2 Samuel 21:19...what does your Bible say?

http://www.tegart.com/brian/bible/kjvonly/2sam21_19.html

 

2 Sam. 21:19 (HCSB): Once again there was a battle with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam.

1 Chr. 20:5 (HCSB): Once again there was a battle with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam.

2 Sam. 21:19 obviously parallels 1 Chr. 20:5, and it is a stupid simplification to say that different people are being killed in the two passages. Benjamin Kennicott, a most revered Oxford scholar who assembled in the 18th century the largest Hebrew critical apparatus ever, and which has yet to be paralleled, contended that the Hebrew text 2 Sam. 21:19 is corrupt, as in Hebrew "lehemite" (2 Sam. 21:19) is exactly the same as "Lahmi" (1 Chr. 20:5), and "oregim" (2 Sam. 21:19) is exactly the same as "weaver's" (1 Chr. 20:5) in Hebrew.

In Hebrew, "Bethlehemite" is only one letter different than "Lahmi" (the latter does not have the Hebrew letter BET at the beginning). Kennicott's explanation was that the word for "weaver's" accidentally slipped into the line above it and thus was translated with the name of Jair, while the object form of "Lahmi" was accidentally or intentionally "corrected" by a scribe by adding a single Hebrew letter and thus became "Bethlehemite".

Some say the composer of 2 Samuel himself made the blunder. I prefer to leave all blunders and mistakes with scribes. (Some Baptist Board members, according to the Inerrancy Survery, prefer the former explanation, unfortunately.)

Yours,

Bluefalcon

 

The Hebrew text of 2 Sam. 21:19 didn't drop out the phrase "brother of", it just confused it with the Hebrew object marker (or "accusative" case) of the original. It also confused several other things as I listed in my previous post. OT Hebrew scholars accept this as fact, but translations are unwilling to eliminate these blatant errors, when they are reasonably known to have occurred, in the Hebrew manuscript tradition, and leave translations as more errant than necessary. This is also one reason why a belief in the inerrancy of the autographs (which don't exist, although they can reasonably be reconstructed) is the only rational proposition in a doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Scribes and translators make mistakes. God doesn't. Sometimes the errors of scribes and translators need to be corrected, and the Hebrew text is unique in this regard, I mean, for crying out loud, the "Hebrew" MSS we have are in Aramaic script instead of actual Hebrew script!

One more point. The fact that scribes copying 2 Sam. 21:19 after the errors were made did not take it upon themselves to change the text back to a proposed original is testimony to just how faithful they were on a general scale.

Yours,

Bluefalcon

 

For completeness sake I will add the other explanation sometimes given.
David never killed Goliath, he stole the credit of Elhanan son of Jair. II Chr. was edited to match, II Samuel wasn't.

 

The "I" is clearly understood and not implied as you pointed out because of the spelling (particularly the ending) of the Spanish word. The Spanish word itself is modified and therefore it is not necessary to put the personal pronoun in italics when translating to English.

Bebo _ I drink.
Bebemos - We drink.

The KJV translators supplied words in italics where there was no such definite clarity of text.


HankD

 

There is every possibility that Elhanan whacked Goliath, Jr. After all, this event occurred long after David had rocked to sleep the Goliath of Saul's day.

It's possible that G's dad named a subsequent son Goliath. That practice isn't unheard-of even in modern times. Or, Elhanan's target coulda been any other male relative of the original Big G.

Or, some scribe coulda simply gotten up on the wrong side of the bed one day and borfed his work.

Lotsa explanations possible. These differences in texts aren't a modern discovery.

 

These kinds of "explanations" are more harmful than helpful, because in the parallel passage of 1 Chr. 20:5 it is definitely the brother of Goliath that Elhanan kills. The passages are so similar in Hebrew it obviously came from the same source, and they are actually identical when one considers exactly how the ancient scribe confused similar words for others.

Explanations like those above only confuse the issue and actually end up elevating the known errors of scribes to inspired truth! These kind of "brilliant" explanations have ticked me off for a long time, not only regarding the OT, but also the NT.

Yours,

Bluefalcon

 

Please don't mind my interrupting . Bluefalcon, do you like falconry? Just wondering.

-Alycia

 

Oh. I'm quite diappointed.

-Alycia

 

Keil and Delitzsch offer some good comments on 2 Sam. 21:19:

(vid., 1Ch_20:5). In another war with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan the son of Yaare-Orgim of Bethlehem smote Goliath of Gath, whose spear was like a weaver's beam. In the Chronicles, however, we find it stated that “Elhanan the son of Jair smote Lahmi the brother of Goliath of Gath, whose spear,” etc. The words of our text are so similar to those of the Chronicles, if we only leave out the word ארגים, which probably crept in from the next line through oversight on the part of a copyist, that they presuppose the same original text, so that the difference can only have arisen from an error in copying. The majority of the expositors (e.g., Piscator, Clericus, Michaelis, Movers, and Thenius) regard the text of the Chronicles as the true and original one, and the text before us as simply corrupt. But Bertheau and Böttcher maintain the opposite opinion, because it is impossible to see how the reading in 2 Samuel. could grow out of that in the Chronicles; whereas the reading in the 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.

 

I see that there is a problem in my post above with the Hebrew fonts. However, all ten volumes of the English Translation of the commentary on the Old Testament by Keil and Delitzsch can be downloaded for free into a free downloadable Bible study program at http://www.e-sword.net/index.html.