The Šālīšîm: Officers or Special Three-Man Squads?

Reconsidering Goliath: An Iron Age I Philistine Chariot Warrior

“…Others, though, have argued for more general meanings, such as "officer" of men in a special kind of military unit. See the discussions in Rabin 1963: 133-34;Mastin 1979;Naʾaman 1988;Schley 1990, for various theories, explanations, and literature. In any event, except for the Hittites and Philistines, and possibly at Ugarit, three-man chariot crews do not begin to appear in the ancient Near East before the ninth century b.c., and are not common before the eighth century, so a specially coined term for a "third-man," the ʾîš-habbēnayim, might well be expected in a text recalling an event from the Iron I era.…”