Goliath

Goliath of Gath came out from the Philistine camp at the Valley of Elah and challenged Israel to send a man to fight him. The Hebrew text gives his height as six cubits and a span and describes his bronze helmet, his coat of mail and his iron-headed spear (1 Samuel 17:4–10). The Greek Septuagint and Josephus give four cubits and a span (Septuagint 1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms) 17:4) (Josephus, Antiquities 6.171). David struck him down with a sling stone and cut off his head with Goliath’s own sword (1 Samuel 17:49–51). The sword was later kept at the sanctuary of Nob, where David took it again (1 Samuel 21:1, 8–9).

A notice of David’s wars with the Philistines says, in the Hebrew text, that Elhanan of Bethlehem killed “Goliath the Gittite”, whose spear shaft was like a weaver’s beam (2 Samuel 21:19). Chronicles says that Elhanan killed Lahmi, Goliath’s brother (1 Chronicles 20:5), and some translations, the World English Bible among them, read “brother” in Samuel as well. The question is taken up under David and Goliath.