Goliath the Gittite גׇּלְיָת הַגִּתִּי
the champion from Gath who challenged Israel for forty days
A champion from Gath who came out of the Philistine camp in the valley of Elah. His height was six cubits and a span; he had a helmet and a coat of scale armour weighing five thousand shekels of bronze; the shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam (I Samuel 17:4–7).
For forty days he came out morning and evening and offered to settle the war by single combat: let one man come out. No one came. The challenge was not only military: "I defy the ranks of Israel this day."
David came to the camp with loaves for his brothers, heard this, and went out. Refusing Saul's armour, he took a staff, five smooth stones from the brook, and a sling. And he said: "You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts" (17:45).
A hard passage. II Samuel 21:19 says that Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite. I Chronicles 20:5 gives the same otherwise: Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. The discrepancy has long been known, and Chronicles is the text that resolves it.
Goliath's sword was afterwards kept in Nob with the priests, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod—and it was that sword David took when fleeing from Saul (I Samuel 21:10).
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Shmuel I 17:4–7 — the height, the armour and the spear
- Shmuel I 17:16, 45 — the forty days of challenge and David's answer
- Shmuel II 21:19 and Divrei HaYamim I 20:5 — Elhanan and Lahmi: the discrepancy of the two passages and its resolution
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.