And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Ja'are-oregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.
There was again a battle in Gob. The scene of this contest is not mentioned (1 Chronicles 20:4). [The Septuagint has: en Rom; Alexandrine, en Gob.]
Where Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, a Beth-lehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, х 'Elchaanaan (H445), God-bestowed] - one of David's warriors. х Ya`ªreey-'Orgiym (H3296), forest of weavers. It is evident that 'irgiym, is spurious, and has been introduced by mistake from the eye of a transcriber catching the end of the following line, where oregim (weavers) stands.] This word being rejected, the clause is identical with that in the parallel passage, 1 Chronicles 20:5. Elhanan, the son of Jaur (Khethib), Jair (Qeri'), "slew ... Goliath the Gittite." Jerome ('Quest. Hebraicae,' in loco) considers Elhanan another name of David; Ewald has thrown out the conjecture that the name of David's opponent, who is commonly called "the Philistines" (1 Samuel 15:2), was borrowed from this. But modern criticism rejects these hypotheses, on various critical grounds, particularly for this region, that the incidents associated with the feat of Elhanan show it to have occurred in an advanced period of David's reign; and therefore, regarding the statement of the chronicler as the correct one, we consider the word "brother" as properly borrowed from that passage, and Beth-hal-lachma, a Beth-lehemite, as corrupt; so that the clause should be, 'Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite.'