HistoricalChristian.Faith

Is "four cubits and a span" the original reading of 1 Samuel 17:4 (the Masoretic "six" a later inflation)?

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: sound — that "four cubits and a span" (~6′9″) is the earliest recoverable reading is the text-critical mainstream, resting on the oldest and independent witnesses converging against a Hebrew "six" attested only in medieval codices; the separate question of Goliath's real height stays open (Billington reads both figures as ~8 ft) but does not unsettle which reading is prior · advanced by J. Daniel Hays (with McCarter, Tov, Ulrich)

See also: the same "the Septuagint is not to be presumed inferior to the later Masoretic Hebrew" principle this argument rests on, applied to a lexical rendering rather than a variant reading, on the KJV "unicorn" (Hebrew re'em) (contested) — where the older versions' one-horned beast is defended against the modern, Masoretic-anchored "wild ox."

The claim

"Therefore, in conclusion, I suggest that we accept 'four cubits and a span' as the most likely original reading. I also suggest that this reading should be reflected in our Bible translations, relegating the variant reading of 'six cubits and a span' to the notes and/or the margins…"

— J. Daniel Hays, "Reconsidering the Height of Goliath," JETS 48/4 (2005): 701–714, link, at 713–714.¹ The reading this serves: the autograph of 1 Samuel 17:4 gave Goliath's height as "four cubits and a span" (about 6′9″), and the "six cubits and a span" (about 9′9″) that stands in the Masoretic Text—and, through Jerome and the Vulgate, in the giant everyone remembers—is a secondary enlargement that entered the Hebrew line in transmission.

Who advances it

The modern popular case is Hays's, but he stands squarely within the broader text-critical mainstream: P. Kyle McCarter's Anchor Bible I Samuel (1980) already treats "six" as a copyist's error, Emanuel Tov's standard Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible uses the verse to illustrate parablepsis, and Eugene Ulrich's study of the Qumran Samuel scroll argues that Josephus drew on a Hebrew text of the 4QSam^a type.² The reading is not the invention of an apologist reaching for a shorter giant; it is the ordinary judgment of the discipline, and Hays's contribution is to gather the witnesses and press translators and preachers to follow them.

The evidence for

The external evidence is the argument's spine, and it is strong on two counts—age and independence. "Four cubits and a span" is the reading of 4QSam^a, the oldest surviving Hebrew copy of the verse (first century BC), which predates the earliest complete Masoretic manuscript, the Aleppo Codex (c. AD 935), by roughly a thousand years. The same "four" is carried independently by the Septuagint—in the great uncials Vaticanus and Alexandrinus and in the Lucianic recension, so very probably in the Old Greek from the outset—and by Josephus, writing in Greek from a Hebrew source in the first century AD. Three witnesses from three traditions (Qumran Hebrew, Alexandrian Greek, a first-century Palestinian Jewish historian) converge on the shorter number, while "six" is attested in Hebrew only from the medieval Masoretic codices.³

Alongside the manuscripts sits a plausible mechanism, which answers the critic's proper question—"which reading best explains the other?" Hays and others propose parablepsis ("a looking by the side"): the Hebrew for "cubit" in v. 4 (ammah, אמה) closely resembles the word for "hundred" in v. 7 (me’ah, מאה), so a scribe's eye could slip down to the "six hundred shekels" of the spear-weight in v. 7 and carry the "six" back up into v. 4, turning "four cubits" into "six cubits." The reverse—a scribe changing an original "six" to "four"—has no comparably easy explanation, since it makes the miracle-story less impressive rather than more.⁴ And the internal, literary evidence points the same way: the story's spotlight is on the contrast between David and Saul, who 1 Samuel 9:2 marks as the exceptionally tall Israelite, "higher than any of the people." A Goliath of about 6′9″ is roughly Saul's own scale—which is why Saul's armor fits David (17:38–39) and why the king who should have answered the challenge, on sheer height, was Saul; a 9′9″ monster blunts that indictment.⁵

Adversarial assessment

What holds. The narrow text-critical claim—that "four cubits and a span" is the earliest recoverable reading—is about as secure as such judgments get. It follows the standard rules (prefer the older, broader, more independent attestation; prefer the reading that best explains the rise of the others), and it is the consensus of the critical editions and handbooks, not a fringe position. Importantly, the case does not depend on the supernatural being ruled out: no one is arguing "four" because a 9′9″ man is impossible—exceptional stature and gigantism are granted—but because the manuscripts that carry the verse earliest and independently read "four."

What is overstated or imprecise. Two cautions keep the finding honest. First, the mechanism is the argument's softest leg: even sympathetic writers note that parablepsis here requires the scribe's eye to skip unusually far down the column (from v. 4 to v. 7), so the eye-skip is a plausible illustration rather than a proof—but the external evidence carries "four" regardless of which precise slip produced "six," so little rides on it. Second, and more substantively, one must not let the textual claim swallow a different question: how tall was Goliath in reality? Clyde Billington—the serious counter-voice—does not simply defend the Masoretic "six"; he argues that "six" reckoned in the common cubit and "four" reckoned in the longer Egyptian royal cubit describe the same man, a Goliath of about eight feet, so that the variant may record a metrological conversion rather than a growing giant. If that is right, then granting "four" is the earlier text is fully compatible with a Goliath well over seven feet, and the word "inflation" overstates what the data compel: what is secure is the earlier reading, not a firm real-world height.⁶

A note on the rhetorical counter-case. The other frequently-cited defender of "six," William Barrick, is far weaker and should not be mistaken for Billington's metrological argument. Barrick repeatedly names the scroll "4QSam-b" and treats the shorter reading as a "deliberate alteration" by Qumran scribes—but the four-cubits reading is in 4QSam^a (4Q51); 4QSam^b (4Q52) preserves nothing from 1 Samuel 17 at all, so the manuscript he impugns is not the one that carries the reading. His case rests on the weight of the armor and spearhead "fitting" a 9.5-foot man and on Israel's terror making no sense otherwise—an appeal to plausibility that is not a text-critical rebuttal of the older attestation, and one Hays answers directly: a near-seven-foot warrior in bronze was still a monster to an army averaging five to five-and-a-half feet.⁷

Assessment

Sound. On the question the argument actually decides—which reading is earliest—"four cubits and a span" wins on the ordinary criteria of the discipline: it is the reading of the oldest Hebrew witness (4QSam^a), independently confirmed in the Greek and by Josephus, against a "six" that surfaces in Hebrew only in medieval codices; the parablepsis mechanism and the David-versus-Saul literary logic reinforce it; and it is the mainstream judgment of McCarter, Tov, and Ulrich, not an apologetic novelty. Keep two questions distinct, and the verdict is clean. That "four" is the earlier reading is sound. Whether Goliath really stood about 6′9″ or nearer eight feet is a separate, still-open matter, because Billington's cubit-length argument shows the two figures may describe one man—so read the assessment as endorsing the text-critical finding, not a fixed height, and flag the stronger word "inflation" as going a step beyond what the evidence compels. The one counter-case to discount outright is Barrick's, which misnames the scroll and argues from plausibility rather than attestation; Billington's is the one that keeps the real-height question genuinely open.

Sources