How many fighting men did Joab count in Israel and Judah? II Samuel 24:9 says 800,000 and 500,000; but I Chronicles 21:5 says 1,100,000 and 470,000.<\/p>\n\t
When dealing with numbers, you must ask yourself two questions: Are the same group of people being counted and could one account or the other be rounding the answer? We do it all the time. I am in Cullman, Alabama, today and someone asked how far is it from Omaha. Do I answer the direct distance, the number of miles if you drove the shortest route or the number of miles I actually drove because we stayed overnight with my brother? Should I give the answer to the tenth of a mile, to the nearest mile or just round it to the nearest hundred miles? All the possible answers are different, yet all of them are correct.<\/p>\n
“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” (II Samuel 24:9).<\/p>\n
“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. But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king’s word was abominable to Joab” (I Chronicles 21:5-6).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While subtle, there are differences between what is being counted. I Chronicles says all<\/em> Israel, but II Samuel just says Israel.<\/p>\n
The difference is 300,000. In I Chronicles 27:1, we learn that the standing army consisted of 12 divisions of 24,000 men. That comes to 288,000 men. Later in I Chronicles we learn that there were officers for each tribe’s leader. The number isn’t given, but if we assume that these units had about 1,000 men, then the total standing militia was about 300,000 men. Therefore, the most logical conclusion is that II Samuel 24 didn’t include the already active military, while I Chronicles 25 added them in because the number included all<\/em> in Israel.<\/p>\n
The difference between Judah’s two numbers is 30,000. We do know that there were 30,000 men assigned to patrol the Philistine border (II Samuel 6:1). We note that I Chronicles 21:5 doesn’t say all<\/em> of Judah like it did with Israel. So it is possible the border patrol was not included. Another possibility is to remember that a plague came in response to the numbering, that killed 70,000 men (II Samuel 24:15). One account may be giving pre-plague numbers and the other post-plague numbers. But more likely the author of II Samuel 24:5 simply rounded his numbers to the nearest 100,000 and 470,000 rounded is 500,000.<\/p>\n
While we can’t say with absolute certainty which reason is correct for the two sets of numbers, the fact that there are several reasonable explanations means there is no need to conclude that there is a conflict between the two records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Question: How many fighting men did Joab count in Israel and Judah? II Samuel 24:9 says 800,000 and 500,000; but I Chronicles 21:5 says 1,100,000 and 470,000. Answer: When dealing with numbers, you must ask yourself two questions: Are the same group of people being counted and could one account or the other be rounding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[568,793],"class_list":["post-18587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-accuracy-of-the-bible","tag-apparent-contradictions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":59543,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/shall-the-sword-devour-forever\/","url_meta":{"origin":18587,"position":0},"title":"Shall the Sword Devour Forever?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor M. Eskew David was now the official king of Israel. However, Abner, the captain of Saul's forces, was not in submission to David. He assisted in the establishment of Saul's son Ishbosheth as king over all but the house of Judah. \"But Abner the son of Ner, captain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30945,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-was-david-wrong-in-numbering-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":18587,"position":1},"title":"Why was David wrong in numbering Israel?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: In II Samuel 24:1-2, it was written that David commanded Joab to take a census of Israel. After the census was taken, in II Samuel 24:10, David knew that he had sinned and God sends a pestilence upon Israel as a consequence. Why did God consider David commanding a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23515,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-was-it-a-sin-for-david-to-count-the-fighting-men\/","url_meta":{"origin":18587,"position":2},"title":"Why was it a sin for David to count the fighting men?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 26, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: In I Chronicles 21, why was it a sin for David to take a census? Answer: \"When you take a census of the sons of Israel to number them, then each one of them shall give a ransom for himself to the LORD, when you number them, so that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":53861,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-didnt-you-list-the-ten-tribes\/","url_meta":{"origin":18587,"position":3},"title":"Why didn’t you list the ten tribes?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 19, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Questions: You fail to answer your own question, \"Who are the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom?\" I was looking to see if Levi was among them but no list is given. If Judah and Benjamin remained in the south then that would mean Levi was in the north. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7542,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-could-the-israelites-have-left-egypt-if-they-crossed-into-the-sinai-peninsula\/","url_meta":{"origin":18587,"position":4},"title":"How could the Israelites have left Egypt if they crossed into the Sinai peninsula?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have a question regarding the map of your proposed route for the Exodus. You show the Israelites going south and crossing the Gulf of Suez. The problem I see is that this route invalidates Exodus 12:41 which states that the Israelites \"left Egypt\" on precisely the same day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36629,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-are-the-counts-of-the-levites-off-in-numbers-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":18587,"position":5},"title":"Why are the counts of the Levites off in Numbers 3?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Okay, so I know this is probably going to sound like a pointless question, since it's just about numbers of people in Numbers, and population censuses are usually rounded off anyway, but why do the rules change throughout the taking of the census? What I mean is, when Moses\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}