by
Damien F. Mackey
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”.
Mark Twain
Two things, people, places, historical events, can be alike but not the same as.
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” (Mark Twain).
Thus World War I was like in many ways, but not the same as, World War II.
An archaeologist in 1500 years time might have great difficulty distinguishing the two, especially if a nuclear war has intervened (which is now almost inevitable) to destroy much of what was on earth.
David and Elhanan, both of whom struck down a Philistine giant, are like in some regards, but cannot be the same person.
Though some would argue that David was Elhanan.
Judge Shamgar is like Samson, but also somewhat like David’s warrior, Shammah.
Again, some like to bind these three names (Shamgar, Samson, Shammah) into the one heroic person.
David and Elhanan
While a case could (and has) be (been) made for identifying these two as the same Israelite hero, there are stronger reasons for not doing so.
“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”.
2 Samuel 21:19
Might the biblical giant, Goliath, have been polycephalic?
Could David’s Goliath also have been Elhanan’s Goliath?
No, because, on closer inspection, Elhanan’s Goliath was not really a Goliath.
We know this much, at least (I Samuel 17:51): “Then David ran over and pulled Goliath’s sword from its sheath. David used it to kill him and cut off his head”.
But it could seem that, in fine folkloric fashion, Goliath thereupon grew another head, only to have this one removed by Elhanan (from 2 Samuel 21:19).
Or is this simply a case of a biblical repetition, due to the insertion of a different source using another name for David the Bethlehemite: namely, Elhanan?
The matter is well resolved, I think, at:
http://www.carm.org/bible-difficulties/joshua-esther/who-killed-goliath-david-or-elhanan in the article:
Who killed Goliath, David or Elhanan?
1 Samuel 17:50 and 2 Samuel 21:19
David did (1 Samuel 17:50) – “Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and he struck the Philistine and killed him; but there was no sword in David’s hand.”
Elhanan did (2 Sam. 21:19)- “And 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.”
The answer lies in two areas. 1 Chronicles 20:5 says, “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.” This is the correct answer; namely, that Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother.
Second, it appears there was a copyist error in 2 Samuel 21:19. According to Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties on page 179, it says,
- The sign of the direct object, which in Chronicles comes just before “Lahmi,” was ‘-t; the copyist mistook it for b-t or b-y-t (“Beth”) and thus got Bet hal-Lahmi (“the Bethlehemite”) out of it.
- He misread the word for “brother” (‘-h) as the sign of the direct object (‘-t) right before g-l-y-t (“Goliath”). Thus he made “Goliath” the object of “killed” (wayyak), instead of the “brother” of Goliath (as the Chronicles passage does).
- The copyist misplaced the word for “weavers” (‘-r-g-ym) so as to put it right after “Elhanan” as his patronymic (ben Y-‘-r-y’-r–g-ym, or ben ya ‘arey ‘ore -gim — “the son of the forests of weavers” — a most unlikely name for anyone’s father!). In Chronicles the ‘ore grim (“weavers”) comes right after menor (“a beam of “) — thus making perfectly good sense.
Therefore, we see that 2 Samuel 21:19 had a copyist error and 1 Chronicles 20:5 is the correct information.
Shamgar and Samson
At first glance, an identification here (Shamgar = Samson) would seem less likely than that of the contemporaneous David with Elhanan, due to chronologies tending to separate the one from the other by not much less than a century.
According to these, Shamgar well preceded Samson.
However, I have, in my attempted re-organising of the Judges period, proposed a tucking up of certain poorly attested Judges with like, better-attested ones.
Jair the Gileadite as Jephthah the Gileadite, for instance; Ibzan of Bethlehem as Boaz of Bethlehem (from the contemporaneous Book of Ruth); Shamgar as Samson, following the article:
Shamgar Son of Anat and Israel’s Age of Heroes
Shamgar, Samson and Shammah
In the same article, the author will proceed to include in the mix, Shammah.
This is a case of like, but definitely not the same, due to, for one, the chronological gap of several hundred years:
Shammah and the Plot of Lentils
There is yet another biblical character whose story closely resembles those of Shamgar and Samson: Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. He was one of David’s gibborim—his war champions—who single-handedly defeated the Philistines in strikingly similar fashion to that of Shamgar and Samson:
Next to him was Shammah son of Agee, the Hararite. The Philistines gathered together at Lehi, where there was a plot of ground full of lentils. Now the army had fled from the Philistines, but he took his stand in the middle of the plot, defended it, and killed the Philistines; and Yahweh brought about a great victory. (2 Samuel 23:11–12)
Note that this battle is especially similar to Samson’s feat, including the location at Lehi, an otherwise obscure place. Either Shammah and Samson (Shimshon) are based on the same legend, or details have been borrowed from one to the other.
The malleability of biblical legend [sic] is evident in the way the Chronicler reassigns Shammah’s feat to Eleazar and David, substituting Lehi with Pas-dammim and the plot of lentils with a plot of barley:
And next to him among the three warriors was Eleazar son of Dodo, the Ahohite. He was with David at Pas-dammim when the Philistines were gathered there for battle. There was a plot of ground full of barley. Now the people had fled from the Philistines, but he and David took their stand in the middle of the plot, defended it, and killed the Philistines; and Yahweh saved them by a great victory. (1 Chronicles 11:12-14)
Regular readers may also recall how the defeat of the giant Goliath by the champion Elhanan (2 Sam. 21:19) was reattributed to David by a later author. Similarly, Shammah is downgraded in the more familiar Goliath story to become one of David’s brothers (1 Sam. 16:9), a mere bystander in the battle against the Philistines and the giant Goliath. Biblical legends shift like quicksand [sic].
Giants in the Land
In Genesis 6, the gibborim (warriors of old) born from the mating of gods and women are also understood to be giants, the Nephilim.³ The Nephilim and other giant races (Anakim, Rephaim, Zamzummim, and Emim)⁴ occasionally appear elsewhere in the Deuteronomic History, with no regard for the flood that is supposed to have wiped them out. If the Genesis 6 story reflects general Hebrew ideas about the origins of ancient heroes with great strength and stature, then those ideas probably apply to giants where they appear elsewhere. The term “Rephaim” in particular is closely connected with divine beings, being used not only to describe the Philistine giants (“sons of Rapha”) and mythical king Og of Bashan, but also certain inhabitants of the underworld (Psalm 88:11) who, according to pre-biblical Ugaritic texts, were chthonic deities (see Wyatt 590). Incidentally, in the same Ugaritic texts, these Rephaim were ruled by none other than Shapash (Shemesh), the sun goddess.⁵
….
Shammah’s enemy, the Philistines, included giants according to Samuel and Chronicles, and David’s chief warriors, among whom Shammah was counted, are described as slaying several of these giants. Although it is an army of Philistines rather than a giant that Shammah defeats in 2 Sam 23, the son of David’s brother Shammah/Shimei slays one in 2 Sam 21:20, and it is possible that both individuals are variations of the same legendary hero, as I suggested above.
While giants are not specifically mentioned in Judges, it is widely recognized that Samson himself is portrayed as a giant.
In a recent journal article, Christophe Lemardelé remarks (translation mine):
Now, that Samson was a giant in a tale older than its later form in Judges 13-16 is not in doubt. Indeed, all of his exploits and, most of all, the one in which he carried the gates of the city of Gaza to the mountain across from Hebron (16,3), reveal just such a figure. Even though the hero was updated to illustrate a ritual involving young men and was “shrunk” to make him a judge in one view of the historical reconstruction of “Israel” (14,20 and 16,31), the character retains the traits of a giant that inspire fear (14,11). (Lemardelé [2010] 171)
Thompson agrees, and links Samson’s superhuman stature and strength to his divine parentage:
Samson is a giant, like those born of the sons of God in Genesis 6, and Samson has divine strength. The story [of Samson’s birth] is a comic adventure of this figure of folklore, vigorously drawing on the amusement that the husband’s ignorance of divine intervention allows. (Op. cit. 342)
Is it possible Shamgar son of Anat was originally conceived of as a giant as well? Superhuman strength and size would go a long way in explaining how one could kill 600 men with a farming tool.
Comparing the Three Heroes
The following chart shows the most obvious points of similar between Shamgar, Samson, and Shammah. ….
Joshua and Israel's Colourful Judges 