Which judge of Israel killed six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad? Shamgar is the Israelite hero credited in Judges 3:31 with killing 600 Philistines using an oxgoad. An oxgoad was a long, pointed implement used to prod cattle, making the episode an example of an improvised weapon defeating a superior force.
The verse gives Shamgar only a brief notice: he rescued Israel after Ehud’s period and killed the Philistines. Unlike the longer stories of Gideon, Jephthah, or Samson, it does not describe his family, military campaign, length of leadership, or death. That brevity makes him one of the Bible’s most enigmatic judges.
Shamgar also appears in the Song of Deborah in Judges 5:6, where the days of Shamgar are associated with unsafe roads and social disorder. Some scholars question whether the two references describe the same person. Ancient manuscript traditions also place the oxgoad episode in different locations within Judges.
Those textual questions do not change the standard quiz answer. In the familiar biblical account, Shamgar—not Samson or Gideon—is the figure associated with 600 Philistines and an oxgoad.