1 Chronicles20chapter 20

1 Chronicles 20:1-3

The campaign against Rabbah opens with the same words 2 Samuel 11:1 uses to open its own account, at the time that kings go out to battle, and Chronicles keeps the phrase while cutting everything Samuel set inside it. Between David tarried at Jerusalem and the fall of the city, 2 Samuel 11-12 records Bathsheba, Uriah's death, Nathan's rebuke and Solomon's birth, and none of it appears here. The Chronicler moves straight from the siege to the crown taken off the Ammonite king's head, a talent of gold set on David's own, keeping the victory and passing over the sin that ran beside it.

1 Chronicles 20:4

Samuel places this same fight at Gob (2 Samuel 21:18); Chronicles names the place Gezer, and the bench reads the two as either a second name for one field or a copying variant, without settling which. Sippai answers to Saph in the Samuel text, one of the children of the giant, the Rapha clan of Gath that runs through the rest of this chapter. Sibbechai the Hushathite already stands among David's mighty men at 1 Chronicles 11:29, so the victory is not left to an anonymous soldier.

1 Chronicles 20:5

Chronicles names what 2 Samuel 21:19 leaves harder to read: there Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim slew the brother of Goliath, with the words the brother of supplied by most translators to close a reading many hold corrupt in the underlying Hebrew, while here Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, a name and a relation stated outright. Keil and much of the bench take the Chronicles text as preserving the reading Samuel's own copying lost, while others hold that Goliath was a title carried by more than one champion of Gath. Both texts stand as they are written, and this chapter does not resolve the question beyond naming Lahmi as the man Elhanan killed.

1 Chronicles 20:6-7

The Gath giant of verse 6 carries twenty-four digits, six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, a mark of the same stock 2 Samuel 21:20 already describes and 2 Samuel 21:22 sums up as born to the giant in Gath. Jonathan the son of Shimea, David's own nephew, kills him when he defies Israel, the family circle widening the victory past David and his named mighty men. The bench reads these Gath giants as the Rephaim line behind Goliath himself, the stock Numbers 13:33 and Joshua 11:22 already trace into Gath's remnant after the conquest.

1 Chronicles 20:8

The summary names the source directly, these were born unto the giant, the Hebrew behind it the sons of Rapha, a clan name rather than one man's own title, and it fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants across three separate fights. Joshua 11:22 already left an Anakim remnant standing only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod, and this verse shows that remnant still producing champions in Gath generations later. The chapter closes the giant line David's whole reign has met, from Goliath's own death at the hand of a shepherd to this last brother and this last nameless son of Rapha.