Three more lies from "God's ineffable, inerrant word":
The final chapter of 2 Samuel gives an account of a census ordered by king David and taken by Joab, the captain of the host. 1 Chronicles 21 also records the details of this census which was considered especially onerous by Joab. As is most often the case with various biblical accounts of the same things or events, there are discrepancies between the accounts of this census.
The record of 1 Samuel reads: "And Joab gave up the sum of the number of the people unto the king: and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the sword; and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men [2 Samuel 24:9]." Thus, the overall census total given in 2 Samuel is 1.3 million.
1 Chronicles gives a wildly different set of numbers: "5 And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand men that drew sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten thousand men that drew sword [1 Chronicles 21:5]." The census total here is 1.57 million.
There are three obvious discrepancies in these two sets of numbers: 1) The number of battle- aged men in Israel given in 2 Samuel is 300,000 less than that recorded in 1 Chronicles; 2) The number of battle- aged men in Judah given in 2 Samuel is 30,000 more than that recorded in 1 Chronicles; 3) And the census total given in 2 Samuel is 210,00 less than the same total recorded in 1 Chronicles.
The inexplicable irony of these discrepancies is that, of the two accounts provided of David's census, it is in the tale of the one with the largest overall total where Joab is credited with leaving some of those he was supposed to count uncounted. 1 Chronicles alleges Joab left two tribes untabulated, saying, "But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them: for the king's word was abominable to Joab [1 Chronicles 21:6]."
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