Arms and Armour
Goliath
Goliath ( gə-LY-əth) 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. 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.
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See also
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