so the obvious person to answer Goliath's call. Yet he never steps forward, and a shepherd boy does.

  Many scholars read this as the whole point of the chapter. Saul had been chosen to lead Israel against its enemies, and the giant exposes him as unfit to be king. The story also shows that David is fit. Saul's armour and weapons were apparently no better than Goliath's, so the giant was not simply out of reach.

  The animals in the story carry the argument. David says that when a lion or a bear attacked his father's sheep, he fought it and killed it. One reading sets this against Saul, who would be cowering while the flock, meaning Israel, was under threat.

  On this view, David's speech points at both Saul and Goliath through its beast imagery. It presents David as the true king, the one who can master wild animals. The Bible, though, contains a second verse about who killed the giant.

  3891

• 4. The Other Slayer

  ›

  The Hebrew Bible says in 2 Samuel 21, verse 19, that Goliath the Gittite was killed by "Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite". The verse contains no mention of David at all. Some modern scholars believe Elhanan, son of Jair, was the original slayer in the tradition.

  In this theory, the authors of the Deuteronomistic history changed the older record. They moved the victory to David, the more famous figure. If so, the best-known duel in the Bible may have started as someone else's achievement.

  The book of 1 Chronicles 20:5 offers a tidier version. It says Elhanan killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. Source critics think the name Lahmi was built from the last part of the word "Bethlehemite", which in Hebrew is "beit-ha'lahmi".

  The King James Bible adopted this reading into 2 Samuel 21:18-19. But the Hebrew text of Samuel never uses the word "brother" there. Most scholars dismiss the Chronicles wording as "an obvious harmonization".

  To see how the credit could have moved, scholars look at how and when the books of Samuel were put together.

  324447

• 5. Layers of a Text

  ›

  The books of Samuel belong to a larger work. Together with Joshua, Judges, and Kings, they form one history of Israel that biblical scholars call the Deuteronomistic History. Its first edition was probably written at the court of King Josiah of Judah in the late 7th century BCE.

  A revised edition followed during the exile in the 6th century BCE, with further changes after the exile. The Goliath chapter shows the seams. According to 1 Samuel 17:54, David took the head to Jerusalem. Yet 2 Samuel 5 says Jerusalem was still a Jebusite stronghold, captured only after David became king.

  Scholars therefore separate a base narrative from later additions, probably made after the exile. The original story has the armies facing off, Goliath's challenge, David volunteering, and five smooth stones taken from a creek-bed. David wins, and the Philistines flee. In this version David's courage also inspires others, who go on to defeat four other giants, possibly Goliath's relatives, in 2 Samuel 21:15-22.

  The added material includes David being sent by his father with food for his brothers, where he hears the challenge. It also includes the detailed account of the battle, and the scene in which Abner introduces David to Saul.

  Even the giant's size changed in transmission. The Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel, from the late 1st century BCE, the 1st-century CE historian Josephus, and the major Septuagint manuscripts all give his height as "four cubits and a span", about 6 ft 9 in. The Masoretic Text says "six cubits and a span", about 9 ft 9 in.

  Most scholars think the larger figure crept in during copying, perhaps when a scribe's eye was drawn to the number six in line 17:7. A few suggest the reverse. Either way, the text also contains echoes from far outside Israel.

  44514545

• 6. Greek or Philistine

  ›

  The armour described in 1 Samuel 17 looks like typical Greek armour of the sixth century BCE. Settling a war through single combat between two champions has also been seen as a feature of the Homeric epics rather than of the ancient Near East. Even the odd Hebrew label for Goliath, "man of the in-between", appears to borrow the Greek metaikhmion, the space between two armies where champions fought.

  The Iliad, written around 760-710 BCE, contains a strikingly close story. The old warrior Nestor, urging the Greeks to answer a challenge from Hector, recalls how as a young man he beat the giant Ereuthalion. Each giant carries a distinctive weapon, an iron club for Ereuthalion and a massive bronze spear for Goliath.

  In both tales the seasoned fighters are afraid, and the challenge is taken up by the youngest of the family. Nestor is the twelfth son of Neleus, and David is the seventh or eighth son of Jesse. An older father figure, Nestor's own father or David's patron Saul, says the boy is too young. Divine help arrives, and the giant is left sprawling.

  Nestor, on foot, takes his enemy's chariot, while David takes Goliath's sword. The enemy army then flees and is slaughtered. Some scholars doubt the biblical writers could ever have read the Iliad, and point to similar duels in other ancient Near Eastern accounts. Others argue the armour is a trustworthy picture of a Philistine warrior of the tenth century BCE.

  Digging has added evidence. Tell es-Safi, the biblical Gath and the traditional home of Goliath, has been excavated extensively by Israel's Bar-Ilan University. The archaeologists found that it was one of the largest Philistine cities until it was destroyed in the ninth century BC, and it never recovered.

  At the site they found a potsherd inscribed with the names ʾLWT and WLT. It is reliably dated between the tenth and the mid-ninth century BC. These are not the biblical Goliath, written GLYT, but they are etymologically related. Aren Maeir, who directs the dig, commented: "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."

  The name itself is non-Semitic and has been linked with the Lydian king Alyattes. A similar name, Uliat, appears in Carian inscriptions. Roger D. Woodard proposed *Walwatta as the ancestor of both the Hebrew and Lydian forms. If he is right, Goliath's name once meant "Lion-man", placing him in the Indo-European world of warrior-beast myth.

  1113121417

• 7. Rabbis, Tombs, and Jalut

  ›

  The Babylonian Talmud, in Sotah 42b, makes Goliath a son of Orpah, the sister-in-law of Ruth. Ruth was David's great-grandmother, through Obed and Jesse. Ruth Rabbah goes further and calls the two women full sisters, which makes the giant and David cousins.

  Orpah, the rabbis said, pretended to accompany Ruth but turned back after forty paces and lived a dissolute life. The Jerusalem Talmud offers a stranger origin, saying Goliath was born by polyspermy and had about one hundred fathers. The Babylonian Talmud also explains the name "Goliath, son of Gath" with an Aramaic word, gat, meaning winepress. His mother, it says, was threshed by everyone as grapes are in a press.

  The Talmud stresses his ungodliness. He boasted that he had captured the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to the temple of Dagon. He issued his challenges at morning and evening to disturb the Israelites at prayer.

  His armour weighed 60 tons according to rabbi Hanina and 120 according to rabbi Abba bar Kahana. His sword, later David's, had marvelous powers. When he died, his heart was found to carry an image of Dagon, who shared his shameful downfall.

  Pseudo-Philo, believed to have been composed between 135 BCE and 70 CE, tells the duel differently. David picks up seven stones and writes on them his father's name, his own, and the name of God, one per stone. He tells Goliath: "Hear this word before you die: were not the two women from whom you and I were born, sisters? And your mother was Orpah and my mother Ruth..."

  After the stone strikes, David runs to the dying giant. Goliath says: "Hurry and kill me and rejoice." David replies: "Before you die, open your eyes and see your slayer." Goliath sees an angel and says the angel, not David, has killed him. The angel then changes David's appearance so no one recognizes him, which is why Saul asks who he is.

  Near Jericho, a Jewish family tomb of the 1st century CE held several ossuaries inscribed "Goliath". One reads "Yeho'ezer son of El'azar Goliath", another "Salome wife of Yeho'ezer Goliath", and a third "Shelamzion mother of Yo'ezer Goliath". Epigraphists judge that this was a nickname, first given to one man for his unusual height and later passed down to his descendants.

  In Islam, Goliath appears in chapter 2 of the Quran, verses 247-252, under the Arabic name Jalut. The account is concise but parallels the Hebrew Bible. Muslim scholars have most commonly traced his origins to the Amalekites. Early tradition made him a collective name for the oppressors of the Israelites before David.

  Muslim tradition also sees the fight with Goliath as a prefiguration of Muhammad's battle of Badr. In that reading, Goliath stands beside the enemies Muhammad faced.

  1920212223

• 8. Underdogs and Muscle Men

  ›

  Theology professor Leonard Greenspoon studied how journalists use this story in his essay "David vs. Goliath in the Sports Pages". He found that "most writers use the story for its underdog overtones (the little guy wins)". The contrast that mattered most to the biblical authors appears far less often in newsprint. For them, David's win showed the power of his God, and Goliath's defeat showed the weakness of Philistine gods.

  The secular meaning is now everywhere. A contest between a smaller, weaker opponent and a bigger, stronger one gets the label, and the underdog may win in a surprising way. The Guardian headlined a boxing match between Haye and Nikolai Valuev as a "David and Goliath" fight. The New York Times used the phrase for a battle over instant messages, The Economist for dissent in Cuba, and the Los Angeles Times for a cable story on Skid Row. The dispute between the Philippines and China over the Spratly Islands has been compared to it too.

  The word "Goliath" alone can also mean a very tall person. Basketball player Wilt Chamberlain was nicknamed "Goliath", which he disliked.

  On screen, Ted Cassidy played Goliath in the 1978 series Greatest Heroes of the Bible. In the 1985 Paramount film King David, Luigi Montefiori played him in a flashback, and a Philistine king says: "Goliath has challenged the Israelites six times and no one has responded." David meets the challenge on the seventh.

  Toho and Tsuburaya Productions released Daigoro vs. Goliath in 1972, which follows the story closely but recasts the main characters as kaiju. In 1975, Kaveret recorded a humorous version in which Goliath is the "Demon from Ashkelon" and David meets him by chance rather than on a battlefield.

  In 2005, Lightstone Studios released a direct-to-DVD musical, first titled "One Smooth Stone" and later "David and Goliath", with former NBA player Thurl Bailey as Goliath. In 2009, NBC aired Kings, a loose retelling of King David set in a kingdom resembling the present-day United States. There, Goliath is a tank, and David destroys it with a shoulder-fired rocket launcher.

  The oddest afterlife came from Italy in the early 1960s. After the 1958 film Hercules became a blockbuster, Joseph E. Levine claimed sole right to the name of Hercules. The 1959 Steve Reeves film Terrore dei Barbari was therefore retitled Goliath and the Barbarians in the United States. Its box-office success inspired four more films about a strongman hero named Goliath, though the films were not really related to each other.

  Those four were Goliath Against the Giants in 1960, with Brad Harris, then Goliath and the Rebel Slave in 1963, with Gordon Scott. Goliath and the Masked Rider, with Alan Steel, and Goliath at the Conquest of Baghdad, with Peter Lupus, followed in 1964. The 1960 Orson Welles film David and Goliath was not part of this series, since it simply adapted the biblical story.

  American distributors also pasted the name onto other Italian muscle-man films. Goliath and the Vampires and Goliath and the Sins of Babylon actually starred the superhero Maciste in Italy. Goliath and the Dragon began life as an Italian Hercules film called The Revenge of Hercules.

  2526272935