by Brian Godawa
Desperate conspiracies and harmonies aside, the problem needs a reasonable answer. And there is one. 1 Chronicles 20:4-8 is a rewrite of the same historical information in 2 Sam. 21:16-22. They are passages that have clearly used the same source with some modifications. They talk about the same Israelite warriors killing the same giants. But there are some slight differences. And the biggest difference is where the Chronicler addresses that sentence about Elhanan’s victory over the giant. Here are the two passages after one another to make the point:
2 Samuel 21:19
19 And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
1 Chronicles 20:5
5 And there was again war with the Philistines, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
1 Chronicles 20 says that Elhanan struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath, not Goliath! So was it Elhanan or David? Did they kill Goliath or his brother Lahmi?
In short, the answer is quite simply that 2 Samuel 21 is the problematic text as the result of scribal error. Michael Heiser, a Biblical language scholar, explains the forensic anatomy of the scribal mishap. He looks at the Hebrew behind the texts and shows how the Hebrew words for “son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlemite,” (1 Sam.) and “Lahmi the brother of” (1 Chron.) contain very similar Hebrew constructions that show the writer of 2 Samuel confusing the word for weaver (oregim) and adding it to Jair, and then misconstruing the Hebrew word for Lahmi as meaning Bethlehemite. The writer of 2 Samuel had a defective text and tried to fix it. In so doing, he created the problem that we now have.
Heiser’s conclusion:
The solution to the contradiction between 2 Sam 21:19 and 1 Chr 20:5 is recognizing that 2 Sam 21:19 is a defective reading since it is the result of a scribe’s sincere effort to cope with a problematic manuscript…1 Chr 20:5 should be used to correct 2 Sam 21:19. David killed Goliath as 1 Samuel 17 says, and Elhanan killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath.[6]
The Other Five
There are two other passages in 1 Chronicles, with parallel passages in 2 Samuel that explain the giants defeated by David and his Mighty Men. I will only reproduce the 1 Chronicles passages and fill out the facts with additional information from 2 Samuel.
1 Chronicles 11:22–23
22 And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel… And he struck down an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits tall. [7 1/2 to 8 1/2 feet] The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver’s beam, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.
1 Chronicles 20:4–8
4 And after this there arose war with the Philistines at Gezer. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Sippai [Saph - 2 Sam. 21:18], who was one of the descendants of the giants, and the Philistines were subdued. 5 And there was again war with the Philistines, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 6 And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants. 7 And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea, David’s brother, struck him down. 8 These were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.
2 Samuel 21:16–22
16 And Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David. 17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him.
So in all, we have five giants being killed by David’s men. 1) Benaiah killed an Egyptian giant, 2) Sibbecai killed the giant Sippai [Saph], 3) Elhanan killed the giant Lahmi, brother of Goliath, 4) Jonathan killed an unnamed giant, and 5) Abishai killed Ishbi-benob the giant.
But these are not mere chronicling of random deaths of a few tall bad guys. There is meaning and deliberation behind these facts. There is deliberate intent by the author to link these giants to the Nephilim of Genesis 6 whose diabolical plan was thwarted by God with the Flood.
Firstly, they are all summarized in the same paragraph, indicating a theological purpose behind combining them together. Secondly, except for the Egyptian, they are all Philistines fighting Israel. In Deut. 3:1-11 we read that Joshua killed Og of Bashan, the last of the Rephaim giants. Then in Joshua 11:21-22 we read that Joshua deliberately sought out the Anakim giants in Canaan and cut them off everywhere in the hill country. But then it gives this qualification: “There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.”
So, some giants were left by Joshua – in the land of Philistia. The very cities from which came the giants David would fight, including Goliath. It was almost as if God was deliberately keeping the last of the giants in order to finally destroy them through his messianic king. They were the leftover giants from Joshua’s conquest, and they were linked back to the evil Nephilim before the flood (Num. 13:32-33).
And there is strong indication that the giants were trying to kill David specifically as well. Ishbi-benob is said to explicitly have been trying to kill David (2 Sam. 21:16); another one “taunted Israel” (1Chron 20:7), the same phrasing used of Goliath; and of course, Lahmi, Goliath’s brother, would no doubt have revenge against the slayer of his sibling on his mind. But there is still more to this picture.
The English phrase used of the giants in these passages is that they were “descendants of the giants.” It is used three times in 1 Chron. 20 and four times in 2 Sam. 21. The authors go out of their way to stress these warriors as connected to that special group of giants that were theologically tied to the Nephilim of Genesis 6.
Excursus on Connecting the Nephilim giants of Genesis 6
to the Rephaim giants of King David’s Time
1) The Nephilim offspring of the fallen angelic “Sons of God” were part of God’s reason for judgment.
Genesis 6:1–4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
Genesis 6:11–13
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
2) The Anakim giant clans that Joshua was to eradicate were theologically connected to the cursed Nephilim before the Flood.
Numbers 13:32–33 (ESV)
32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
3) The giant clans were all considered Rephaim in a generic sense. In this sense, Rephaim can be the catch-all term for all giant warriors.
Deuteronomy 2:10–11
10 (The Emim formerly lived there [in Moab], a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim. 11 Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim.
Deuteronomy 2:20–21
20 (It [Ammon] is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— 21a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim.
4) The Philistine
“Descendants of Giants” (“Sons of Rapha”) in David’s time were considered descendants or devotees of those cursed Rephaim/Anakim that Joshua had left alive in Philistia (Joshua 11:).
Joshua 11:21–22
21 And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. 22 There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.
2 Samuel 21:22
These four [giants warriors] were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.
This narrative theological thread of giants from the Nephilim of Noah’s day to the Rephaim of David’s time conspires to imply a deliberate summary of climactic conflict between the titan Seed of the Serpent in Canaan and the Seed of Abraham from Eve.
But a closer look at the original Hebrew behind the translation “descendants of the giants” in 1 Samuel and 1 Chronicles reveals much more then merely being linked to those oversized warriors left alive by Joshua in Philistia.
Biblical scholar Conrad E. L’Heureux examines this Hebrew phrase, yalid ha rapha, that translates as “descendants of the giants.” He explains that the word rapha, is the specific word for the Rephaim giants and warriors in the Bible. But the word yalid, “never refers to genealogical lineage. Rather, the yalid was a person of slave status and dedicated to the deity who was head of the social unit into which he was admitted by a consecration.”[7]
Because the discoveries of Ugarit shed light on the Rephaim as deified dead giant warriors,[8] this religious devotion indicates that the “descendants of the giants” is really more the giant “devotees of Rapha.” L’Heureux concludes that this was probably some kind of reference to an elite fighting force religiously bound to their Rephaim code. What was that code? Was it to hunt down and destroy the Seed of Eve, the messianic king?
He then points out that of the eight times that the Bible speaks of the location of battle called “Valley of the Rephaim,” five of them are in these narratives of the Philistines fighting Israel in that valley. This brings him to suggest that “Valley of the Rephaim” may simply be an anachronism that was used in the stories about where that name came from. They called it Valley of the Rephaim because that valley is where David’s army defeated these Philistine elite fighting forces.
Thus, the origin of my elite corps of giants in David Ascendant called the Yalid ha Rapha or the “Sons of Rapha,” bound by oath to their own Seed (of the Serpent) to destroy the Seed of Eve, David.
Were Agag and Saul Giants?
Agag. In 1 Samuel 15 we read that King Saul defeated the Amalekites, ancient enemies of the Israelites. God tells Saul in verse 15 to “devote to destruction, all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” This was the language of herem (devotion to destruction) used for Joshua’s conquest of Canaan’s Nephilim infestation. It was not used for all of Israel’s enemies, only the specific clans that God was focusing on, and those clans all had Nephilim or giants in them.[9]
While 1 Samuel does not tell us that Agag was a giant, there is some indication that he could have been and that the Amalekites also had giants in their midst.
Their history goes all the way back to Genesis 14 and the Giant Wars in the days of Abraham. In that passage, Chedorlaomer leads his alliance of four Mesopotamian kings to wipe out specific giant clans in Canaan. The list of giant clans they take out are the Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim, Horites and Amorites. In Abraham Allegiant I explained this campaign and how Abraham fit in with it. But for our purposes now, suffice it to say that mentioned within that list of giant clans is one more people group: The Amalekites.
Though it is not stated explicitly that the Amalekites were a giant clan, it is implied by its inclusion in the list of all the other giant clans. In the Zohar, a 13th century Jewish mystical text, there is a clear reference to the Amalekites as giants among the Nephilim, Anakim, and Rephaim.[10] The Arabs also have legends about Ad, the son of Amalek, being a giant.[11]
Some scholars think that this Genesis 14 reference is just an anachronism in the Bible text, and that the Amalekites did not come in history until later. Genesis 36:12 states that Amalek came later as a son of Esau, father of the Edomites, a tribe that Israel was commanded by God not to fight (Deut. 2:4-6). But there is a problem here. When the Israelites encounter the Amalekites in the desert during the Exodus, God says, “I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven…The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Ex. 17:15-16). After Israel had taken the Promised Land for an inheritance, God told them again, “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget” (Deut. 25:19). Again, the holy war language used against the Nephilim in Canaan.
So either Genesis 36 is an anachronism and a contradiction or there are two separate lines of Amalekites, one from Esau and one from this earlier giant clan in Abraham’s time. Balaam’s prophecy, just before the conquest of the Promised Land, seems to blend both clans into one. It indicates that “Amalek was the first among the nations, but its end is utter destruction” (Num. 24:20), thus favoring the earlier Genesis 14 existence. But it also links Amalek to Edom, the favored nation of Seir in verse 18, favoring the Esau lineage. The problem is that the prophecy from God himself then declares that Edom shall be dispossessed by Israel. Why would God change his mind and dispossess the tribe he was protecting? Maybe there was some kind of mixing of two Amalekite clans into one under the name of Amalek. And that people group had giants.[12]
Saul. One more literary reference hints at Agag being a giant. In Balaam’s prophecy just quoted, Israel is predicted to overcome her enemies in Canaan.
Numbers 24:6–8 (NASB95)
6 [Israel is planted] like cedars beside the waters. 7 “Water will flow from his buckets, And his seed will be by many waters, And his king shall be higher than Agag, And his kingdom shall be exalted… He will devour the nations who are his adversaries, And will crush their bones in pieces.
This Scripture uses the language of the giants in an ironic application to Israel. The cedar tree, used in reference to the giants of Canaan (Amos 2:9), is now used of Israel; the nations of giants that “devoured its inhabitants” (Num. 13:32), would be devoured (same Hebrew word) by Israel instead. Like a giant, Israel would crush the bones of his enemies. The seed motif is brought up that reminds us of the Seed of Eve versus the Seed of the Serpent (Gen. 3:15). And then we read that Israel’s king shall be “higher than Agag.”
This reference to height is an obvious metaphor for glory and exaltation of David’s house. But of course it also hints at Agag’s own stature being a defining trait. An interesting textual gloss appears in some of the Septuagint manuscripts that render Agag as “Gog” or “Og.”[13] We’ve seen Og before: The last of the Rephaim giants in the Transjordan during Israel’s approach to Canaan.
Another literary linkage seems to be occurring in the Biblical text. 1 Samuel goes out of its way to point out that Saul was “taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward” (1 Sam. 9:2; 10:23). This would make him at least 6 1/2 to 7 feet tall. Could he have been of Nephilim seed? Verse 2 also says, “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he.” It was customary to describe kings in glorious language as exemplary physical and spiritual specimens to justify their royalty.[14] This description of Saul is used to make a point later that God does not look upon the outward appearance like man does, but upon the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). However, as Bible commentator Bergen points out, it is not a coincidence that “Saul is the only Israelite specifically noted in the Bible as being tall; elsewhere it was only Israel’s enemies [the giants] whose height was noted (cf. Num. 13:33; Deut. 1:28; 2:10; 9:2; 1 Sam. 17:4). Israel had asked for a king ‘like al
l the other nations’ (8:20), and the Lord was giving them the desires of their heart, even down to the physical details!”[15]
So Saul is likened to the giants of Israel’s enemies. This is not to say that he was a Nephilim, but certainly the writer is making a theological comparison with Saul to Israel’s enemies. But with Saul at close to 7 feet of height, no doubt some Israelites gossiped to one another about the possibility of such a thing. A double irony occurs in that Saul, the giant’s equal, does not kill Israel’s perpetual enemy the Amalekite king (a giant?), but David, the ruddy and small youth, does kill Goliath the Rephaim giant who embodied the last of the Serpentine Seed in the Promised Land.
What this all means is that Israel’s first encounter with giants may have been when they battled the Amalekites in the exodus (Ex. 17:8-16); Saul may have defiantly failed to kill the Serpentine Seed of Amalek, which resulted in his cursing by God; and David may have faced those giants when he all but wiped them out at Ziklag in 1 Samuel 30, resulting in their ultimate decline.
Yet One More Giant
But there’s one more giant hiding out between the lines of sacred writ. The Septuagint (LXX), an earlier Greek translation of the Old Testament that Jesus and the apostles quoted as authoritative, contains additional information about one other giant that was left out in the Masoretic text, or later Hebrew version of the Old Testament.[16]
In 2 Samuel 21, the Gibeonites demand that David release to them all of Saul’s sons as justice for their oppression by Saul. David hands over six of them to be hanged by the Gibeonites. But David spared Mephibosheth, because of his oath of loyalty to the crippled son of Saul. One of the mothers, Rizpah, asks for the remains of the victims and spreads out a sackcloth to mourn over them and protect them from the vultures.