Goliath

This article is about the biblical warrior. For other uses of “Goliath,” see Goliath (disambiguation).

"David and Goliath" redirects here. For other uses, see David and Goliath (disambiguation).

David and Goliath, a colour lithograph by Osmar Schindler (c. 1888)

Goliath or Goliath the Berber (Hebrew: גָּלְיָת, Modern: Golyat, Tiberian: Golyāṯ; Arabic: جالوت , Ǧālūt (Qur’anic term), جليات Ǧulyāt (Christian term)) known also as Goliath of Gath (one of five city states of the Philistines) is a figure in the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). Described as a giant Philistine warrior, he is famous for his combat with the young David, the future king of Israel. The battle between them is described in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and, more briefly, in the Qur'an.

The purpose of the original story was to show David's identity as the true king of Israel. Post-Classical Jewish traditions stressed Goliath's status as the representative of paganism, in contrast to David, the champion of the God of Israel. Christian tradition gave him a distinctively Christian twist, seeing in David's battle with Goliath the victory of God's King over the enemies of God's helpless people as a prefiguring of Jesus' victory over sin on the Cross and the Church's ongoing struggle against Satan.

The story

David hoists the severed head of Goliath.

The account of the battle between David and Goliath is given in 1 Samuel, chapter 17. Saul and the Israelites are facing the Philistines at the Valley of Elah. Twice a day for 40 days, Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, comes out between the lines and challenges the Israelites to send out a champion of their own to decide the outcome in single combat. However, Saul and all the other Israelites are afraid of him. David is present, having brought food for his elder brothers. Told that Saul has promised to reward any man who defeats Goliath, David accepts the challenge. Saul reluctantly agrees and offers his armor, which David declines, taking only his sling and five stones chosen in a brook.

David and Goliath confront each other, Goliath with his armor and shield, David with his staff and sling. “The Philistine cursed David by his gods,” but David replies: “This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down, and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that God saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is God’s, and he will give you into our hand.”

David hurls a stone from his sling with all his might, and hits Goliath in the center of his forehead. The Philistine falls on his face to the ground; David takes Goliath's sword and cuts off his head. The Philistines flee and are pursued by the Israelites “as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron.” David puts the armor of Goliath in his own tent and takes the head to Jerusalem, and Saul sends Abner to bring David to him. The king asks whose son he is, and David answers, ‘I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.’”

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Goliath's height

Goliath's stature grew at the hand of narrators or scribes: the oldest manuscripts — the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel, the first-century historian Josephus, and the fourth century Septuagint manuscripts — all give his height as "four cubits and a span", a little over 2.25 meters (about 7 feet, 5 inches); later manuscripts increase this to "six cubits and a span," which would make him over 3 meters tall (10 feet).

Goliath's injury and fall

The biblical account describes Goliath as falling on his face after he is struck by a stone that sank into his forehead. British rabbi Jonathan Magonet has discussed some of the textual difficulties this raises. In the first place, he notes that archaeological information suggests that Philistine helmets generally had a forehead covering, in some cases extending down to the nose. Why (he asks) should David aim at such an impenetrable spot (and how did it hit with such force to penetrate thick bone)? And why should Goliath fall forward when struck by something heavy enough to stop him, rather than backwards? An answer to both questions, Magonet suggests, lies in the Hebrew word meitzach, normally translated forehead. A word almost identical with it appears earlier in the passage — the word mitzchat, translated as "greaves" — the flexible leg-armour that protected Goliath's lower leg (see I Samuel 17: 6). It is possible, grammatically in the passage, for the same word to be used in verse 49, a reconstruction of which, replacing meitzach with mitzchat, would imply that the stone sank down behind Goliath's leg-armour (as his leg was bent), making it impossible for him to straighten his leg, and causing him to stumble and fall. Then David removed the head of Goliath to show all that the Giant was killed.

David’s age

The earliest manuscripts, such as the fourth-century AD Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 do not contain the verses describing David coming each day with food for his brothers, nor 1 Samuel 17:55–58 in which Saul seems unaware of David’s identity, referring to him as “this youth” and asking Abner to find out the name of his father. The narrative therefore reads that Goliath challenges the Israelites to combat, the Israelites are afraid, and David, already with Saul, accepts the challenge. This removes a number of ambiguities which have puzzled commentators: it removes 1 Samuel 17:55–58 in which Saul seems not to know David, despite having taken him as his shield-bearer and harpist; it removes 1 Samuel 17:50, the presence of which makes it seem as if David kills Goliath twice, once with his sling and then again with a sword; and it gives David a clear reason, as Saul’s personal shield-bearer, for accepting Goliath’s challenge. Scholars drawing on studies of oral transmission and folklore have concluded that the non-Septuagint material “is a folktale grafted onto the initial text of … 1 Samuel.”

Elhanan and Goliath

In the NASB version of the Bible and the Complete Jewish Bible it says the decedents of the giant (Goliath). David did kill the original Goliath in 1 Samuel 17: 25-53 so evidently Goliath has sons who fought under their fathers name who were out to kill their fathers killer (David). A Goliath makes another appearance in 2 Samuel 21:19, which tells how Goliath the Gittite was killed by “Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite.” The fourth-century BC. 1 Chronicles 20 explains the second Goliath by saying that Elhanan “slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath,” apparently constructing the name Lahmi from the last portion of the word “Bethlehemite” (“beit-ha’lahmi”). The King James Bible translators adopted this into their translation of 2 Samuel 21:18–19, although the Hebrew text at this point makes no mention of the word “brother.” "Most likely, storytellers displaced the deed from the otherwise obscure Elhanan onto the more famous character, David."

Goliath and the Philistines

Tell es-Safi, the biblical Gath and traditional home of Goliath, has been the subject of extensive excavations by Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. The archaeologists have established that this was one of the largest of the Philistine cities until destroyed in the ninth century BC, an event from which it never recovered. A potsherd discovered at the site, and reliably dated to the tenth to mid-ninth centuries BC, is inscribed with the two names “alwt” and “wlt.” While the names are not directly connected with the biblical Goliath, they are etymologically related and demonstrate that the name fits with the context of late-tenth/early-ninth-century BC Philistine culture. The name “Goliath” itself is non-Semitic and has been linked with the Lydian king Alyattes, which also fits the Philistine context of the biblical Goliath story. Aren Maeir, director of the excavation, comments: “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.”

Goliath and Saul

The underlying purpose of the story of Goliath is to show that Saul is not fit to be king (and that David is). Saul was chosen to lead the Israelites against their enemies, but when faced with Goliath he refuses to do so; Goliath is a giant, and Saul is a very tall man. His exact height is not given, but he's a head taller than anyone else in all Israel [1 Samuel 9:2]) which implies he was over 6-feet-tall (1.83 m); and Saul's armour and weaponry are apparently no worse than Goliath's (and David, of course, refuses Saul's armour in any case). "David declares that when a lion or bear came and attacked his father's sheep, he battled against it and killed it, [but Saul] has been cowering in fear instead of rising up and attacking the threat to his sheep (i.e. Israel)."

Goliath and the Greeks

In 2004 Azzan Yadin suggested that the armor described in 1 Samuel 17 is typical of Greek armor of the sixth century BC rather than of Philistines armor of the tenth century, and that narrative formulae such as the settlement of battle by single combat between champions is characteristic of the Homeric epics (the Iliad) but not of the ancient Near East. Yadin also suggested that the designation of Goliath as a איש הביניים, “man of the in-between” (a longstanding difficulty in translating 1 Samuel 17) appears to be a borrowing from Greek “man of the metaikhmion (μεταίχμιον)”, i.e. the space between two opposite army camps where champion combat would take place.

Martin Litchfield West has pointed out that a story very similar to that of David and Goliath appears in the Iliad, where the young Nestor fights and conquers the giant Ereuthalion. Each giant wields a distinctive weapon—an iron club in Ereuthalion’s case, a massive bronze spear in Goliath’s; each giant, clad in armor, comes out of the enemy’s massed array to challenge all the warriors in the opposing army; in each case the seasoned warriors are afraid, and the challenge is taken up by a stripling, the youngest in his family (Nestor is the twelfth son of Neleus, David the seventh or eighth son of Jesse). In each case an older and more experienced father figure (Nestor’s own father, David’s patron Saul) tells the boy that he is too young and inexperienced, but in each case the young hero receives divine aid and the giant is left sprawling on the ground. Nestor, fighting on foot, then takes the chariot of his enemy, while David, on foot, takes the sword of Goliath. The enemy army then flees, the victors pursue and slaughter them and return with their bodies, and the boy-hero is acclaimed by the people.

Later traditions

Jewish

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 42b) Goliath was a son of Orpah, the sister-in-law of Ruth, David's own great grandmother (Ruth → Obed → Jesse → David). Ruth Rabbah, a haggadic and homiletic interpretation of the Book of Ruth, makes the blood-relationship even closer, considering Orpah and Ruth to have been full sisters. Orpah was said to have made a pretense of accompanying Ruth but after forty paces left her. Thereafter she led a dissolute life. According to the Jerusalem Talmud Goliath was born by polyspermy, and had about one hundred fathers.

The Talmud stresses the thrasonical Goliath's ungodliness: his taunts before the Israelites included the boast that it was he who had captured the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to the temple of Dagon; and his challenges to combat were made at morning and evening in order to disturb the Israelites in their prayers. His armour weighed 60 tons, according to rabbi Hanina; 120, according to rabbi Abba bar Kahana; and his sword, which became the sword of David, had marvellous powers. On his death it was found that his heart carried the image of Dagon, who thereby also came to a shameful downfall.

In Pseudo-Philo, believed to have been composed between 135 BCE. and 70 CE, David picks up seven stones and writes on them the names of his fathers, his own name, and the name of God, one name per stone; then, speaking to Goliath, he says: "Hear this word before you die: were not the two woman from whom you and I were born, sisters? And your mother was Orpah and my mother Ruth ..." After David strikes Goliath with the stone he runs to Goliath before he dies and Goliath says, "Hurry and kill me and rejoice," and David replies, "Before you die, open your eyes and see your slayer;" Goliath sees an angel and tells David that it is not he who has killed him but the angel. Pseudo-Philo then goes on to say that the angel of the Lord changes David's appearance so that no one recognizes him, and thus Saul asks who he is.

Islam

Goliath appears in chapter 2 of the Qur'an (II: 247-252), in the narrative of David and Saul's battle against the Philistines. Goliath's mention in the Qur'an is concise, though it remains a parallel to the account in the Hebrew Bible. Muslim scholars have tried to trace Goliath's origins, most commonly with the Amalekites. Goliath, in early scholarly tradition, became a kind of byword or collective name for the oppressors of the Israelite nation before David. Muslim tradition sees the battle with the Philistines as a prefiguration of the Prophet's battle of Badr, and sees Goliath as parallel to the enemies that the Prophet faced.

Fictional adaptations

American actor Ted Cassidy portrayed Goliath in the TV series Greatest Heroes of the Bible in 1978. Italian actor Luigi Montefiori portrayed this nine-foot-tall giant in Paramount's 1985 live-action movie King David as part of a flashback. Big Idea's popular VeggieTales episode was called "Dave and the Giant Pickle".

In 2005, Lightstone Studios released a direct-to-DVD movie musical titled "One Smooth Stone," which was later changed to "David and Goliath." It is part of the Liken the Scriptures (now just Liken) series of movie musicals on DVD based on scripture stories. Thurl Bailey, a former NBA basketball player, was cast to play the part of Goliath in this film.

The Italian Goliath film series (1960-1964)

The Italians used Goliath as an action superhero in a series of Biblical adventure films (peplums) in the early 1960s. He was possessed of amazing strength, and the films were similar in theme to their Hercules and Maciste movies. After the classic Hercules (1958) became a blockbuster sensation in the film industry, a 1959 Steve Reeves film Terrore dei Barbari (Terror of the Barbarians) was retitled Goliath and the Barbarians in the United States, (after Joseph E. Levine claimed the sole right to the name of Hercules); the film was so successful at the box office, it inspired Italian filmmakers to do a series of four more films featuring a beefcake hero named Goliath, although the films were not really related to each other. (The 1960 Italian film David and Goliath starring Orson Welles was not one of these, since that movie was a straightforward adaptation of the Biblical story).

The four titles in the Italian Goliath series were as follows:

• Goliath contro i giganti/Goliath Against the Giants (1960) starring Brad Harris
• Goliath e la schiava ribelle/Goliath and the Rebel Slave (a.k.a. The Tyrant of Lydia vs. The Son of Hercules) (1963) starring Gordon Scott
• Golia e il cavaliere mascherato/Goliath and the Masked Rider (a.k.a. Hercules and the Masked Rider) (1964) starring Alan Steel
• Golia alla conquista di Bagdad/Goliath at the Conquest of Baghdad(a.k.a. Goliath at the Conquest of Damascus, 1964) starring Peter Lupus

The name Goliath was later inserted into the film titles of three other Italian muscle man movies that were retitled for distribution in the United States in an attempt to cash in on the Goliath craze, but these films were not originally made as Goliath movies in Italy.

Both Goliath and the Vampires (1961) and Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963) actually featured the famed superhero Maciste in the original Italian versions, but American distributors didn't feel the name Maciste had any meaning to American audiences. Goliath and the Dragon (1960) was originally an Italian Hercules movie called The Revenge of Hercules.

See also

• Battle of Ain Jalut ('Battle of Goliath Well')
• List of artifacts significant to the Bible
• Sword and sandal (film genre)
• An Army of Davids

Further reading: Goliath in Islam

• K. Al-Tidian, Hyderabad, 1347/1928, 178 f.
• Ya'kubi, Tarikh, 51f. (Smit Bijbel en Legende, 61f.)
• Tabari, Volume I: Prophets and Patriarchs, 370-76, c.f. 278-80
• Masudi, Murudj, i, 105-108; iii, 241
• Kisa'i Vita Prophetarum, 250-54
• Mukhtasar al-adja'ib (Abrege des Merveilles), trans. Carra de Vaux, 101