Bible Synapse
Did David take 700 (or 1,700) horsemen from Hadadezer, or 7,000?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 4 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
David takes from Hadadezer “a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen” and 20,000 footmen; ‘chariots’ is in italics in the KJV, and the Hebrew reads ‘1,700 horsemen’.
And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: and David houghed all the chariot horses, but reserved of them for an hundred chariots.
David takes “a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen”.
And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: David also houghed all the chariot horses, but reserved of them an hundred chariots.
The objection
Samuel and Chronicles report the same victory over Hadadezer king of Zobah. Samuel’s Hebrew says David captured 1,700 horsemen and 20,000 foot soldiers (the KJV supplies “a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen”), while Chronicles says a thousand chariots and 7,000 horsemen.
The answer
The best explanation is a copyist’s slip in Samuel, and the oldest translation shows what the verse once said. The Greek Septuagint of 2 Samuel 8:4 reads ‘a thousand chariots and seven thousand horsemen’, exactly as Chronicles does. The Hebrew of Samuel has lost the word for chariots (rekev) and reads ‘a thousand and seven hundred horsemen’. Keil and Delitzsch explain that rekev dropped out after ‘a thousand’, and that the numeral for thousand in ‘seven thousand’ was then confused with the one for hundred. The verse itself still speaks of chariots at its end, where David hamstrung the chariot horses and kept enough for a hundred chariots, so chariots belonged in the list. Many modern translations, such as the NIV and BSB, follow the Greek and Chronicles here.
From the classic commentators
Instead of 1700 horse-soldiers, we find in the Chronicles (1 Chronicles 18:4) 1000 chariots and 7000 horsemen. Consequently the word receb has no doubt dropped out after אלף in the text before us, and the numeral denoting a thousand has been confounded with the one used to denote a hundredKeil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 2 Samuel 8
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 2 Samuel 8, at Bible Hub
- The Septuagint (Brenton’s Greek text), 2 Samuel 8
- The Clementine Vulgate, 2 Samuel 8