Politics
Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horsemen. 1 Kings 4:26 NASB
40,000 – Like a few others comparative passages between the books of Kings and the books of Chronicles, this verse has a parallel. 2 Chronicles 9:25 says almost the same thing. But rather than 40,000, it reads 4,000. It’s a problem.
One of the typical solutions is to show that one verse talks about stalls and the other talks about actual horses. The mathematics works out so that there were 10 horses per stall, and everything is fine. No contradiction. Of course, if you’re a horse person you might wonder how these animals would get along with 10 in a stall (and the amount of space that would take). Here’s the argument: CLICK HERE
But I don’t think (I could be wrong, of course) that the real issue is about the number 40,000. My quick calculation suggest that the implications are problematic. For example:
One horse requires about 20 pounds of hay per day. That’s 3.65 tons a year. 1 acre produces about 2.52 tons of hay per year. Solomon would need about 1.4 acres per horse, or 57,936 acres of land producing hay to feed 40,000 horses. Even in modern Israel, the amount of land that can produce (with irrigation) is 13.6% of the total land mass of Israel. If Solomon had 40,000 horses to feed, he would have needed 90 square miles of producing land out of the 1100 square miles of arable land. It’s possible, of course, but it seems a bit over-zealous to designate more than ten percent of the land to feed the army’s horses when there were no wars. Maybe Solomon just wanted to show off. “Look at all the horses and chariots I have.” But if that’s the case, then he violated a strict commandment of Torah about what a king should and should not do.
Perhaps this claim is a bit more like the claims concerning Solomon’s gold (the modern equivalent of 37 trillion US dollars). Since the stories of David and Solomon were written long after their actual reigns, exaggeration of political stories in the Bible might be intended to convince the people of the current audience that they are going to be protected by God against the Babylonians, and to demonstrate that in the past Israel was great, powerful and shielded by God, so, of course, God will do all this again. This is political brainwashing. It still happens today. It is a staple of government media. Why should we think it wasn’t occurring during the time of Josiah? Or do we believe that God protects the biblical text from any human interference?
There are other examples of passages in Kings that are modified or toned-down in Chronicles. Most famously are the stories of David’s frolicking before the altar and his affair with Bathsheba. David is painted in a much more favorable light in Chronicles than he is in Kings. Why do you suppose that is so? Passages like these raise doctrinal issues (e.g. plenary inspiration) rather than textual or political ones. But is doctrine the real issue here?
Topical Index: horses, politics, 2 Chronicles 9:25, 1 Kings 4:26
