2 Samuel 21:20

And there was yet a battle in Gath,.... Besides the battles in the above place or places; for this does not necessarily suppose that one of the said battles had been there, only that this, which was

And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.

In Gath, i. e. in the territory of the city of Gath; which circumstance intimates that this, and consequently the other battles here described, were fought before David had taken Gath out of the hands of the Philistines, which he did , compared with , and therefore not in the last days of David, as some conceive from their mention in this place. A man of great stature, or, a man of Middin or Madon, as the LXX. render it; so called from the place of his birth, as Goliath is said to be of Gath for the same reason.

2 Samuel 21:20 And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of [great] stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.Ver. 20. A man of treat stature.] Yet not so great, likely, as he of whom Pliny writeth, that he was found in Crete, in the opening of a monument by an earthquake, to have been forty-six cubits long. Fides sit penes Authorem.

Verse 20. On every hand six fingers] This is not a solitary instance: Tavernier informs us that the eldest son of the emperor of Java, who reigned in 1648, had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. And Maupertuis, in his seventeenth letter, says that he met with two families near Berlin, where sedigitism was equally transmitted on both sides of father and mother. I saw once a young girl, in the county of Londonderry, in Ireland, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, but her stature had nothing gigantic in it. The daughters of Caius Horatius, of patrician dignity, were called sedigitae, because they had six fingers on each hand. Volcatius, a poet, was called sedigitus for the same reason. See Pliny's Hist. Nat., lib. xi., cap. 43. THERE are evidently many places in this chapter in which the text has suffered much from the ignorance or carelessness of transcribers; and indeed I suspect the whole has suffered so materially as to distort, if not misrepresent the principal facts. It seems as if a Gibeonite has had something to do with the copies that are come down to us, or that the first fourteen verses have been inserted from a less authentic document than the rest of the book. I shall notice some of the most unaccountable, and apparently exceptionable particulars: - 1. The famine, 2 Samuel 21:1, is not spoken of anywhere else, nor at all referred to in the books of Kings or Chronicles; and, being of three years' duration, it was too remarkable to be omitted in the history of David. 2. The circumstance of Saul's attempt to exterminate the Gibeonites is nowhere else mentioned; and, had it taken place, it is not likely it would have been passed over in the history of Saul's transgressions. Indeed, it would have been such a breach of the good faith by which the whole nation was bound to this people, that an attempt of the kind could scarcely have failed to raise an insurrection through all Israel. 3. The wish of David that the Gibeonites, little better than a heathenish people, should bless the inheritance of the Lord, is unconstitutional and unlikely. 4. That God should leave the choice of the atonement to such a people, or indeed to any people, seems contrary to his established laws and particular providence. 5. That he should require seven innocent men to be hung up in place of their offending father, in whose iniquity they most likely never had a share, seems inconsistent with justice and mercy. 6. In 2 Samuel 21:8, there is mention made of five sons of Michal, which she bore (ילדה yaledah) unto Adriel. Now, 1. Michal was never the wife of Adriel, but of David and Phaltiel. 2. She never appears to have had any children, see 2 Samuel 6:23; this I have been obliged to correct in the preceding notes by putting Merab in the place of Michal. 7.

20. six fingers … six toes] Pliny mentions such a peculiarity (Hist. Nat. 11:43), and it is not unknown in modern times.

20. Six fingers… six toes — Persons thus abnormal have been elsewhere met with. “Tavernier informs us that the eldest son of the emperor of Java, who reigned in 1648, had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot.