This page was originally created in July 2017, and most recently edited 2023-9-6
This page is the first in a two-part series. For part 2, see part 2.
While there is ongoing debate over how much of the Bible’s stories are historical, it is fair to say that there are some consensus positions that have been reached. Genesis, for the most part, contains stories that are not historical in nature, except insofar as the characters personify later national realities. The kings, from about Rehoboam and Jeroboam onward, are generally acknowledged to have existed. Despite some skeptics, I think it’s fair to say that Saul, David, and Solomon had some kind of historical memory behind them, though I don’t think there’s a lot of consensus on how much. This post will deal with things in the biblical timeline around the time of David to somewhat before. I’m aware of some scholarship that touches on some of the questions I’ll raise, but I don’t know if any other person has connected all the dots I’ll try to connect in this post. Some of the material here is pretty standard in biblical studies, but my idea about Jonathan is more speculative and should not be taken too seriously.
Shagee
Let’s start with the very obscure biblical character named Shagee. The Bible has nothing to say about Shagee, and mentions him only insofar as he is related to his son, another minor figure, who appears in a list of David’s Thirty, a group of thirty-ish warriors who are supposed to have formed some important part of David’s forces. Taking just three verses of the version of the list in Chronicles (1 Ch 11:33-36), we find “. . . Azmaveth the Beharumite, Eliahba the Shaalbonite, the sons of Hashem the Gizonite, Jonathan son of Shagee the Hararite, Ahiam son of Sakar the Hararite, Eliphal son of Ur, . . .” The name Shagee occurs only in this version of the list.
Shammah
Turning to Samuel, we find a name which appears only in Samuel’s version of the list: Shammah. The name Shammah appears both among the Thirty, and among the more elite Three. Let’s start with the Three.
Listed third, after an Eleazar, we find, “And after him was Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite. And the Philistines were gathered together at Lehi, there at a plot of land full of lentils, and the people fled from the Philistines. But he stood there in the middle of the plot, and was victorious, and killed the Philistines, and Yahweh gave a great deliverance.” (2 Samuel 23:11-12, ignoring the Masoretic points which read Lehi as Lahai). Because Chronicles copies material, generally without complete success, from earlier parts of the Bible, the most natural thought at this point is that the word ben “son” has dropped out somehow, and that Chronicles has mashed together the names Shammah and Agee. But where does the “Jonathan son of” bit in Chronicles come from?
In Samuel’s list of the Thirty, we find the name Shammah twice. In 2 Samuel 23:24-25 we find, “. . . Elhanan the son of Dodo of Bethlehem, Shammah the Harodite, Eliqa the Harodite, . . .”.
And a little later (32-34), we find, “Eliahba the Shaalbonite, sons of Jashen, Jonathan, Shammah the Hararite, Ahiam son of Sharar the Hararite, Eliphelet son of Ahasbai.”
Comparing the various lists, we can see that Shammah and Shagee are not the only names subject to copying issues. There’s also Hararite and Harodite, Shakar and Sharar. So in a context with such a level of copying trouble, it seems perfectly reasonable that Samuel’s “Jonathan, Shammah the Hararite” and “Shammah son of Agee the Hararite” would find their way into the Chronicler’s somewhat scrambled “Jonathan son of Shagee the Hararite.”
Things get murkier from here. Shammah is identified as a figure notable for fighting Philistines single-handedly, and is associated with the names Shagee and Jonathan via various sorts of copying hijinks. We may note in passing — though it may just be coincidental — that a Shammah who was a brother of David was briefly described (in a very different context where he is part of a cowardly army) of being involved in a military confrontation with the Philistines (1 Samuel 17:13).
Shamgar
Judges mentions not a Shammah, or a Shagee, but a Shamgar who like Shammah is given a very brief description as successfully fighting a whole military of Philistines in unlikely circumstances. Judges 3:31 reads, “And after him was Shamgar son of Anath, who killed six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad. He also delivered Israel.”
Notice that Shamgar is somewhat out of place here in Judges — he doesn’t fit into the chronological structure of the the nearby chapters. He is also placed differently in the Septuagint than in the Masoretic text (the Septuagint has him in chapter 16, rather than 3), perhaps suggesting that he is a late addition to the book and not a part of its original structure. Likewise, there is also reason not to take the chronology of Judges too seriously in general, but that is another story for another day.
This Shamgar‘s mention is a lot like Shammah’s mention. Both mentions begin with the same Hebrew word, we-aharayv, “And after him,” followed by the name of the hero. Both heroes take on a bunch of Philistines successfully. And finally, both abbreviated narratives end with “deliverance” (teshuaʕ) or “delivered” (yashaʕ, a closely related word). The similarities are too close to be coincidental — these are two versions of the same story.
In addition to the brief story of Shamgar, another verse testifies to the importance of Shamgar in Israelite tradition. In the Song of Deborah, often considered one of the earliest parts of the Bible, a hymn describes a situation which is often considered to contain traces of genuine pre-monarchic Israelite traditions, the only character named outside of the ones immediately relevant to Deborah is Shamgar. And two verses after Shamgar, we read that there weren’t swords or shields available to the Israelites in the time of Shamgar, who is treated as a contemporary or near-contemporary to the events in the Song. This fits nicely with the previous description of Shamgar, and with the description of Jonathan, which we will look at next.
Jonathan
Now, turn your attention back to the ambiguity between Samuel and Chronicles. Is our Hararite hero who fights the Philistines called Shammah or Jonathan son of Shagee? Well, everything we’ve seen so far would seem to point toward Shammah being the earlier tradition, and in the passages we’ve seen so far the figures named as fighting an improbable number of Philistines alone are Shammah and Shamgar, with Chronicles seemingly to preserve a possibly much later alteration into Jonathan absorbing the Shammah figure’s name.
But there is a passage, oddly enough, which does tell a story of a person named Jonathan engaging in improbable combat with a bunch of Philistines, and like Shammah’s the story is set in the time of David, though a bit before David is king. I am speaking of Saul’s son Jonathan, the son of David’s rival Saul but the personal close friend of David.
1 Samuel 13 depicts Jonathan commanding half of his father’s army and defeating a garrison of Philistines, but this is a conventional war-story. It is only at the end of 1 Samuel 13 where things get interesting, and the narrator records that only two Israelites, Saul and Jonathan, possessed a sword, due to the Philistine disarmament regime imposed on Israel.
In 1 Samuel 14, Jonathan and one other person, his second, sneak off to visit the Philistines themselves, with the intention of fighting them all with just two men. The Philistines see the two Israelites and talk smack. Jonathan and his second then engage in a fight with the Philistines and kill twenty of them on a plot of land about the size that a single yoke of oxen might plow, presumably in a day. The army, seeing Philistine soldiers fleeing Jonathan’s slaughter, then join and route the Philistines.
Notice the parallels with the Shammah and Shamgar stories. Like Shamgar, Jonathan’s single weapon is specified, and where Shamgar used an ox-goad, the measurement of land alludes to oxen in the case of Jonathan. In both cases, a given number of Philistines is killed in an improbable manner, outside of what would normally happen in warfare. In the case of Jonathan and Shammah, we are told that this slaughter occurred on a particular plot of land. The Jonathan episode concludes that “Yahweh delivered (yashaʕ ) Israel that day,” in words that are reminiscent of both the Shammah and Shamgar stories.
Shamshon
In addition to Shamgar, Shammah, and Shagee, we can associate another Sha-_figure: _Shamshon, or as we usually get him in English, Samson. (To get the pronunciation Shamshon, take the Septuagint’s a-vowel as a more original reading than the Masoretic Text’s i in Shimson, which is reasonable given that the Septuagint’s vowels were put in about a thousand years earlier and there’s a known linguistic phenomenon where Hebrew replaced a bunch of early a vowels with i vowels.)
For most of Judges, despite a few mentions of Philistines, our heroes are always depicted as fighting Canaanites, Moabites, etc. Shamgar stands out as fighting Philistines. Then, as we reach Judges 13, we’ll reach the final major enemy of the Israelites prior to Samuel, and that enemy, as in Samuel, is the Philistines.
Samson fights Philistines over and over. Single-handedly killing a bunch of Philistines is Samson’s schtick. It’s almost his reason for being, as outside of killing Philistines he’s not really a good guy. He decides to marry a Philistine woman, and things quickly get out of hand and he kills thirty Philistines to steal their clothes (Judges 14:19). The girl’s dad then marries her off to someone else, and he commits arson and kills a bunch more Philistines in a fight (15:8).
Then, as in the case in the Shammah version of the story mentioned above, the Philistines are gathered at Lehi (Judges 15:9). Like in the case of the Shamgar version, Samson uses an unusual weapon (Shamgar had an oxgoad, Samson takes a donkey’s jawbone in 15:15). Samson kills 1000 men with the jawbone. As with the other passages about deliverance, immediately after the killing Samuel tells Yahweh, “You have given your servant this great deliverance,” with the wording about “Yahweh” and a “great deliverance” closest to the Shammah version of the story.
Conclusion
When it comes to pre-monarchic stories, we are likely dealing with stuff that had a significant oral pre-history before any of it was written down, allowing various versions of things to circulate. And now, when things are put down in written form, we find a set of names, Shagee, Jonathan, Shammah, Shamgar, Shamshon, all appearing in different versions of a similar story.
If we accept the Septuagint’s placement of the Shamgar story after the Samson story, then all of the versions of this story occur in a pretty small window of time, which begins with the last major judge/warlord of pre-monarchic Israel, continues through the reign of king Saul, and ends with the second king, David.
If I had to blend them into a single story that preserved features that crop of repeatedly, it would look something like this:
“After him, a person named Sham-something son of somebody single-handedly took on a whole troop of Philistines, on a specific plot of land at Lehi, using only an unusual implement. He killed a specific number of them, and Yahweh gave him a great victory.” The story, in all its versions, is set prior to the emergence of the distinct northern and southern kingdoms and their associated dynasties, in a time when Israel is struggling with Philistines.
I think that much wouldn’t be too terribly controversial, so long as I didn’t claim that my reconstruction was the “original” version of the story, but just one possible form.
Where I am stepping out on a limb is in wondering if the close placement in Samuel or Kings of the name Jonathan near Shammah or Shagee might reflect an older memory and have a non-coincidental relationship to the fact that Jonathan the son of Saul is also an anti-Philistine hero of the Shamgar/Shammah/Samson type. It would be easy to read this as a mere coincidence, though, so I wouldn't put too much weight on the Jonathan connection.