God’s Word for You

1 Chronicles 20:4-5 More giants in the land

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, February 20, 2024

4 After this, there was war with the Philistines at Gezer. It was then that Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Sippai, who was one of the descendants of the giant Rephaites, and the Philistines were subdued.

The only connection this verse has with any chronology is that it took place “after this,” which is either a reference to the preceding account of the siege of Rabbah, or the missing incident from 2 Samuel in which the army asked David not to come personally into the battles anymore (2 Samuel 21:17). Gezer is a village that was on the border between northern Philistia and Ephraim, about three or four miles north of Ekron (the top of the Philistine “candy cane,” the line and loop of Philistine cities).

The hero of this battle is given by his full name, Sibbecai the Hishathite. The name Hushah is not a place, but a family; Hushah was one of the descendants of Hur in the family of Judah (1 Chronicles 4:4). As we saw in chapter 11, this Sibbecai was one of David’s Mighty Men and a commander in Israel’s standing army; he was over the eighth division (1 Chronicles 27:11).

He defeated Sippai, a Philistine giant like Goliath. The Rephaites were “as tall as the Anakites” (Deuteronomy 2:20). They has several names. To the Moabites they were called the Emites. To the Ammonites they were called Zamzummites. Og, the King of Bashan in Moses’ time, was thought to have been “one of the last of the Rephaites” (Deuteronomy 3:11; Joshua 12:4), but this man, Sippai, remained a few generations later. In the days of Abraham, the army of Kedorlaomer had defeated an army of Rephaites at “the Horns of Asherah” (Ashteroth Karnaim).

The cities of these giants have left their remains in great numbers all throughout the region northeast of Galilee, ancient Bashan. The British archaeologist Tristram describes the ruins as “Cyclopean” (like that of the giant Cyclopses of Homer), “The cities are there… more than sixty, all attesting to their antiquity by their antique Cyclopean architecture, with the basalt slabs for roofs and doors. We read of their ‘gates and bars.’ The huge doors and gates of stone eighteen inches thick, and the places for the bars, which can still be seen, take us back to the very time of Moses; perhaps even earlier—for, in the first campaigns recorded in history, Kedorlaomer smote the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim (Genesis 14:5). The Rephaites were the aborigines of the country, and these buildings tell of the infancy of architecture, when strength and security alone were regarded” (Topography of the Holy Land, 1871, p. 306).

David and his men faced these giants in hand-to-hand combat, armed with short swords and lances. No wonder the victories of individual warriors were remembered this way. Sibbecai survived the battle and went on to serve with distinction in David’s army.

5 And again, in a battle with the Philistines, Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam.

The parallel passage, 2 Samuel 21:19, seems to have been corrupted in copying. The text of Samuel and of the prophet Nahum suffer from the most difficulties this way. In the case of 2 Samuel, Elhanan is called “the son of Jair ‘the Weaver’s Beam’ of Bethlehem who killed… Goliath of Gath, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s beam.” The jumble of words in the Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 21:19 is a challenge; even as a string of variant readings. The name of the man is the main point. As the verse stands in Samuel, the term “weaver’s beam” (Hebrew oregim) is duplicated from the spear description backward into the hero’s father’s name. The name of the village Bethlehem is not spelled in its usual way beth-lehem, but beth-halahmi. In Hebrew, the marker of the object of a verb is spelled eth, and it is most likely that a scribe became confused, jumbling what should have been “(he struck down) Elhanan [eth] Lahmi the brother of Goliath” and transformed it into “(he struck down) Elhanan of Beth[lehem] [eth] Goliath.”

2 Samuel 21:19		1 Chronicles 20:5
Yarach	he struck	Yarach	he struck
Elhanan	Elhanan	Elhanan	Elhanan
Ben-	son of	Ben-	son of
Ya’arey	Jair (Jairi)	Ya’ar	Jair (Jairi)
oregim	(a weaver’s beam)
Beth-	Beth- (?)	eth-	(object of verb:)
ha-lahmi	(the?) Lehem (?)	Lahmi	Lahmi
eth	(object of verb:)	achi	the brother of
Goliath	Goliath	Goliath	Goliath
ha-Gitti	the Gittite	ha-Gitti	the Gittite
va-ets	(had) a wooden	va-ets	(had) a wooden
hagitto	spear	hagitto	spear
kimanor	like	kimanor	like
oregim	a weaver’s beam	oregim	a weaver’s beam

It is a sentence in which there are four variant words in a row. Naturally, liberal critics whoop it up over a passage like this and are more than ready to toss out the clear simplicity of Chronicles and adopt the murky questions of this verse in Samuel. It’s like a child dropping some of his breakfast cereal in the dog dish, and insisting on eating what’s mixed up with the dog food rather than the perfectly good breakfast that’s still there in his bowl on the table. Yet even in this tangle of weeds from 2 Samuel, no doctrine is affected. Our faith is in no danger. If one scribe became confused or was distracted, it is forgivable. That his was the manuscript that later on became the standard is unfortunate. But no matter. Our verse in Chronicles clears things up. The Holy Spirit knows what he is doing.

Yet there are sinful and wicked women and men who think David stole another man’s thunder by claiming the victory over Goliath as his own! What shall we say to them? If the liberal critics are right, and somehow Davids victory over Goliath was really another man’s victory, then why was Saul even jealous of David? How did David become the object of Saul’s wrath? Why did Saul’s family rage over David later on? The whole account of David’s early life unravels into meaninglessness if the victory over Goliath belongs to another man. But since it can be explained with a scribe mistaking “Lahmi the brother of” for “Bethlehem,” then everything falls into place and stands firmly as the rest of the Bible (including the rest of 1-2 Samuel) have it. Goliath, Lahmi’s brother, had been killed by David at least twenty years before. Now Goliath’s well-armed brother was conquered by God through the warrior-gifts of Elhanan.

This brings us to a final point: the weaver’s beam. Another man, an Egyptian giant, was also said to have had a weapon like this (1 Chronicles 11:23). The beam of a weaver was the heavy shaft of the loom that held the thread tight while a length of fabric was being made. It must have been a massive weapon. In the Star Trek episode The Galileo Seven, some the crew of the Starship Enterprise are attacked by giants throwing spears of this size.

The reader has been patient with all of this talk about critics and variations in the text. Do not be frustrated or afraid. The message of these victories of David’s heroes over giant Philistine warriors is the message of God with us in all of our battles. Rely on the Holy Spirit who lives within you (1 Corinthians 3:16), and know that Jesus Christ is with you always, to the very end of the world (Matthew 28:20). He gives us fellowship with the Father who created us (1 John 1:3) and who gives us every blessing. The devil, the world and our sinful flesh are powerful enemies, giants against puny creatures like me and you. Their weapons are bigger and heavier than anything we could lift. But no matter. Christ is our champion. His death gave satisfaction for the guilt of every sin and for the punishment of eternal death in hell, as the prophet says: “O grave. I will have no compassion on you” (Hosea 13:14). Christ is our hero. Christ has won the victory over the devil and proclaimed it for everyone to hear. Our certain future is everlasting life.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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