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.
