Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | 2 Samuel 8:4 David captured from him 1,700 horsemen and 20,000 foot soldiers; and David hamstrung the chariot horses, but reserved enough of them for 100 chariots. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 2 Samuel 8:4 David captured from him 1,700 horsemen and 20,000 foot soldiers. David also hamstrung all the chariot horses (making them lame), but reserved enough of them for a hundred chariots. |
Bible Question:
Hi mommapbs, Please refer to Yahoo! Singapore Message Boards http://sg.messages.yahoo.com/index.html Got a message thread about the Holy Bible and a post of such contradiction. And I want to answer it and to have better understanding of the passage for myself. I just wanna have a good answer to this apparent contradiction. I believe the inerrancy and self-sufficency of the Bible. Regards David Yew Love - An intelligent willingness to do what is best for the other person. |
Bible Answer: Hi, I am not Mommapbs, but I do have some interesting observations. The Tektronitron Encyclopedia Apologetica at http://www.tektonics.org/index2.html gives some very good answers to questions that many athiests ask. Concerning 2 Samuel 8:4 and how many horsemen is this note: 2 Samuel 8:4 700 or 7000 (per 1 Chronicles 18:4) horsemen? Keil and Delitzsch have a most convincing solution, that the word for chariotry ( rekeb ) was inadvertently omitted by the scribe in copying 2 Sam 8:4, and that the second figure, seven thousand (for the parasim "cavalrymen"), was necessarily reduced to seven hundred from the seven thousand he saw in his Vorlage for the simple reason that no one would write seven thousand after he had written one thousand in the recording of the one and the same figure. The omission of rekeb might have occurred with an earlier scribe, and the reduction of seven thousand to seven hundred would have followed by chain reaction when the defective copy was next copied by a later scribe. But in all probability the Chronicles figure is right and the Samuel numbers should be corrected to go with it. One thing worth noting is that the LXX as well as some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date far before the Massoretic text that was and is used for the Hebrew Bibles of today, have the harmonizing number of 7000 that is found in 1 Chron 18:4. So a very substantial and weighty text tradition supports the harmonization. |