David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 7) (42 page)

Goliath Was Not Alone

David Ascendant
tells the story of a league of giant assassins who seek to kill King David during his reign as the ruler of Israel. Goliath is only one of them, and when his brother Lahmi, another giant, discovers David killed his sibling, he sets out to kill the Israelite leader for both revenge and to stop the messiah king from securing victory over the Philistines and ownership over all of Canaan
.

As much as I admit creative license in my adaptation of Scriptural story, my goal for the entire saga
Chronicles of the Nephilim
is to faithfully retell those stories of the Bible that touch on the giants and the War of the Seed as expressed in Genesis 3:15 through God’s curse upon the Serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [Seed] and her offspring [Seed]; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
”

My goal has been to bring to light all these Biblical references to giants (ala,
Chronicles of the
Nephilim
) that hint at that cosmic war of principalities and powers against the Biblical God, Yahweh and his victorious Messiah. My standard for deciding which stories to tell was only those that had explicit or implicit references to the Nephilim giants and their progeny in the Bible. Admittedly, Scriptural references to the giants are sparse, but they are significant and seem to hint at this War of the Seed that I have been writing about
.

In
Noah Primeval
and
Enoch Primordial
, I retold the story of the Flood based on Genesis 6 and the book of 1 Enoch that the New Testament uses as source material. In
Gilgamesh Immortal
, I retold the pagan myth about a giant king as a prelude or origin story of the Biblical uber-villain, Nimrod. Then in
Abraham Allegiant
, I expanded on that villain and his building of the Tower of Babel and how it wove into the Divine Council worldview of God allotting territory to fallen Watchers. These were the same Watchers who sought to use the giants as the “Seed of the Serpent” to corrupt the earth and destroy the bloodline of God’s people and his Messiah. The giant clans are referenced in Genesis 14 and the Watcher/human copulation is hinted at in the Sodom and Gomorrah episode in Genesis 19. Abraham settled right near the city of Kiriath-arba, later called Hebron (Gen. 13:18). Kiriath-arba was the city of King Arba, forefather of the Anakim giants that Joshua would battle (Josh. 14:15, 15:13). That is a subtle but critical theological fact that is easily overlooked by less rigorous Bible study. The Sons of Anak and the Sons of Abraham had a history together that went back to Arba and Abraham, their forefathers. Or in other words, the Seed of the Serpent and the Seed of Eve
.

In
Joshua Valiant
and
Caleb Vigilant
, I retold the conquest of the Promised Land, where the Bible indicates a deliberate targeting of giant clans by Joshua for eradication (Joshua 11:21-22). We even read about specific giants in Scripture who were mighty opponents of this campaign, such as the Rephaim giant king Og of Bashan (Deut. 3:1-11), and the Anakim giant warriors; Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai (Num. 13:22; Josh. 15:14; Judges 1:10). Again, we are not told the details of these giant warriors, so I filled in between the lines of Scripture with story that would be consistent with those lines, making those apparently random historical “factoids” more meaningful in the big picture of God’s plans. I connected the dots that our western Christian bias might miss because of our lack of ancient Near Eastern Jewish context.

As much as I assume there had to be giants in Canaan during the time of the book of Judges, none are actually mentioned in that Biblical tome, so my saga must jump from the story of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan to the next Scriptural occurrence of giants, which is in the life of David.

Goliath and Giants Galore

In King David’s story there are five passages that contain giants in the narrative. The most famous one is 1 Samuel 17 that tells the story of Goliath. In fact, that story is so famous, it seems that some Christians think he’s the only giant in the Bible! Others say he wasn’t much of a giant at all. That’s because there are textual problems with the sources we have for the English text of the Old Testament.

In 1 Samuel 17:4, Goliath is described as being “6 cubits and a span.” Scholarly consensus describes the “cubit” as being approximately 18 inches, measured by the distance between an average man’s elbow and forefinger. A “span” is about half of that length, which is about the distance of an outstretched hand, or 9 inches. So by these standards, Goliath’s “6 cubits and a span” was about 9 feet, 9 inches tall.

But there is a problem with that measurement. The 6 1/2 cubit dimension is taken from the Hebrew Masoretic Texts (MT), which are not always the most reliable in their transmission history. Some scholars point out that the Septuagint (LXX), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Josephus after them describe Goliath at only “4 cubits and a span,” which would make him more like 6 feet, 9 inches tall. According to archeological estimates of discovered remains in Canaan, the average Jew was about 5 feet, 6 inches tall.
[1]
This shorter version of Goliath would still be a tall man compared to the average ancient Jew, but not at all the supernatural monstrosity of 9 feet, 9 inches tall.

But scholar Clyde Billington has pointed out that the DSS and Josephus took their cue from the LXX, which was translated in Egypt. Egypt’s royal cubit was consistently at 20.65 inches.
[2]
It is entirely reasonable that the LXX translators would adjust the Biblical numbers to coincide with their own definitions of measurement. Using the Egyptian cubit would make Goliath’s height from the LXX come out to just over 9 feet tall – the same height as in the MT. Rather than the MT exaggerating Goliath’s size for mythic effect, the later translators most likely translated the Hebrew measurement to match their local Egyptian measurements.

A further complication arises when one considers the fact that Moses had been raised and educated as royalty in Egypt. So he and the Exodus Israelites no doubt used the Egyptian royal cubit in their measurements. The question then is whether or not the
original
Hebrew text translated that cubit measurement to the smaller Mesopotamian/Levantine cubit.

There is an indication in other Biblical texts of the awareness of this cubit difference. The writer of the Chronicles (written much later in Israel’s history during the exile) makes this distinction when describing the dimensions of Solomon’s temple. He writes, “the length, in cubits
of the old standard
, was sixty cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits” (2 Chron. 3:3). Ezekiel describing the measurements of the temple in his vision also makes this distinction of cubit difference as well when he writes, “the altar by cubits (the cubit being a cubit and a handbreadth)” (Ezek. 43:13). He later calls this a “long cubit” (Ezek. 41:8). So these parentheticals written by authors around the time of the exile indicate that during that time, there was still an awareness of the older longer Egyptian cubit as if they had been still using it up until that date
.
[3]

If we apply this longer cubit measurement to Goliath’s 9 cubits and a span, we get a height of about 10 1/2 feet tall!
[4]
Remember Og of Bashan, whose bed was 9 cubits long? (Deut. 3:11). That would make his bed approximately 15 1/2 feet long and Og about 13 to 14 feet tall.
[5]
And the Egyptian warrior that was killed by Benaiah (1 Chron. 11:23) 8 feet 6 inches tall
.

Whichever way one measures a cubit, Goliath was a giant. But that is not the only controversy surrounding that rabid Rephaim Gittite of old.

In 2 Samuel 21 we read a description of several giant warriors who were killed by David’s Mighty Men (
gibborim
). But verse 19 is a disturbing sentence that seems to contradict David’s slaying of Goliath. It says, “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.”

Well, who was it that killed Goliath, then? Was it David or Elhanan? Critical scholars use this single difficult text to justify constructing a complex conspiracy theory that David didn’t exist and that Elhanan killed Goliath, but the Jewish writer then attributed it to a fictional “David” but forgot to make that change in this passage.

On the other side of desperate conspiracy theories are desperate hyper-literalist harmonizers who conclude that either Elhanan was another name for David or that there was a second Goliath of Gath who was killed by a different warrior later than David. But the lack of a David/Elhanan connection anywhere else in the Bible and the clear coincidence of redundant language about Goliath are no less biased in their attempts to harmonize.

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.