Chronicles might have arisen through conscious alteration originating in the offence taken by some reader, who recalled the account of the conflict between David and Goliath, at the statement that Elhanan smote a giant named Goliath, and who therefore altered את הלחמי בית into אחי לחמי את. But apart from the question whether there were two Goliaths, one of whom was slain by David and the other by Elhanan, the fact that the conjecture of Bertheau and Böttcher presupposes a deliberate alteration of the text, or rather, to speak more correctly, an intentional falsification of the historical account, is quite sufficient to overthrow it, as not a single example of anything of the kind can be adduced from the whole of the Chronicles. On the other hand, the recollection of David's celebrated officer Elhanan of Bethlehem (2Sa 23:24; 1Ch 11:26) might easily lead to an identification of the Elhanan mentioned here with that officer, and so occasion the alteration of לחמי את into הלחמי בית. This alteration was then followed by that of גלית אחי into גליה את, and all the more easily from the fact that the description of Lahmi's spear corresponds word for word with that of Goliath's spear in 1Sa 17:7. Consequently we must regard the reading in the Chronicles as the correct one, and alter our text accordingly; since the assumption that there were two Goliaths is a very improbable one, and there is nothing at all strange in the reference to a brother of Goliath, who was also a powerful giant, and carried a spear like Goliath. Elhanan the son of Jairi is of course a different person from Elhanan the Bethlehemite, the son of Dodo (2Sa 23:24). The Chronicles have יעוּר, instead of Jairi (the reading according to the Chethib), and the former is probably the correct way of writing the name.
Verses 20-21
2Sa 21:20-21 (cf. 1Ch 20:6-7). In another war at Gath, a Philistian warrior, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot,[1] defied Israel, and was slain by Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother of David (see at 2Sa 13:3). The Chethib מדין is probably to be read מדּין, an archaic plural (“a man of measures,
- ↑ Men with six fingers and six toes have been met with elsewhere. Pliny (h. nat. xi. 43) speaks of certain sedigiti (six-fingered) Romans. This peculiarity is even hereditary in some families. Other examples are collected by Trusen (Sitten, Gebräuche, und Krankheiten der alten Hebräer, pp. 198-9, ed. 2) and Friedreich (zur Bible, i. 298-9).
