2 Chronicles 13:3 - Exposition

It is not within the province of an expositor to assert dogmatically that numbers like these in this verse should be deprived of one cipher, and that the slaughter of 2 Chronicles 13:17 must be, consequently, similarly discounted. It would be, however, a great relief to faith to be able to give proof that this treatment would be true to fact. At present the numbers can be shown to be consistent with other numbers, such as those of the entire man-population ( 1 Chronicles 21:5 ; 2 Chronicles 11:13-17 ); and this seems the best that can be said in support of them. It does not, however, suffice to bring comfortable conviction. It is remarkable, among the difficulties that the question entails, that we do not get any satisfactory explanation as to how such vast numbers of slain bodies were disposed of in a compass of ground comparatively so small.