Kings and Chronicles: 8 points on the numbers that disagree

1 Kings 4:26 (5:6 in the Hebrew) says that Solomon had “forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen”. 2 Chronicles 9:25 says he had “four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen”.^[1] The difference is thirty-six thousand stalls.

The figure in Chronicles is the more likely one. Both books say elsewhere that Solomon had fourteen hundred chariots (1 Kings 10:26, 2 Chronicles 1:14), and four thousand stalls fits that number better than forty thousand. Several modern translations, including the New International Version, print “four thousand” in 1 Kings 4:26 as well, with a note that the Hebrew has forty thousand.^[2]

The explanation sometimes offered, that the two numbers differ by “a dot”, does not fit the Hebrew. The books of the Hebrew Bible write numbers out in words. Forty thousand is arbaim elef, “forty thousand”, and four thousand is arbaat alafim, “four thousands”. The two phrases share a root and differ in the endings of both words. No surviving Hebrew manuscript of these books, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, writes them with numerals or letter-numbers.^[3] Some scholars have suggested that an earlier stage of copying used number signs that were later misread, which is possible but has no direct evidence.

Either way, the defence concedes the main point. If a copyist turned four thousand into forty thousand, the Hebrew text of 1 Kings that Jews and Christians have read for two thousand years contains a scribal error, and translators now correct it from another book.

2 Kings 8:26 says that Ahaziah, king of Judah, was twenty-two years old when he began to reign. 2 Chronicles 22:2, in the Hebrew, says he was forty-two.^[4]

The second figure cannot be right. His father Jehoram was thirty-two when he became king and reigned eight years, so he died at forty (2 Chronicles 21:20). A son of forty-two would have been two years older than his father. Some manuscripts of the Septuagint and the Syriac version read twenty or twenty-two in Chronicles. The New International Version, the English Standard Version and most other modern translations print “twenty-two” in 2 Chronicles 22:2 and note that the Hebrew says forty-two; the King James Version keeps forty-two.^[5]

Here again the solution is a correction of the Hebrew text from another witness. The defence that the error is obvious and easily explained is fair, and it sits badly with the claim that the Old Testament has no variant readings.

2 Kings 24:8 says that Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and reigned three months in Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles 36:9 says that he was eight, and reigned three months and ten days.^[6]

Ezekiel 19:5–9 describes him as a young lion who learned to catch prey and devoured men, and 2 Kings 24:15 says that he was taken to Babylon with his wives, which fits eighteen better than eight. Some Hebrew manuscripts, the Septuagint and the Syriac read eighteen in Chronicles as well. Modern translations again print eighteen in both places and note the Hebrew reading of Chronicles.^[7]

The account of David’s census appears in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, and the two differ at several points.

In Samuel, Joab reports eight hundred thousand fighting men in Israel and five hundred thousand in Judah. In Chronicles, he reports one million one hundred thousand in Israel and four hundred and seventy thousand in Judah.^[8] Chronicles adds that Joab did not count Levi and Benjamin, which would lower its figures, and yet its total for Israel is three hundred thousand higher than Samuel’s. The prophet Gad offers David a choice of punishments: in Samuel the first is seven years of famine, and in Chronicles three years. The Septuagint of Samuel reads three, in agreement with Chronicles.^[9] David buys the threshing floor of Araunah: in Samuel for fifty shekels of silver, together with the oxen; in Chronicles for six hundred shekels of gold, for the whole site.^[10]

The most striking difference concerns who prompted the census. In 2 Samuel 24:1, “the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah.” In 1 Chronicles 21:1, “Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel.”^[11] Christian commentators reconcile the two by saying that God permitted what Satan did. Many scholars see in the change a later writer’s unease with the idea that God moved David to sin. Either reading admits that the Chronicler did more than copy.

The accounts of Solomon’s building works show further differences.

The bronze basin called the Sea held two thousand baths of water according to 1 Kings 7:26, and three thousand according to 2 Chronicles 4:5.^[12] The two bronze pillars at the entrance were eighteen cubits high in 1 Kings 7:15 and Jeremiah 52:21, and thirty-five cubits in 2 Chronicles 3:15.^[13] Some harmonisers suggest that thirty-five is the combined length of the two pillars, which would make each seventeen and a half.

The officers over Solomon’s workers are counted differently as well. 1 Kings 5:16 gives three thousand three hundred chief officers, and 2 Chronicles 2:2 and 2:18 give three thousand six hundred. 1 Kings 9:23 gives five hundred and fifty officers over the work, and 2 Chronicles 8:10 gives two hundred and fifty.^[14] In this case the totals of the two books agree at three thousand eight hundred and fifty, which suggests that the writers were dividing the same number into different ranks. That reconciliation is plausible and should be acknowledged.

Not every discrepancy is an error, then. Some can be explained by different ways of counting. Others, like Ahaziah’s age, cannot.

The parallel accounts of David’s wars and Asa’s reign add further figures that disagree.

After David’s victory over the Arameans, 2 Samuel 10:18 says that he killed the men of seven hundred chariots and forty thousand horsemen. 1 Chronicles 19:18 says seven thousand charioteers and forty thousand foot soldiers.^[15] The first of David’s mighty men killed eight hundred men at one time according to 2 Samuel 23:8, and three hundred according to 1 Chronicles 11:11, where his name also differs.^[16] Solomon’s fleet brought back from Ophir four hundred and twenty talents of gold in 1 Kings 9:28, and four hundred and fifty in 2 Chronicles 8:18.^[17]

The chronology of Asa’s reign raises a different kind of problem. 2 Chronicles 16:1 says that Baasha, king of Israel, came up against Judah “in the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa”. According to 1 Kings 15:33 and 16:8, Baasha became king in Asa’s third year, reigned twenty-four years, and was succeeded by his son in Asa’s twenty-sixth year. By the dates of Kings, Baasha had been dead for about ten years by Asa’s thirty-sixth year.^[18]

Commentators have offered solutions. One is that the Chronicler counted the years from the division of the kingdom and not from Asa’s accession; another is that “thirty-sixth” is a copyist’s error for “sixteenth”. Archer, a conservative defender of the Bible’s accuracy, adopts the first, and Japhet discusses both and finds neither free of difficulty.^[19] The case shows the range of explanations that the parallel books require, and that even the defenders of the text disagree about which to use.

2 Samuel 21:19 says, in the Hebrew: “Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.” The famous story in 1 Samuel 17 says that David killed Goliath. 1 Chronicles 20:5, in the parallel passage, says that “Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite”.^[20]

Textual critics generally think that the Chronicler’s text arose from a reading of the consonants of Samuel: the word for “the Bethlehemite”, bet ha-lahmi, became “Lahmi”, and the word for “the brother of” was supplied. Others argue that Chronicles preserves the better reading. Whichever is correct, the two Hebrew texts say different things.

The King James Version resolved the difficulty by printing in 2 Samuel 21:19: “Elhanan … slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite”, with the words “the brother of” in italics, the translators’ sign for words not in the original.^[21] Many modern translations print “Goliath”, as the Hebrew has it, and leave the reader to compare the two books. The episode shows how a reader of the English Bible could be given a harmony that the Hebrew does not contain.

Christian writers who defend the Bible on these points sometimes turn the argument around, citing Quran 32:5, where a day with God is “a thousand years of what you count”, and 70:4, where the angels ascend “in a day whose measure is fifty thousand years”. If Muslims may cite four thousand and forty thousand, the argument runs, Christians may cite one thousand and fifty thousand.

The two cases are of different kinds. The discrepancies in Kings and Chronicles are textual: the defence itself says that a scribe miscopied a number, and translators correct the Hebrew from other manuscripts and versions. Quran 32:5 and 70:4 read the same in every manuscript of the Quran, early and late. There is no variant to correct. The question they raise is one of meaning, whether two verses speak of the same day, and the classical commentators answered it centuries ago: Ibn Abbas is reported to have distinguished the day of the descent and return of God’s command from the day of the angels’ ascent, and others identified the fifty-thousand-year day with the Day of Resurrection.^[22] The site’s article on alleged contradictions in the Quran sets out their answers.

A Christian may judge those answers unconvincing, and he is free to argue the point. He cannot treat a question of interpretation in a text without variants as the equivalent of a scribal error that his own translators correct. The comparison shows the opposite of what it was meant to show.