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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Samuel 21:15 - 21:15
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Heroic Acts Performed in the Wars with the Philistines. - The brief accounts contained in these verses of different heroic feats were probably taken from a history of David's wars drawn up in the form of chronicles, and are introduced here as practical proofs of the gracious deliverance of David out of the hand of all his foes, for which he praises the Lord his God in the psalm of thanksgiving which follows, so that the enumeration of these feats is to be regarded as supplying a historical basis for the psalm.
2Sa 21:15-16
The Philistines had war with Israel again. עֹוד (again) refers generally to earlier wars with the Philistines, and has probably been taken without alteration from the chronicles employed by our author, where the account which follows was attached to notices of other wars. This may be gathered from the books of the Chronicles, where three of the heroic feats mentioned here are attached to the general survey of David's wars (vid., 1Ch 20:4). David was exhausted in this fight, and a Philistian giant thought to slay him; but Abishai came to his help and slew the giant. He was called Yishbo benob (Keri, Yishbi), i.e., not Yishbo at Nob, but Yishbobenob, a proper name, the meaning of which is probably “his dwelling is on the height,” and which may have been given to him because of his inaccessible castle. He was one of the descendants of Raphah, i.e., one of the gigantic race of Rephaim. Raphah was the tribe-father of the Rephaim, an ancient tribe of gigantic stature, of whom only a few families were left even in Moses' time (vid., Deu 2:11; Deu 3:11, Deu 3:13, and the commentary on Gen 14:5). The weight of his lance, i.e., of the metal point to his lance, was three hundred shekels, or eight pounds, of brass, half as much as the spear of Goliath (1Sa 17:7); “and he was girded with new armour.” Böttcher has no doubt given the correct explanation of the word חֲדָשָׁה; he supposes the feminine to be used in a collective sense, so that the noun (“armour,” כֵּלָיו) could be dispensed with. (For parallels both to the words and facts, vid., Jdg 18:11 and Deu 1:41.) וַיֹּאמֶר, he said (sc., to himself), i.e., he thought.
2Sa 21:17
The danger into which the king had been brought in this war, and out of which he had been rescued solely by Abishai's timely help, induced his attendants to make him swear that he would not go into battle any more in person. לֹו נִשְׁבַּע, administered an oath to him, i.e., fixed him by a promise on oath. תְכַבֶּה וְלֹא תְכַבֶּ, “and shalt not extinguish the light of Israel.” David had become the light of Israel from the fact that Jehovah was his light (2Sa 22:29), or, according to the parallel passage in Psa 18:29, that Jehovah had lighted his lamp and enlightened his darkness, i.e., had lifted him out of a state of humiliation and obscurity into one of honour and glory. The light (or lamp) is a figure used to represent the light of life as continually burning, i.e., life in prosperity and honour. David's regal life and actions were the light which the grace of God had kindled for the benefit of Israel. This light he was not to extinguish, namely by going into the midst of war and so exposing his valuable life to danger.
2Sa 21:18
(compare 1Ch 20:4). In a second war, Sibbechai and Hushathite slew Saph the Rephaite at Gob. According to 1Ch 27:11, Sibbechai, one of the gibborim of David (1Ch 11:29), was the leader of the eighth division of the army (see at 2Sa 23:27). הַחֻשָׁתִי is a patronymic from חוּשָׁה in 1Ch 4:4. The scene of conflict is called Gob in our text, and Gezer in the Chronicles. As Gob is entirely unknown. Thenius supposes it to be a slip of the pen for Gezer; but this is improbable, for the simple reason that Gob occurs again in 2Sa 21:19. It may possibly have been a small place somewhere near to Gezer, which some suppose to have stood on the site of el Kubab, on the road from Ramleh to Yalo (see at Jos 10:33). The name Saph is written Sippai in the Chronicles.
2Sa 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 יָעוּר, instead of Jairi (the reading according to the Chethib), and the former is probably the correct way of writing the name.
2Sa 21:20-21
(cf. 1Ch 20:6-7). In another war at Gath, a Philistian warrior, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot,
(Note: Men with six fingers and six toes have been met with elsewhere. Pliny (h. nat. xi. 43) speaks of certain sedigiti (six-fingered) Romans. This peculiarity is even hereditary in some families. Other examples are collected by Trusen (Sitten, Gebräuche, und Krankheiten der alten Hebräer, pp. 198-9, ed. 2) and Friedreich (zur Bible, i. 298-9).)
defied Israel, and was slain by Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother of David (see at 2Sa 13:3). The Chethib מדין is probably to be read מַדִּין, an archaic plural (“a man of measures, or extensions:” de Dieu, etc.); in the Chronicles we find the singular מִדָּה instead.
2Sa 21:22
(cf. 1Ch 20:8). This verse contains a postscript, in which the previous verses are summed up. The accusative אֶת־אַרְבַּעַת may be explained from a species of attraction, i.e., from the fact that the historian had יַכֵּהוּ (2Sa 21:21) still in his mind: “As for these four, they were born to Rapha,” i.e., they were descendants of the Rephaite family at Gath, where remnants of the aboriginal Canaanitish tribes of gigantic stature were still to be found, as in other towns of the Philistines (vid., Jos 11:22). “They fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.” “By the hand of David” refers to the fact that David had personally fought with Yishbobenob (2Sa 21:16).