Lahmi

Lahmi is named once in the Hebrew Bible, identified as the brother of Goliath the Gittite and slain by Elhanan in one of David's Philistine campaigns. The Chronicler's notice stands as the verse where the name itself surfaces; the parallel narrative in Samuel describes the same combat but reads differently in its naming.

The Brother of Goliath

The Chronicler's account places Lahmi within the cycle of Philistine wars: "And there was again war with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam" (1Ch 20:5). The detail of the spear-shaft "like a weaver's beam" is the same descriptor attached to Goliath himself in the Davidic combat tradition, and here it is transferred to his brother Lahmi.

The Parallel in Samuel

The parallel verse in Samuel describes the same engagement but reads "Goliath the Gittite" rather than "Lahmi the brother of Goliath": "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 two verses preserve the same combat — the slayer Elhanan, the giant opponent, and the weaver's-beam spear — with the divergence falling on whether the slain man is Goliath himself or his brother Lahmi. The name Lahmi appears only in the Chronicler's form of the report.