גׇּלְיַת
Goliath
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Goliath’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H1555 appears in the Book of 2 Samuel — 1 distinct verse. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
2 Samuel
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
גלית — transliterated Golyath — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Goliath.” Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Samuel (67% of all occurrences). Spanning 6 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Its earliest occurrence is 1 Samuel 17:4. See 6-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1555 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 4 verses 67%
- 2 Samuel 1 verse 17%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 17%
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 6 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 83%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 17%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Goliath 5×
- American Standard Version: Goliath 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Goliath 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Goliath 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1555 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1555 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1555 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1555 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- Goliath = "splendour"
- the Philistine giant of Gath slain by David's sling
Word origin
גָּלְיַת n.pr.m. ( conspicuous ?) Philistine giant slain by David
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from גלה (gâlâh) (H1540) — to uncover.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
גָּלְיַת
- (b. h.) Goliath, the Philistine. Sot. VIII, 1 בנצחונו של ג׳ relying on the strength of G. Ib. 42ᵇ ג̇ל̇י̇ת … בג̇יל̇וי̇ פנים וכ׳ he is named G., because he stood before the Lord with barefacedness (defiance). Lev. R. s. 5; a. fr.
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms H1555 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| גָּלְיָ֣ת | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 20:5 | 2 |
| גָּלְיָ֥ת | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 17:4 | 2 |
| גָּלְיָ֨ת | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 21:9 | 1 |
| גָּלְיָת֩ | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 17:23 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1555, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- גולה gôwlâh H1473 exile
- גלה gᵉlâh H1541 to reveal
- גלות gâlûwth H1546 exile
- גליון gillâyôwn H1549 table
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Goliath). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Great. (1.) A famous giant of Gath, who for forty days openly defied the armies of Israel, but was at length slain by David with a stone from a sling (1 Sam. 17:4). He was probably descended from the Rephaim who found refuge among the Philistines after they were dispersed by the Ammonites (Deut. 2:20, 21). His height was "six cubits and a span," which, taking the cubit at 21 inches, is equal to 10 1/2 feet. David cut off his head (1 Sam. 17:51) and brought it to Jerusalem, while he hung the armour which he took from him in his tent. His sword was preserved at Nob as a religious trophy (21:9). David's victory over Goliath was the turning point in his life. He came into public notice now as the deliverer of Israel and the chief among Saul's men of war (18:5), and the devoted friend of Jonathan.
(2.) In 2 Sam. 21:19 there is another giant of the same name mentioned as slain by Elhanan. The staff of his apear "was like a weaver's beam." The Authorized Version interpolates the words "the brother of" from 1 Chr. 20:5, where this giant is called Lahmi.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(splendor), a famous giant of Gath, who "morning and evening for forty days" defied the armies of Israel. (1 Samuel 17:1) ... (B.C. 1063.) He was possibly descended from the old Rephaim [Giants], of whom a scattered remnant took refuge with the Philistines after their dispersion by the Ammonites. (2:20,21; 2 Samuel 21:22) His height was "six cubits and a span," which taking the cubit at 21 inches, would make him 10 1/2 feet high. The scene of his combat with David, by whom he was slain, was the "valley of the terebinth," between Shochoh and Arekah, probably among the western passes of Benjamin. In (2 Samuel 21:19) we find that another Goliath of Gath was slain by Elhanan, also a Bethlehemite.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
passage; revolution; heap
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
