Why this Story Matters

(commentary on 2nd Samuel 24, 1st Chronicles 21)

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Introduction

This story represents one of the most glaring examples of why objective observers reading the Bible for the first time might view the Hebrew god with a degree of repugnance instead of admiration. Bible teachers who are aware of this episode don't like to be reminded of it because it’s pretty hard to justify the murder of 70,000 people no matter what they had done. It doesn't make for an easy Sunday sermon. Another puzzling aspect to the story is that even believers have to admit they're not sure why Yahweh did this. If you read the text at face value, it appears that he killed 70,000 people because King David wanted to know how big his army was. Many Christian apologists find this disturbing so they look for other explanations. And more problems result from the fact that the Bible contains two separate accounts of the atrocity, neither of which quite matches up to the other. It is worth comparing both versions, not only for their discrepancies, but because together they confirm the extend of the angry god's revenge. It all adds up to this story being a real problem for the faithful.

Contradictions between versions

One version of the story appears in the second book of Samuel, and the other appears in the first book of Chronicles. Unfortunately for those who believe God’s word is without error, the two accounts contradict each other many times. Some contradictions are minor, but others are highly significant to the story, so before discussing the divine massacre, it's worth taking a brief look at a couple of clear differences.

It has been postulated that the writer of 1st Chronicles set out to correct errors that were found in 2nd Samuel, which was written prior to 1st Chronicles. This would account for the many numerical discrepancies. For example, 2nd Samuel 8:4 says, “And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen.” Meanwhile, 1st Chronicles 18:4 says, “And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen and twenty thousand footmen.” Was it seven hundred horsemen or seven thousand? Seven thousand is more consistent, hence the correction by the writer of 1st Chronicles.

Similarly, in the story of David’s Census, when Joab, returns with the final tally of soldiers, there is disagreement about what Joab said. In Samuel, Joab tells David that there are 1,300,000 men, 800,000 from Israel, and 500,000 from Judah:

“And Joab gave up the sum of the number of people unto the king: and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the sword; and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men (24:9).”

In the Chronicles version Joab tells him there were 1,570,000 men, 1,100,000 from Israel, and 470,000 from Judah:

“And Joab gave the sum of the number of people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew the sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew the sword" (21:5).

So was there 800,000 or 1,100,000 men from Israel? Well, this is difficult for apologists to deal with. Here's a typical response. The Samuel version says there were 800,000 “valiant men” from Israel. Meanwhile the Chronicles version just says there were 1,100,000 “men”. Therefore, they claim, there must have been 300,000 men who were not “valiant” that Joab neglected to mention. This may satisfy the faithful, but it's hardly convincing. David didn’t say, “Go and count all my valiant soldiers, and if you feel like it you can include the non-valiant ones.” Besides, another rather obvious problem with this is that historically there was only one report. Either Joab included these 300,000 men in the census, or he didn’t.

Some apologists are willing to admit the discrepancy, but they say this was a mere “copyist” error, and not actually an error in the Bible. What they are really saying, however, is that there was no error in the original manuscripts. This is convenient because not a single original manuscript of any of the books of the Bible exists that we can check with. All we have are copies of copies which differ in a myriad ways. The Bible, on the other hand, is the collection of translated surviving copies that we can pick up from any book store, and it contains errors, whether you stick the word “copyist” in font or not. In fact, the Bible contains so many such errors that they're far too numerous to list here.

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