Beam

The weaver's beam — the heavy wooden bar that anchors the warp threads on a loom — supplies a stock comparison for the size of a Philistine giant's spear-shaft. The figure recurs twice in the Samuel narratives, attached to Goliath in the David story and again to a giant felled at Gob.

Goliath's Spear at Elah

When the champion from Gath comes out, his armor is described first and then his weapon, and the weaver's beam supplies the scale of its shaft: "And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head [weighed] six hundred shekels of iron: and his shield-bearer went before him" (1Sa 17:7). The image is concrete to anyone who had seen a loom — a thick wooden bar carrying the warp — and it fixes the spear in the reader's mind as something no ordinary man could wield.

Elhanan and the Giant at Gob

The same comparison reappears in the catalogue of Philistine giants killed in David's later wars: "And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan the son of Jari the Beth-lehemite slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam" (2Sa 21:19). The weaver's-beam shaft becomes a recognized Philistine giant-marker in this stratum of the tradition.