The Textual Problem of 2 Samuel 21:19

One of the more frequently discussed textual difficulties in the historical books of the Old Testament concerns the identity of the man who killed Goliath. The familiar account in 1 Samuel 17 plainly attributes Goliath’s death to David. Yet the Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 21:19, as it has come down to us, appears to attribute the killing of Goliath to another Israelite warrior named Elhanan. At first sight, the two statements seem irreconcilable. The parallel account in 1 Chronicles 20:5, however, provides important evidence for understanding how the difficulty arose.

The Clear Testimony of 1 Samuel 17

There is no ambiguity in the principal narrative concerning the death of Goliath. First Samuel 17 identifies David as the young Israelite who confronted the Philistine champion from Gath. After rejecting Saul’s armour, David went against Goliath with his staff, sling, and five smooth stones. He struck the Philistine in the forehead with a stone and then used Goliath’s own sword to complete the victory. 1 Samuel 17:50 says, “Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and he struck the Philistine and killed him.” The following verse identifies David explicitly as the victor, “Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it” (1 Samuel 17:51).

The narrative therefore leaves no reasonable doubt concerning its claim: David killed Goliath. Moreover, Goliath is repeatedly identified as being from Gath. First Samuel 17:4 introduces him as “Goliath, from Gath,” while verse 23 again calls him “Goliath the Philistine from Gath.” The problem arises because another passage, at least in the form preserved in the Masoretic Hebrew text, appears to say something different.

The Difficulty in 2 Samuel 21:19

Second Samuel 21 records several conflicts between Israel and the Philistines during David’s reign. Among the Israelite warriors mentioned is Elhanan, the son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite. The NASB95 renders 2 Samuel 21:19 as follows, “There was war with the Philistines again at Gob, and Elhanan the 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). Taken by itself, the verse seems straightforward: Elhanan killed Goliath the Gittite. This creates an obvious difficulty when compared with 1 Samuel 17. If David killed Goliath, how can Elhanan also be said to have killed him?

Some interpreters have attempted to resolve the problem by proposing that there were two different Philistine warriors named Goliath. Although this is theoretically possible, it is not the most satisfactory explanation. The description attached to the warrior in 2 Samuel 21:19 is strikingly similar to the description of David’s Goliath. Both are associated with Gath, and both possess a spear whose shaft is compared with a weaver’s beam. More importantly, the parallel account in Chronicles preserves a different and considerably clearer reading.

The Evidence of 1 Chronicles 20:5

The Chronicler recounts the same series of Philistine conflicts but gives a crucial additional detail, “And there was war with the Philistines again, and Elhanan the 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).

Here Elhanan does not kill Goliath. He kills Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. This parallel is of considerable textual importance. The surrounding material in 2 Samuel 21:15–22 and 1 Chronicles 20:4–8 demonstrates that the two writers are describing substantially the same collection of conflicts and warriors. Consequently, 1 Chronicles 20:5 provides strong evidence that the wording preserved in 2 Samuel 21:19 has suffered error during textual transmission. The original sense of 2 Samuel 21:19 was therefore most probably that Elhanan killed the brother of Goliath, rather than Goliath himself.

How Could the Scribal Error Have Arisen?

The difficulty becomes particularly interesting when the Hebrew wording is examined. In 1 Chronicles 20:5, Elhanan is said to have killed: אֶת־לַחְמִי אֲחִי גָּלְיָת that is, “Lahmi the brother of Goliath.” By contrast, the Masoretic Text of 2 Samuel 21:19 contains wording that has traditionally been understood as referring to Elhanan as “the Bethlehemite” and then states that he killed Goliath. The relevant Hebrew forms are sufficiently similar to make scribal error a credible explanation.

The problem appears to involve the Hebrew expression associated with “Bethlehemite” (beth hallachmi) and the wording preserved in Chronicles, Lahmi, the brother of (Lahmi ’achi). During the copying of the text, letters or words could have been misread, omitted, or divided incorrectly.

This explanation has an important advantage: it accounts for all three passages without requiring the supposition that 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel preserve competing traditions about who killed Goliath. First Samuel 17 says David killed Goliath; 1 Chronicles 20:5 says Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother; and the problematic wording of 2 Samuel 21:19 can plausibly be explained as a textual corruption of substantially the same statement preserved more clearly in Chronicles.

The NASB95 and the Hebrew Text

It is worth observing that the NASB95 does not conceal the textual difficulty. Its main text translates 2 Samuel 21:19 according to the received Hebrew wording and therefore reads that Elhanan “killed Goliath the Gittite.” This reflects an important principle of responsible translation: a translator should not silently rewrite a difficult Hebrew text merely because a parallel passage supplies an apparently preferable reading.

The NASB95 consequently allows the reader to see the problem rather than eliminating it by conjectural emendation. The parallel text in 1 Chronicles 20:5 then supplies the evidence necessary for evaluating the difficulty.

This distinction is significant. It would be imprecise to say that the surviving Masoretic Text of 2 Samuel 21:19 actually reads “the brother of Goliath.” It does not. Rather, textual criticism seeks to determine whether the extant reading represents the earliest recoverable form of the text. In this instance, the parallel passage in Chronicles gives substantial reason for concluding that it does not.

A Scribal Error Is Not the Same as an Original Contradiction

The distinction between the original composition of a biblical book and the subsequent transmission of its text must also be maintained.

Ancient manuscripts were copied by hand. The process was remarkably careful, but scribes were not incapable of making errors. Letters could be confused, words accidentally omitted, phrases repeated, or marginal material incorporated into the text. Textual criticism exists precisely because surviving manuscripts occasionally preserve such variations.

Recognising a scribal error in 2 Samuel 21:19 therefore does not require the conclusion that the original biblical authors contradicted one another. On the contrary, the existence of the parallel account in 1 Chronicles provides evidence by which the earlier wording may be reconstructed. The issue is one of textual transmission, not necessarily one of contradictory historical claims in the original documents.

Indeed, the presence of the difficulty in the Hebrew textual tradition is itself instructive. Ancient Jewish scribes did not simply harmonise every troublesome reading in order to make difficulties disappear. The problematic wording was transmitted rather than silently replaced. Consequently, modern readers possess the textual evidence necessary to identify and examine the problem.

Who, Then, Killed Goliath?

When the relevant passages are considered together, the most coherent reconstruction is straightforward.

David killed Goliath of Gath, as 1 Samuel 17 records in detail. Elhanan was another distinguished Israelite warrior who later killed Lahmi, Goliath’s brother, as explicitly stated in 1 Chronicles 20:5. The wording of 2 Samuel 21:19 that makes Elhanan the killer of Goliath is best understood as the result of an ancient scribal error in the transmission of Samuel.

The distinction matters because the apparent contradiction arises only when the extant wording of 2 Samuel 21:19 is treated as though it must reproduce perfectly the original wording of that verse. The parallel account in Chronicles gives good reason to question that assumption.

Thus the three passages need not represent three incompatible historical claims. First Samuel preserves the well-known account of David’s victory over Goliath. Chronicles identifies Elhanan’s victim as Lahmi, Goliath’s brother. Second Samuel preserves a textual difficulty that most plausibly arose during manuscript transmission.

Far from being a difficulty that must either be ignored or artificially harmonised, 2 Samuel 21:19 is a useful example of why careful textual criticism matters. Scripture has come down to us through an ancient manuscript tradition, and where a copying difficulty has arisen, parallel passages can sometimes preserve precisely the evidence required to recognise it. In this case, 1 Chronicles 20:5 supplies the crucial clarification: David killed Goliath; Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother.