2 Chronicles 2 · a question people ask
Do 2 Chronicles 2 and 1 Kings 5 give the same numbers?
Some are the same and some differ. Both have seventy thousand to bear burdens and eighty thousand stone cutters (2:2, 2:18; 1 Kings 5:15). The overseers differ: "three thousand six hundred to oversee them" (2:2), and again "three thousand six hundred overseers" (2:18), where 1 Kings has "three thousand three hundred who ruled over the people who labored in the work" (1 Kings 5:16). The payments are told differently too. Solomon promises Huram's servants who cut the timber "twenty thousand cors of beaten wheat, twenty thousand baths of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil" (2:10). 1 Kings says, "Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand cors of wheat for food to his household, and twenty cors of pure oil. Solomon gave this to Hiram year by year" (1 Kings 5:11). 2:10 names Huram's servants who cut the timber; 1 Kings 5:11 names Hiram's household. The Bible doesn't say whether these are one payment or two, or why the overseers' numbers differ, and these notes set the verses side by side without joining them.
The verses
“Solomon counted out seventy thousand men to bear burdens, eighty thousand men who were stone cutters in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred to oversee them.”
“Behold, I will give to your servants, the cutters who cut timber, twenty thousand cors of beaten wheat, twenty thousand baths of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.””
“He set seventy thousand of them to bear burdens, eighty thousand who were stone cutters in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred overseers to assign the people their work.”
“Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand cors of wheat for food to his household, and twenty cors of pure oil. Solomon gave this to Hiram year by year.”