David said to Ahimelech, “Isn’t there here under your hand spear or sword? For I have neither brought my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.”
World English Bible
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
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David said to Ahimelech, “Isn’t there here under your hand spear or sword? For I have neither brought my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.”
World English Bible
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
1 Samuel 17 credits David with killing Goliath of Gath. 2 Samuel 21:19 says Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim killed Goliath the Gittite, identifying Goliath specifically by the same weapon-description ("the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam") used for Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:7.
Critical scholarship: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction.
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
One of these tensions involves a difference in wording across manuscripts or translations. Examine the original language on Lemma →
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"1 Samuel 21:8 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/1-samuel/21/8?version=WEB (retrieved 27 August 2026).