11. Did David capture 1,700 of King Zobah's horsemen (2 Samuel 8:4), or was it 7,000 (1 Chronicles 18:4)?

(Category: copyist error)

There are two possible solutions to these differing figures. The first by Keil and Delitzsh (page 360) is a most convincing solution. They maintain that the word for chariotry (rekeb) was inadvertently omitted by the scribe in copying 2 Samuel 8:4, and that the second figure, 7,000 (for the parasim "cavalrymen"), was necessarily reduced to 700 from the 7,000 he saw in his Vorlage * for the simple reason that no one would write 7,000 after he had written 1,000 in the recording the one and the same figure. The omission of reke*b might have occurred with an earlier scribe, and a reduction from 7,000 to 700 would have then continued with the successive copies by later scribes. But in all probability the Chronicles figure is right and the Samuel numbers should be corrected to agree with that.

A second solution starts from the premise that the number had been reduced to 700 as it refers to 700 rows, each consisting of 10 horse men, making a total of 7,000.

(Archer 1982:184: Keil & Delitzsch 1949:360; Light of Life II 1992:182)

Problem: After David had defeated Hadadezer, he took prisoners from Hadadezer’s army. According to 2 Samuel 8:4, David captured “one thousand, seven hundred horsemen” (the word “chariots” added by some translations is not in the Hebrew text). However, the passage in 1 Chronicles 18:4 states that David captured 7,000 horsemen. Which number is correct?

Solution: This is undoubtedly a copyist error. Probably an early copyist inadvertently omitted the word “chariot” that we find supplied in some translations. This in turn created a problem for a later copyist who would have recognized that it was not proper Hebrew structure to write “one thousand seven thousand horsemen,” so he would have reduced the second “thousand” to “hundred” resulting in the reading we now have in 2 Samuel 8:4. It is probably the 1 Chronicles passage that retains the correct number.