1 Chronicles 21:5

The report of the numbers as given in this verse does not tally with that of the parallel place. Here they are three hundred thousand more for Israel, and thirty thousand fewer for Judah, than there. No really satisfactory explanation of these discrepancies has yet appeared. The somewhat ingenious suggestion that the Chronicle-compiler counted in the standing army (two hundred and eighty-eight thousand, 1 Chronicles 27:1-15 ) for Israel, and omitted from Judah a supposed "thirty thousand," under the head of "the thirty" of our 1 Chronicles 11:1-47 .; while the writer of the Book of Samuel did exactly the converse,—can scarcely pass muster, although it must be noticed that it would meet in the main the exigencies of the case. A likelier suggestion might be found in a comparison of the statements of our 1 Chronicles 11:6 compared with 1 Chronicles 27:22-24 . Indeed, the last sentence of this last-quoted verse ( 1 Chronicles 27:24 ) may possibly contain the explanation of all (cutup. Numbers 1:47-50 ; Numbers 2:33 ). That Joab utterly refused to number Levi, because this was a thing most distinctly prohibited (and further because it was not material to David's presumable objects), was quite to be expected. And though Joab is said in the following verse not to have numbered Benjamin, it is possible enough that he may have known this number ( 1 Chronicles 7:6-11 ). Yet see what follows.