# Who killed Goliath? > Everyone knows David did. Then a short verse in 2 Samuel gives Goliath to a man named Elhanan. Here are all three passages, and the range of what scholars make of them. Text & Tradition · BibleBelt · https://biblebelt.app/articles/who-killed-goliath Who killed Goliath? It might be the easiest Bible question there is. A shepherd boy, a sling, a giant, a stone. The story is so well known that "David and Goliath" is how newspapers describe any underdog. And the Bible does tell it that way. It also tells it another way, in a verse almost nobody reads. ## The famous version The champion steps out from the Philistine lines in 1 Samuel 17. > And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was four cubits and a span. > (1 Samuel 17:4) David answers him with a sling. > So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, striking down the Philistine and killing him; there was no sword in David’s hand. > (1 Samuel 17:50) That is the story everyone knows, and it is right there in the text. ## The verse nobody mentions Keep reading into 2 Samuel. Near the end of the book there is a short list of battles with the Philistines, each one a sentence or two long. One of them reads like this. > Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. > (2 Samuel 21:19) Elhanan. Not David. And it is the same giant: Goliath, from Gath, with the same spear "like a weaver's beam" that 1 Samuel 17:7 describes. ## The retelling in Chronicles The books of Chronicles retell much of Samuel, often word for word. Here is the same battle there. > Again there was war with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. > (1 Chronicles 20:5) Now Elhanan kills Goliath's brother, a man named Lahmi, who appears nowhere else. With that one change, both stories can stand. David kills Goliath, and Elhanan kills his brother. Older English Bibles took the same route. The King James Version reads "the brother of Goliath" in 2 Samuel 21:19 too, with the added words printed in italics to show they are not in the Hebrew. ## What scholars make of it The explanations fall into a few groups. **A copying error.** Look closely at the Samuel verse in Hebrew and two details stand out. The second half of the father's name, *oregim*, is the Hebrew word for "weavers." It is the same word that ends the verse, in "a weaver's beam," and Chronicles calls the father simply Jair. Many scholars think a copyist's eye slipped to the end of the line and wrote the word twice. And in Hebrew, "the Bethlehemite" in Samuel and "Lahmi" in Chronicles share most of their letters. On this view, the original said Elhanan killed Goliath's brother, as Chronicles does, and the Samuel verse was damaged in copying. Other scholars read the same letters the opposite way: Samuel is the older wording, and Chronicles, or the copy it worked from, turned "the Bethlehemite" into a brother named Lahmi. **Two traditions, with the credit moving to David.** This is the reading many scholars hold today. Elhanan's short notice is the older memory. Over time the deed moved to the better-known hero, David, and 1 Samuel 17 grew into the long tale everyone knows. The notes in *The New Oxford Annotated Bible* point to a clue inside 1 Samuel 17 itself: in the whole chapter, the giant is called Goliath only twice. Everywhere else he is simply "the Philistine." Those notes suggest the name, and the description of the spear, came into the story from 2 Samuel 21:19. The ancient Greek translation of 1 Samuel is also shorter than the Hebrew, which is one reason scholars think chapter 17 was put together from more than one account. **Chronicles as the ancient harmonizer.** Whichever version came first, many scholars read 1 Chronicles 20:5 as a writer bringing two claims together. Chronicles was written later than Samuel, uses it as a source, and often smooths the older books as it retells them. Giving Goliath a brother lets both claims be true. **Two names for one man.** Some readers, starting in ancient Jewish tradition, have suggested that Elhanan was David's own name and David a royal title. Both men are from Bethlehem. Most scholars find this hard to square with the list of David's warriors, which includes "Elhanan son of Dodo of Bethlehem" (2 Samuel 23:24). Scholars still weigh these against each other, and the evidence is small: three passages, a few spellings, and some ancient translations. ## What the text keeps The Bible keeps all three verses. The giant falls to David in 1 Samuel, to Elhanan in 2 Samuel, and Goliath gains a brother in 1 Chronicles. Nobody removed the second one, even though the first became one of the most famous stories ever told. It is not the only place where two tellings sit side by side. [Noah's ark has two animal counts](/articles/how-many-of-each-animal), a page apart. Seeing how the book was put together usually starts with a small detail like this one. ## For further exploration Three things to read with the text open: 1. **Read 2 Samuel 21:15-22.** Four giants, four killers. Notice that David is the one who has to be rescued in the first battle. 2. **Read 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5 side by side.** Mark every word that changes. 3. **Read 1 Samuel 17 and count how often the giant is called Goliath,** and how often "the Philistine." ## Sources - 1 Samuel 17:4, 17:7, 17:50; 2 Samuel 21:19, 23:24; 1 Chronicles 20:5 (NRSVue) - *The New Oxford Annotated Bible*, notes on 1 Samuel 17, 2 Samuel 21:15-22 and 1 Chronicles 20:4-8, and the introduction to the Historical Books - Michael D. Coogan and Cynthia R. Chapman, *The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures*, box on David and Goliath - P. Kyle McCarter Jr., *II Samuel* (Anchor Bible), on 2 Samuel 21:19 - John Barton, *A History of the Bible*, on how the books of Samuel were compiled --- _From [BibleBelt](https://biblebelt.app/), the app that teaches what historians and scholars know about the Bible. The questions behind this article, with the verse and the source on every answer, are in the app. This page's canonical form is https://biblebelt.app/articles/who-killed-goliath._