GOLIATH (Heb. Goljath). — Philistine hero, defeated and slain by David (1 Sam. 17). Gath (v.), but the ending of his name suggests that he was neither Canaanite nor of Philistine origin; he may have descended from the 'Anāqim, whom Joshua exterminated (Josh. 11:21).
He was of gigantic stature, measuring “six cubits and a span” in height (ca. 2.90 m); he was armed with a bronze helmet, a scale armor weighing about 40 kg, greaves, and carried a bronze javelin with an iron tip (5 kg), a large sword at his side, and a bronze scabbard slung from his shoulders. His armor-bearer preceded him, covering his entire body with a large shield. Goliath took part in a campaign against Saul in the land of Judah (“the valley of the terebinth,” now Wadi es-Sant), and as neither army decided to attack, he repeatedly challenged an Israelite hero to single combat: their duel would decide the war. Hearing the challenge, amid universal terror (unmoved by Saul’s rich promises), DAVIDE (v.), who happened to be present and accepted without hesitation, going to meet Goliath with his shepherd’s staff; Saul’s armor had proved burdensome to him. But the staff was a pretext: in his pouch he had five stones, and in his left hand, hidden, the sling. As Goliath, enraged at what he thought a jest, advanced uncovered against the shepherd, he received a stone to the forehead that killed him. The victor was convinced it had been the vengeance of “the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel,” challenged by the idolater. Later, David brought his head to Jerusalem as a trophy. The sword, first hung as a votive offering in the Tabernacle, would later be taken by David in his flight (1 Sam. 21:8-9).
Gino Bressan
ICONOGRAPHY. — In early Christian funerary art the giant does not appear in painting, but on sarcophagi, which depict the combat between him and David. The first example is offered by the lid of the sarcophagus of Ancona, in which the two antagonists prepare for battle; David holds the sling in his right hand and the shepherd’s staff in his left; Goliath is dressed as a Roman soldier (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, II, p. 264, pl. 14, 3).
The other sarcophagi are all from Gaul; that of Reims is known from a copy by Peiresc (Wilpert, ibid., p. 18, fig. 5 and p. 264); the Vienna Museum has two examples on two lids (ibid., p. 264, pl. 194, 1; p. 265, pl. 194, 2); in both these and the destroyed sarcophagus of Marseille (ibid., fig. 24, pp. 57 and 264), David is assisted in the combat by an angel. In the sarcophagus of Marseille, however, on the right side, was represented the single scene of the young David bringing the severed head of Goliath to King Saul.
In a basilica in Spain, perhaps Saragossa, at the beginning of the 5th century, David was depicted slaying Goliath. A record of this survives in the illustrative distich composed by the poet Prudentius (Dittocchacon, no. 19). The combat between David and Goliath is also carved in the Brescia casket (J. Kollwitz, Die Lipsanothek von Brescia, Berlin 1933, pp. 24, 62, pl. 3); on marble basin rims: one from Cyprus, now in the Louvre; a second found at Sbeitla, now in the Bardo Museum in Tunis; a third in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (E. Michon, Rebords de bassins chrétiens ornés de reliefs, in Revue biblique, new series, 13 [1916], p. 128).
The scene also appears in the 10th-century Greek Psalter 139 in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris (H. Omont, Fac-similés des plus anciens manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque nationale, Paris 1902, pl. 4, 7).
The “Ordo commendationis animae” preserves the invocation “Deliver, O Lord, the soul of thy servant, as thou didst deliver David... from the hand of Goliath.” — See pl. LXII.