Have you noticed that God seems to have some favorite numbers? He seems big on seven, and twelve; forty is pretty popular as well. Perhaps one is the loneliest number that you ever knew. Sorry, couldn't resist a little Three Dog Night reference. Numbers are pretty helpful when trying to understand how long kings reign and how long things like the tribulation will last. But numbers are also a problem. The record of the Kings seems to be at odds with those of the writers of the Chronicles.Simply put, there are a number of times that the numbers simply do not add up. From simple things like the number of supervisors Solomon had working on the temple, 3,300 in 1 Kings 5 compared to 3,600 in 2 Chronicles 2:18, to the difference of 10,000 vs 2,000 footmen in 2 Kings 13. Many evangelicals, and those deeply committed to a ridged inerrancy, struggle with these apparent contradictions. Some spend significant amounts of time carefully backtracking the number of years kings reigned and major events that happened to discover things like the age of the earth or the date of creation. They often fail to take into account the possible overlap of kings and their sons and the reality that the scriptures are not written from a western or American cultural point of view. Eastern, Hebraic culture is far less concerned with dates and time lines than they are with relationships and the record of the experience of people. We misunderstand the point as we allow ourselves to be trapped in our western culture.
The culture of the Scriptures, in particular the Old Testament, allows, even expects, exaggeration to make a point. 1 Samuel 18:7 proclaims, "And the women answered one another as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands." Is it really reasonable to think David, as a very young general and fairly resent soldier, had honestly slain tens of thousands of enemy soldiers? Or is exaggeration used to make a point? 2 Chronicles 1:15 is another example, "Also the king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and he made cedars as abundant as the sycamores which are in the lowland." Really? Gold and silver as common as stones in Jerusalem? Jerusalem is nothing but stones! Oh, the author is using exaggeration to make a point. As we read through the Scriptures it is well to remember that eastern records make ready use of hyperbole and exaggeration as they record events. This is true of Babylon, Egypt, and the nations that surrounded Israel. It is also true of the writers of the Biblical text. If you are too ridged in your view of the inerrant Scriptures you will find yourself exercising textual gymnastics to try to get things to fit. Even Matthew conveniently leaves out a few kings to get his genealogical formula to work. The point is not the accuracy of the list but the reality that Yeshua is clearly in the line of David and thus qualified to be Messiah.
If we are honest we do similar things as well. We see a friend and say. "It has been a life time since I last saw you." Probably not a life time. Maybe we are disappointed with a corrupt political leader and say, "They broke every law on the books." Every law? How about a little history lesson as we reflect that General Custer was over run by a million Sioux warriors. Well, maybe not quite a million. We understand that all of these statements use exaggeration to make a point. We need to realize that the Scriptures do the same, from time to time. There are indeed more precise numbers that hold true. There were twelve sons of Israel, and David did reign for forty years. It seems clear that there will be a thousand year reign of Messiah, and the earth was created in six literal twenty-four hours days. Umm, wait a minute, even that is up for debate. My point is that we do not need to feel threatened when we find some apparent discrepancy in the differing records of historic events in the Bible. The authors had a point to make that was focused upon relationships between God and people. Or perhaps the relationship between groups or even individuals. The writers' intent, as directed by God's Spirit, was to help us experience the moment or the event. To learn of God more than the precise number or location that is recorded. Differing writers write from different points of view.
This is why we have four Gospel accounts. Fuor differing views and four ways to present Messiah and His relationship to His people. We can hunt for discrepancies in the various accounts or realize that presenting an accurate chronological history is not the point. The point is to present Messiah in real life with real interaction with real people. The text is an Hebraic experiential record not a western history book. I am not suggesting that we toss inerrancy out, God has given us an accurate account of what He desires us to know and to live out. However, perhaps we need a little more cultural flexibility as we approach God's Word. Perhaps we get so tied up in trying to get the numbers to match that we miss the point God wants us to grasp. Maybe two different authors recorded the same event from their own point of view with the information they had at hand. Maybe that is why we have a few differences. Maybe God wants us to simply know that there are consequences for our behavior instead of how many Amalekites attacked an idolatrous Israel.
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