In the ill-fated census that King David performed, the books of Samuel and Chronicles seem to contradict each other in the final tally of fighting men in Israel and Judah. See the verses below:
(2 Samuel 24:9) “Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to the king. And there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men.”
(1 Chronicles 21:5) “Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to David. All Israel had one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and Judah had four hundred and seventy thousand men who drew the sword.”
Let us begin with Israel’s count – were there 800,000 or 1,100,000?
A likely answer is that one census includes categories of men that the other excludes. It is quite conceivable that the 1 Chronicles 21:5 figure included all the available men of fighting age, whether battle-seasoned or not. In contrast, the 2 Samuel 24:9 account speaks only of those who were ready for battle. Joab’s report in 2 Samuel 24 uses the word ‘is hayil, which is translated as “mighty men” or battle-seasoned troops, and refers to them numbering 800,000 veterans.
It is reasonable that there were an additional 300,000 men of military age kept in the reserves, but not yet involved in field combat. The two groups would therefore make up the 1,100,000 men in the 1 Chronicles 21 account , which does not employ the Hebrew term ‘is hayil to describe them.
Another thing to take into account is what was mentioned in more detail afterwards (1 Chronicles 27:1): “And the children of Israel, according to their number, the heads of fathers’ houses, the captains of thousands and hundreds and their officers, served the king in every matter of the military divisions. These divisions came in and went out month by month throughout all the months of the year, each division having twenty-four thousand.” There were some parts of the army only there to protect the king, 12 divisions, each division around 24,000, with a total of around 288,000 soldiers then we have the captains of thousands who were protecting each tribe leader (1 Chronicles 27:16-22) with a total of 12,000 soldiers, 1000 for each tribe leader.
That means 288,000 for the king + 12,000 for the tribe leaders = 300,000 soldiers, the difference between the Army who are ready for war mentioned in Samuel 800,000, and the one mentioned in Chronicles 1,100,000 soldiers. How’s that for precise numbers?
Now let’s look at the tally for Judah’s fighting men – 500,000 or 470,000?
There is around a 30,000 difference in the number of soldiers, the same number of the king’s men mentioned in (2 Samuel 6:1): “Again David gathered all the choice men of Israel, thirty thousand.” It means that in Samuel, the total number of the Army ready for war included the King’s Army, but in Chronicles, it mentioned only the Army ready for war.
As you can see, these differences in numbers don’t represent errors, but differences in which soldiers were included in the count. There are no contradictions here.
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