ContradictionsReading order 172Bible context 1 min read
How many overseers did Solomon have?
The work-supervision totals differ by three hundred men.
- Textual conflict
- Direct contradiction
- The quoted passages make incompatible claims about the same subject under the same conditions. Little additional inference is needed.
- Importance
- Minor
- A local detail in a story, chronology, or inventory.
The same described work-supervision role receives incompatible totals of 3300 and 3600.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Solomon's work is supervised by three thousand three hundred officers
Beside the chief of Solomon’s officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.
1 Kings 5:16
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
Read the full chapter:1 Kings 5
Solomon appoints three thousand six hundred overseers
And he set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people a work.
2 Chronicles 2:18
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
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