Goliath

Biblical Account

Goliath is a Philistine champion who appears in 1 Samuel 17. He came from Gath, a Philistine city. When the Philistines and the Israelites were encamped on opposite sides of the Valley of Elah, he came out as the Philistines' champion and challenged Israel to single combat. The text records that he wore a bronze helmet and a coat of scale armor, carried a great spear, and came out morning and evening for forty days to defy the army of Israel (1 Samuel 17:16).

David, who had brought food to his older brothers, heard of the challenge and volunteered to fight. He took off the armor that Saul had put on him and went out carrying only a sling (a weapon in which a stone is held in a cord and whirled before being released) and five smooth stones chosen from the brook. He struck Goliath in the forehead with a stone, felling him, and then cut off his head with Goliath's own sword. This event is treated separately in the article David and Goliath. Goliath's sword was later kept by the priest at Nob, and David received it while fleeing from Saul (1 Samuel 21:9).

Significance Within Scripture

The episode is presented as the occasion on which David first comes to prominence in Israel. Many interpreters locate the heart of the passage not in David's courage but in his confession: "I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts" and "the battle is the LORD's" (1 Samuel 17:45–47). The New Testament does not mention Goliath directly. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 47, which the Catholic Church accepts as canonical, contains a passage recalling David's defeat of the giant. Protestants classify Sirach among the Apocrypha.

Interpretation and Issues

• Height: The Hebrew Masoretic Text gives Goliath's height as "six cubits and a span." A cubit is the length from the elbow to the fingertip, commonly reckoned at about 45 cm (about 18 inches); by this measure Goliath would have stood about 2.9 m (roughly 9 feet 6 inches). However, the Septuagint and a manuscript of Samuel among the Dead Sea Scrolls read "four cubits and a span," or about 2 m (roughly 6 feet 9 inches).
• The Elhanan record: The Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 21:19 can be read as stating that Elhanan of Bethlehem killed "Goliath the Gittite." By contrast, 1 Chronicles 20:5 identifies the man Elhanan killed as "Lahmi the brother of Goliath." Conservative scholars explain the difference as a scribal error or as two men bearing the same name, and some translations render the verse in harmony with 1 Chronicles. Some critical scholars hold that Elhanan's exploit was later transferred to the story of David.
• Typological interpretation: Since the patristic era, a tradition of interpretation has read David as a type (a foreshadowing figure) of Christ and Goliath as Satan or the power of sin. Some redemptive-historical preachers in the Reformed tradition criticize applying the passage merely as a moral lesson to "defeat the Goliaths in your life," arguing that such an approach misses the focus on God's saving action.
• Embellishments: It is sometimes said that David chose five stones in order to be prepared for Goliath's four relatives. This is an inference drawn from 2 Samuel 21:22, which mentions four men "born to the giant in Gath"; the text itself gives no reason. David is also often portrayed as a small child, but the text calls him only a "youth" and does not state his age.

In the Korean Church

The story of Goliath is frequently taught in Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. In preaching, it is common to liken a great difficulty facing a believer to a "Goliath," and 1 Samuel 17:45–47 is often quoted. In everyday Korean speech as well, "David and Goliath" is used idiomatically to describe a contest in which the weak confront the strong.