And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam,.... The wooden part of it, held in the hand; this for thickness was like the beam in the weaver's loom, about which the warp, or else the web, is rolled; and it is conjectured that, in proportion to the stature of Goliath, his spear must be twenty six feet long, since Hector's in Homer m was eleven cubits, or sixteen feet and a half:
and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron; the iron part of the spear, the point of it, which has its name in Hebrew from a flame of fire, because when brandished it looks shining and flaming; and being the weight of six hundred shekels, amounted to eighteen pounds and three quarters of avoirdupois weight, and the whole spear is supposed to weigh thirty seven pounds and a half; and the whole of this man's armour is thought to weigh two hundred and seventy two pounds, thirteen ounces n; which was a prodigious weight for a man to carry, and go into battle with; and one may well wonder how he could be able with such a weight about him to move and lay about in an engagement; though this is nothing in comparison of the weight some men have carried. Pliny o tells us that he saw one Athanatus come into the theatre clothed with a leaden breastplate of five hundred pounds weight, and shod with buskins of the same weight:
and one bearing a shield went before him; which when engaged in battle he held in his own hand, and his sword in the other; the former was reckoned at thirty pounds, and the latter at four pounds, one ounce; though one would think he had no occasion for a shield, being so well covered with armour all over; so that the carrying of it before him might be only a matter of form and state. His spear is the only piece of armour that was of iron, all the rest were of brass; and Hesiod p, writing of the brazen age, says, their arms and their houses were all of brass, for then there was no iron; and so Lucretius q affirms that the use of brass was before iron; but both are mentioned together, Genesis 4:22, hence Mars is called χαλχεος αρης r.
m Iliad. 18. n Hostius, ut supra. o Nat. Hist. l. 7. c. 20. p Opera & Dies, l. 1. ver. 147, 148. q "De rerum natura". l. 5. & "prior aeris erat", &c. r Homer. Iliad. 5. ver. 704, 859, 864. Pindar. Olymp. Ode 10.