Goliath’s Death and the Testament of Judah In a 1978 short note championing an alternative reading of a certain detail in the David and Goliath narrative, Deem argues that, rather than striking Goliath on the forehead and killing him, David’s stone was actually aimed at one of the Philistine’s greaves, in order to render him temporarily immobile so that David could run over and kill him. According to Deem, this reading of “greaves” rather than “forehead” in 1 Sam 17,49 is based primarily on iconographical and lexical considerations 1. Deem first points out that most depictions of Philistine warriors in ancient Near Eastern artefacts and reliefs show them wearing helmets covering the forehead and often reaching down to the bridge of the nose. This renders it less likely that David would aim his stone at the well- protected forehead. She then argues that the word “greave” t" xm in 1 Sam jˆ i 17,6, pointed in the MT as a feminine singular construct but uniformly translated in the plural in the versions, may have originally been a defectively-written feminine plural construct tjxm 2. After all, this provides oˆ i a better agreement with the following “on his feet” (wylgrAl[) as the location where the greaves were worn 3. Noting further that the plural of the masculine noun jxm “ forehead ” actually takes a feminine form twjxm in Ezek 9,4, Deem argues for the possibility that the underlying form for “ greaves ” in v. 6 may not be the assumed hapax legomenon hjxm but jxm, a word identical in form to the word for “forehead”. In fact, Deem speculates that the greaves worn by Goliath may have been so novel that there was no name for it in Hebrew, thus prompting the biblical author to coin the term jxm for it because the shape of the greaves resembles in reversed position the tip of the helmet that protects the forehead. This possibility that jxm means both “forehead” and “greaves” thus leads to a certain degree of confusion in v. 49, with the result that most translators and interpreters For full detail of the argument, see A. DEEM, “‘ ... And the Stone Sank 1 into His Forehead’: A Short Note on 1 Samuel XVII 49”, VT 28 (1978) 349 - 351. Note, however, that P.K. MCCARTER, JR., I Samuel (AB 8; Garden City, 2 NY 1984) 286, prefers to emend the form to a dual construct ytjxm. e;ˆ i However, J.M. SASSON, “Reflections on an Unusual Practice Reported in 3 ARM X: 4”, Or 43 (1974) 409-410, speculating that wylgr may be a euphemism for the genitals, thinks that the feminine singular construct t" xm may in fact be jˆ i preferable if it indicates some kind of codpiece rather than greaves.