HistoricalChristian.Faith

Is "Elhanan" in 2 Samuel 21:19 simply another name for David himself?

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: weak — the crux's earliest attested resolution, and a genuine historical witness, but it does not hold on its best available case: it dissolves the contradiction only by identifying Elhanan with David, an equation no text makes, which an independent Bethlehemite Elhanan in David's Thirty and the different battle-setting tell against · advanced by Targum Jonathan (c. 400), pseudo-Jerome (Christian-Latin form), and Rashi (c. 1090); transmitted with candid doubt by Radak (c. 1200)

The claim

"Elhanan — David. We know that it was David who killed Goliath in Shmuel I, 17:51, consequently this Elhanan must be David."

— Rashi on II Samuel 21:19, via Sefaria. The reading this serves: there is no contradiction between 1 Samuel 17 and 2 Samuel 21:19 because the "Elhanan" of the later verse is David under another name — so the same man, David/Elhanan, killed Goliath, and 2 Samuel 21:19 merely restates the duel of 1 Samuel 17 rather than competing with it. On this reading the strange patronymic "son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite" is not a father's name but a bundle of epithets for David: the Aramaic Targum Jonathan renders the whole clause "David the son of Jesse, weaver of the curtains of the sanctuary… killed Goliath the Gittite," reading oregim ("weavers") as David's weaving of the Temple veil and "Jaare" ("forest") as the acacia-wood sanctuary.¹

Who advances it

This is the oldest surviving answer to the crux — older than either direction-of-corruption reading. Its fountainhead is Targum Jonathan (final redaction c. 400), which turns the verse into a description of David; the Christian-Latin pseudo-Jerome (Quaestiones Hebraicae, read for centuries as Jerome's) makes the same move in Latin, translating "Elhanan" as Adeodatus ("God-given") and reasoning "Adeodatus ipse est David… that Adeodatus is David himself the following words declare, where it says: These four… fell by the hand of David and of his servants."² Rashi (c. 1090) fixes the identification as the standard medieval Jewish harmonization, and a century later Radak reports it — but with the candor the reading most needs and least supplies: having quoted the Targum's "David… killed Goliath," he adds, "but as to why [Scripture] called David 'Elhanan,' I do not know the reason for it."³

The evidence for

The reading has three real points in its favour, and they should be stated at their strongest rather than through the Targum's midrashic wordplay. First, it is the earliest attested resolution of the crux, so it carries the weight of a genuinely old reading tradition — the identification is already assumed by the translator of the Prophets into Aramaic. Second, it keeps the consonantal Hebrew of 2 Samuel 21:19 exactly as it stands: unlike the emenders who correct Samuel from Chronicles, it changes no letter, resolving the difficulty by exegesis. Third — the point that steelmans it beyond pious wordplay — a single Israelite bearing two names is a well-attested biblical phenomenon, especially a personal name beside a throne or honorific name: Gideon is Jerubbaal, Solomon is Jedidiah, Uzziah is Azariah. On that footing "Elhanan" ("God has shown grace") could be a birth-name and "David" ("beloved") the regnal name, and the identification would not be an ad-hoc device but an instance of an ordinary pattern. Pseudo-Jerome leans precisely there, and on the chapter's own closing note (2 Samuel 21:22) that these giants "fell by the hand of David and of his servants."⁴

Adversarial assessment

What holds. As history, the reading matters: it is the first recorded attempt to answer "who killed Goliath?", and it shows that the difficulty was felt, and met by harmonization, already in antiquity. As exegesis, its instinct — that Scripture does not contradict itself here — is shared by the surviving conservative reading (the scribal-correction argument), and it reaches that conclusion without emending anything.

What fails. On its own best case the reading still does not hold, for reasons that stack. (1) No text equates the two names. Every genuine two-name case in Scripture is one the text itself records — "the LORD called his name Jedidiah" (2 Samuel 12:25); "Jerubbaal, who is Gideon" (1 Samuel 12:11; Judges 6:32). Nothing anywhere calls David "Elhanan"; the equation is pure inference, made solely to remove the contradiction, which is what Radak's "I do not know the reason" concedes. (2) There is already a separate Bethlehemite Elhanan. Two chapters later, 2 Samuel 23:24 lists among David's Thirty "Elhanan the son of Dodo of Bethlehem" — a real, distinct warrior of exactly this name and town, standing beside David in the same book, so "Elhanan the Bethlehemite" plainly denotes someone who is not the king.⁵ (3) The setting is wrong for David's duel. David felled Goliath as a youth in the Valley of Elah (1 Samuel 17); 2 Samuel 21:18–19 sets its killing at Gob, among the later Philistine wars of David's reign fought by his officers — a different battle at a different place in a different period of his life.⁶ (4) The patronymic dissolution is midrash, not lexicography. Turning "Jaare-oregim" into "weaver of the sanctuary curtains" is homiletical wordplay on ya'ar/"forest" and oregim/"weavers," not a defensible reading of a proper name; the same oregim that the Targum spiritualizes is, on the text-critical account, simply a stray duplication of the "weaver's beam" at the verse's end.⁷

The two-names steelman is what keeps the reading from being baseless rather than merely weak, but it cannot carry it: the phenomenon it invokes is always textually anchored, and here the text anchors the opposite — a different Elhanan of Bethlehem, a different battlefield. And the reading is dominated even for its own purpose. A defender who wants David to keep the kill has a cleaner route: the scribal-correction reading, on which Elhanan really is a distinct man who slew a different giant (Goliath's brother), leaving David the sole slayer of Goliath without having to collapse two people into one. Identifying Elhanan with David buys nothing that reading does not buy more economically, at the cost of an equation the text never makes.

Assessment

Weak. The interpretation is coherent only as pious harmonization: it dissolves the crux by declaring Elhanan to be David, an identification no verse supports, that a separate Bethlehemite Elhanan among the Thirty tells against, that the Gob setting of David's later wars tells against, and that even its medieval transmitter (Radak) could not explain. Its historical importance is real and independent of its truth — it is the earliest witness to the difficulty and the earliest attempt to answer it, and belongs on the timeline for that reason — but as a solution it does not hold on its best available case. Note the contrast with the scribal-correction reading, which secures the same conservative aim (David keeps the kill) without collapsing him into Elhanan, and so is to be preferred by anyone drawn to this one's goal.

Sources