Why are David and Goliath important?

Answer 1

Millions of young children have been taught the famous story of David slaying the Philistine giant, Goliath, to guide them to understand the greatness of the future King David and, perhaps, his God. Another episode, at 2 Samuel 21:19 casts further light on the legend of Goliath. The Hebrew Bible in English (JPS 1917 Edition) says*:

And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Beth-lehemite slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

In other words, there seems to be another tradition that Elhanan killed the same Goliath, which should cast doubt on the historicity and therefore the importance of Goliath's defeat by David.

1 Chronicles, written later and apparently copied from Samuel, attempted to resolve this in two ways. First, there is no mention of David killing Goliath, even though the Book of Kings presents this at the most important single feat leading to David being accepted as a potential king. Second, at 20:5, the book says that Lahmi (Elhanan) killed the brother of Goliath. Either the Chronicler was not convinced that the story of David and Goliath really happened, or he felt it too unimportant to include in Chronicles.

Footnote

*The King James (KJV) translation also adopted the Chronicler solution for 2 Samuel 21:19, adding 'the brother of' [in italics to indicate that this was not an exact translation], but most other English translations of the Book of Samuel seem to have continued with the Hebrew Bible version.