FRIENDS OF 17勛圖WEBINARS
“And the shaft of his spear was like a weavers beam” (I Sam 17:6-7): Weaponry, Weaving, and Broken Similes in the Duel between David and Goliath
Friends of 17勛圖present the next webinar of the 2024-2025 season on October 23, 2024, at 7:00 pm EDT, presented by Prof. Laura Mazow. This webinar will be free and open to the public. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a recording link in the days following the webinar.
You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel色 declares David. Having previously rebuffed the loan of King Sauls armor, David advances against Goliath armed only with a sling shot and five smooth stones. Goliath, on the other hand, is in full battle gear. His armament is described in meticulous detail: bronze helmet, coat of mail and greaves, a javelin between his shoulders, and a spear, whose shaft was like a weavers beam and whose head weighed six hundred shekels of iron色 (I Sam 17:7).
There are two questions that arise, however, when examining Goliaths weaponry, especially within the context of the rest of the story. The first is, where is the sword in this descriptionthe one that David will use to behead Goliath and which is later given to David by the priest Ahimelech that is like no other (I Sam 21: 9)? The second asks, what is a weavers beam and what is the meaning of the simile comparing it to a spear? Yadins suggestion that the simile referenced a thonged javelin is awkward and doesnt provide an answer to the missing sword.
Alternatively, Prof. Mazow proposes that Goliaths sword was an Aegean or Anatolian long sword, a cut-and-thrust tool that could be used to both pierce Goliaths armor and cut off his head. The narrator, describing an instrument unknown in the Israelite weapons inventory, compared Goliaths sword to a weavers sword: a blade-shaped tool used to beat in the weft. Eventually neither the weavers tool nor the Philistines weapon could be conceived, and the description comes down to us as a spear-like weapon with a shaft that resembled a type of weaving tool, a broken simile that no longer described the shape and size of the foreign object.
Reconstructing Goliaths martial outfitting has raised issues about the historicity of the textual narrative and the veracity of its details that have been engaged in debates on Goliaths ethnicity and the dating of this text. Rather than reading Goliaths weaponry as either historically inaccurate or so eclectic that it is unrepresentative of time and place, this proposal contextualizes the narrative details within an historical framework and reveals the dynamism of the textual transmission process.
is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director in the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University. She received her BA in History from Georgetown University, and her MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona with a dissertation based on data from the Iron Age Philistine site of Tel Miqne-Ekron.
Laura has excavated at sites in Israel and Jordan, including Beth-Shean, Ashkelon, Gilat, Khirbet Iskander, Megiddo and Tel Miqne-Ekron. Her professional research interests include the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa, with a particular focus on the study of ancient weaving and wool processing tools and technologies. Lauras recent publications include: Why all Tubs are not Bathtubs, Biblical Archaeological Review, Spring 2023: 1618 and (forthcoming), Ill-weavd ambition, how much art thou shrunk! Re-examining At the Fullers UET 6/2, 414 (Old Babylonian) as a Dialogue Between Weaver and Fuller. She leads an ongoing collaborative project to investigate the function of ancient bathtubs. Were they used for bathing, burial, or textile production?