1 Samuel 17:4

And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines,.... Or a "middle person", or a man "between two" (y); meaning either one that went and stood between the two armies of Israel and the

And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

A champion, Heb. a man between two, either because he used to come forth, and stand between the two armies; or because he moved that the business should be decided between two, whereof he would be one. Whose height was six cubits and a span; which is not strange, for besides the giants mentioned in Scripture, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny, and others, make mention of persons seven cubits high, which is near double to an ordinary man’ s height.

1 Samuel 17:4 And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height [was] six cubits and a span.Ver. 4. And there went out a champion.] Intermedius, sequester, duellio. The Vulgate calleth him a bastard: and it is held by some that those old giants were the devil’ s brats, and that there was none of them good, no not one, but all αντιθεοι, and θεομαχοι, fighters against God. This man was of the race of the Rephaims. See Joshua 11:22. Whose height was six cubits and a span.] Hence his presumption, which is the presage and cause of ruin - “ Magna repente ruunt, summa cadunt subito. ” Dυνατος. - Sept. Josephus thinks they were begotten of Incubi devils.

(3, 4) And the Philistines stood. . . .—Conder, in his Tent Work in Palestine, writing on the spot, gives us a vivid picture of the scene of the well-known encounter between David and the giant Philistine:—“We may picture to ourselves the two hosts covering the low rocky hills opposite to each other, and half hidden among the lentisk bushes. Between them was the rich expanse of the ripening barley, and the red banks of the torrent, with its white shingly bed. Behind all were the distant blue hill-walls of Judah, whence Saul had just come down. The mail-clad warrior advanced from the west through the low corn, with his mighty lance perhaps tufted with feathers, his brazen helmet shining in the sun. From the east a ruddy boy in his white shirt and sandals, armed with a goat’s-hair sling, came down to the brook, and, according to the poetic fancy of the Rabbis, the pebbles were given voices, and cried, ‘By us shalt thou overcome the giant !’ The champion fell from an unseen cause, and the wild Philistines fled to the mouth of the valley, where Gath stood towering on its white chalk cliff, a frontier fortress, the key to the high road leading to the corn-lands of Judah and to the vineyards of Hebron.” Goliath, of Gath.—The Philistine champion belonged to a race or family of giants, the remnant of the sons of Anak (see Joshua 11:22), who still dwelt in Gath and Gaza and Ashdod. The height mentioned was about nine feet two inches. We have in history a few instances of similar giants. This doughty champion was “full of savage insolence, unable to understand how any one could contend against his brute strength and impregnable panoply; the very type of the stupid ‘Philistine,’ such as has, in the language of modern Germany, not unfitly identified the name with the opponents of light and freedom and growth.”—Stanley.

Verse 4. There went out a champion] Our word champion comes from campus, the field; Campio est enim ille qui pugnat in campo, hoc est, in castris, "Champion is he, properly, who fights in the field; i.e., in camps." A man well skilled in arms, strong, brave, and patriotic. But is this the meaning of the original איש הבנים ish habbenayim, a middle man, the man between two; that is, as here, the man who undertakes to settle the disputes between two armies or nations. So our ancient champions settled disputes between contending parties by what was termed camp fight, hence the campio or champion. The versions know not well what to make of this man. The Vulgate calls him sir spurius, "a bastard;" the Septuagint, ανηρδυνατος, "a strong or powerful man;" the Targum, גברא מביניהון gabra mibbeyneyhon, "a man from between them;" the Arabic, [Arabic] rujil jibar, "a great or gigantic man;" the Syriac is the same; and Josephus terms him ανηρπαμμεγεθιστατος, "an immensely great man." The Vulgate has given him the notation of spurius or bastard, because it considered the original as expressing a son of two, i.e., a man whose parents are unknown. Among all these I consider our word champion, as explained above, the best and most appropriate to the original terms. Whose height was six cubits and a span.] The word cubit signifies the length from cubitus, the elbow, to the top of the middle finger, which is generally rated at one foot six inches. The span is the distance from the top of the middle finger to the end of the thumb, when extended as far as they can stretch on a plain; this is ordinarily nine inches. Were we sure that these were the measures, and their extent, which are intended in the original words, we could easily ascertain the height of this Philistine; it would then be nine feet nine inches, which is a tremendous height for a man. But the versions are not all agreed in his height. The Septuagint read τεσσαρωνπηχεωνκαισπιθαμης, four cubits and a span; and Josephus reads the same. It is necessary however to observe that the Septuagint, in the Codex Alexandrinus, read with the Hebrew text. But what was the length of the ancient cubit? This has been variously computed; eighteen inches, twenty inches and a half, and twenty-one inches. If we take the first measurement, he was nine feet nine; if the second, and read palm instead of span, with the Vulgate and others, he was ten feet seven inches and a half; if we take the last, which is the estimate of Graevius, with the span, he was eleven feet three inches; or if we go to the exactest measurement, as laid down in Bishop Cumberland's tables, where he computes the cubit at 21.888 inches, the span at 10.944 inches, and the palm at 3.684 inches, then the six cubits and the span will make exactly 11 feet 10.272 inches.

4–11. Goliath’s Challenge 4. a champion] Lit. “The (well-known) man of the interspaces,” or “interval between two camps” (Gr. μεταίχμιον: see Eur. Phoen. 1361, in the account of the combat between Eteocles and Polynices), in which single combats took place: so E. V. rightly “champion.” Goliath of Gath] A survivor probably of the ancient race of Anakim, a remnant of which found refuge in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod, when they were exterminated by Joshua from the mountains of Judah (Joshua 11:21-22). six cubits and a span] The cubit, or distance from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger, is variously estimated at from eighteen to twenty-one inches: the span, or distance between the extremities of the thumb and little finger in the outstretched hand, is reckoned as half a cubit: so that Goliath’s height was between nine feet nine inches and eleven feet four inches. The most probable estimate is about ten feet three inches. Among parallel instances of gigantic stature may be quoted Pusio and Secundilla, who lived in the reign of Augustus, and are said by Pliny (Nat. Hist. VII. 16) to have been over ten feet high. Josephus says that a certain Eleazar the giant who was sent to the emperor Tiberius, was seven cubits high.

A champion - literally, “a man between the two camps:” i. e., one who did not fight in the ranks like an ordinary soldier, but came forth into the space between the hostile camps to challenge the

4. A champion — The Septuagint has, a mighty man; Vulgate, bastard; Syriac and Arabic, a giant.