How many charioteers were killed, 700 or 7,000? 2 Samuel 10:18 and 1 Chronicles 19:18
- 700 charioteers: 2 Samuel 10:18, “But the Arameans fled before Israel, and David killed 700 charioteers of the Arameans and 40,000 horsemen and struck down Shobach the commander of their army, and he died there.”
- 7,000 charioteers: 1 Chronicles 19:18, “And the Arameans fled before Israel, and David killed of the Arameans 7,000 charioteers and 40,000-foot soldiers, and put to death Shophach the commander of the army.”
This is most probably a copyist error. Notice how the number is off by a single zero; that is, by a single notation of a digit. According to “Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible,” page 382, regarding the characters used to designate numbers, “Nun final , was mistaken for dotted Zayin ,” would account for the copyist error in the text. Most probably, the correct number is 7,000 charioteers.