Bible Difficulties (43 page)

In 2 Samuel 24:24 it says that David "bought the threshing floor and the oxen for
fifty shekels of silver." But in 1 Chronicles 21:25 it says David gave to Ornan for the
place "600 shekels of gold by weight." How are these two statements to be
reconciled?

The record in 2 Samuel 24:24 refers to the immediate purchase price paid by King David to Araunah (or "Ornan," as his name was alternatively spelled) for the two oxen and the wooden threshing cart being used by the Jebusite owner at the time David came up to see him. David's exact words in v.21 are as follows: "To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD" (NASB). A threshing floor is generally an area of modest dimensions, not usually broader than thirty or forty feet. The market price for the two oxen and the cart would scarcely exceed the sum of fifty shekels of silver under the market values then prevailing.

In 1 Chronicles 21:25, however, we are told that David paid the much larger price of six hundred shekels of gold, which was possibly 180 times as much as fifty shekels of silver.

But the Chronicles figure seems to include not merely the oxen and the threshing sledge but also the entire site. The Hebrew
wayyitten...bammaqom
("And he gave for the place") seems to be far more inclusive than the mere threshing floor. Neither in the fifth century B.C., nor in any other period in ancient history, would a threshing floor have cost anything like six hundred gold shekels. Consequently we may safely conclude that Ornan possessed the entire area of Mount Moriah.

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About sixteen hundred feet long and on a commanding elevation, Mount Moriah was an extremely valuable piece of real estate, easily worth six hundred shekels of gold. The advisability of acquiring enough square footage for a temple site must have commended itself to King David, as he viewed the area of the threshing floor and realized how advantageous it would be to have the entire hilltop set apart for religious and governmental purposes. It was probably a somewhat later transaction with Ornan when David paid him the much larger price for the whole tract, and the Chronicler saw fit to record this entire transaction from the standpoint of its end result.

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1 Kings

How can 1 Kings 6:1 be accepted as accurate if Rameses the Great was Pharaoh of
the Exodus?

1 Kings 6:1 states, "Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel,....he began to build the house of the LORD" (NASB). Since Solomon's reign began in 970 B.C., his fourth year would have been 966. Four hundred and eighty years before 966 comes out to 1446 or 1445. (There may have been a rounding off of numbers here, but essentially the time locus of the Exodus would have been between 1447 and 1442, if 1 Kings 6:1 is correct.) This would have been early in the reign of Amenhotep II, who according to the usual estimates reigned between 1447 and 1421. (Some more recent discussions of Egyptian chronology tend to lower these dates by a few years, but they have not yet been generally accepted as valid.)

The most-favored date for the Exodus in scholarly circles is about 1290, or quite early in the reign of Ramses II (1300-1234). In most of the popularizations of the Exodus drama, such as Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," the late date theory is assumed to be correct. The principal arguments in its favor are as follows: 1. The Israelites are stated in Exodus 1:11 to have labored as slaves in the building of the city of "
Raamses
"--which presupposes that there was already a King Rameses for this city to have been named after.

2. Since the Hyksos Dynasty was in charge of Egypt at the time Jacob migrated into Egypt--at least according to the Jewish historian Josephus--and since the Hyksos may not have seized power much before 1750 B.C., the 1445 date is precluded. Exodus 12:40

testifies that the Israelites sojourned in Egypt for 430 years, a subtraction of 430 from 1750 would come out to 1320--which is much closer to the time of Rameses II in the Nineteenth Dynasty than to the period of Amenhotep II of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

3. The early chapters of Exodus presuppose the proximity of the royal residence to the land of Goshen up in the Delta, whereas the capital of Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty was five hundred miles further south, in the city of Thebes. But Rameses built up Tanis in the Delta as his northern capital and as the base of his military expeditions against Palestine and Syria.

4. The archaeological evidence of the destruction levels in key Palestinian cities like Lachish, Debir, and Hazor points rather to the thirteenth century than to the early fourteenth century, as the early date theory would require. Furthermore, the extensive explorations of surface sites in the various tells throughout Transjordan carried on by Nelson Glueck indicate that there was no strongly entrenched, sedentary population to be found in Moab, Heshbon, or Bashan, such as is indicated in the Mosaic campaigns of 191

conquest against Sihon and Og according to the record of Numbers 21 and Deuteronomy 1.

5. The failure of the Book of Judges to mention any Egyptian invasions of Palestine during the late fourteenth and thirteenth centuries is a strong indication that those invasions were already past history by the time of Joshua and the Israelite conquest of Canaan.

These five arguments present an impressive case for the inaccuracy of 1 Kings 6:1. If the Exodus actually took place around 1290 B.C., then the figure should have been 324

years rather than 480. Some Evangelical scholars who adhere to the late date theory point out that 480 may be an "artificial" number, intending to convey no more than that there were about twelve generations intervening between the Exodus and the temple (thought of as 40 years each, because of the prominence of the number 40 in the lives of leaders like Moses and Joshua). But the true average length of generations is 30 years rather than 40, and so we may perhaps correct the total number to 360 rather than 480 (so R. K.

Harrison,
Old Testament Introduction,
pp. 178-79).

However, careful examination of the case for the late date theory shows that it is incapable of successful defense in the light of all the evidence. Not only does 1 Kings 6:1

unequivocally affirm the 1445 date for the departure of the Israelites from Egypt (the whole theory of symbolical or artificial numbers in matters of dating in the Old Testament has no objective support whatever), but so does Judges 11:26. This contains a question put by Jephthah to the Ammonite invaders who laid claim to the Israelite territory east of the Jordan: "For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements, and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn't you retake them in that time?" Since the probable date of Jephthah was about half a century before King Saul, Jephthah's parley with the Ammonites must be dated around 1100 B.C. His remarks therefore imply a conquest dating back to about 1400, which fits in perfectly with a 1445

Exodus. Since this is a casual reference to chronology and adduces a time interval apparently well known to Israel's enemies and acknowledged by them, it carries special credibility as evidence for the early date.

Nor is this the only corroboration of 1 Kings 6:1. In his speech at Antioch Pisidia, the apostle Paul affirms in Acts 13:19-20: "And when He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He distributed their land as an inheritance--all of which took about four hundred and fifty years. And after these things [i.e., after the division of the land to the Twelve Tribes] He gave them judges until Samuel the prophet" (NASB). Quite clearly the interval included the first departure from Egypt to take possession of the Holy Land, all the way to the end of Samuel's career, as the prophet who anointed David as king. In other words, about 450 years elapsed between the Exodus and the establishment of David in the Holy City of Jerusalem: 1445 to 995 B.C.

Thus it turns out that if the 1290 date is correct, then we must condemn as inaccurate at least two other passages in Scripture besides 1 Kings 6:1 itself; and the Bible then loses all claim to complete trustworthiness in matters of historical fact--even the major events 192

of the history of Redemption. It is therefore of particular importance to examine the case for the accuracy of the 1445 date indicated by these two passages from the Old Testament and the one from Acts 13.

First, as to the reference to the slave labor of the Israelites in the city of Rameses in Exodus 1:11, it should be noted that even by the late date theory this would have to be regarded as an anachronism (i.e., a later name applied to the city than the name it bore at the time of their taskwork in it). The reference to this work project occurs before any mention of the birth of Moses, and Moses was eighty years of age by the time of the Exodus event. It would have been impossible for Moses to have been born after the commencement of Rameses's reign in 1300 B.C. and then be eighty years old ten years later! Consequently the city in question could not have borne the name "Raamses" back in the period referred to by Exodus 1:11. Therefore its evidential value for the late date theory is fatally undermined. It should also be observed, however, that even though a later name was inserted in place of the original name of the city that was current in Moses' time, this furnishes no more difficulty than to refer to Kiriath Arba as Hebron, even though narrating an event that took place there prior to its change of name. Nor would a history of England be justly accused of inaccuracy if it spoke of Constantius I of Rome making a triumphant march into "York" back in a day when it was called

"Eboracum."

Second, as to the argument that there could not have been a 430-year interval between a Jacob migration in the Hyksos period and a 1445 Exodus, we freely admit the force of this objection. If the Hyksos rule began around 1750 B.C., a 1445 Exodus would be out of the question. But we hasten to add that the textual evidence of both Genesis and Exodus make it quite certain that it was a native Egyptian dynasty that was in power back in Joseph's day; it could not have been Hyksos--Josephus to the contrary notwithstanding.

Consider the following facts:

1. The reigning dynasty looks down with contempt on Semitic foreigners from Palestine and forbids such to eat at the same table with Egyptians (Gen. 43:32: "The Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians").

But the Hyksos themselves had originally come down from Palestine into Egypt, speaking a Semitic language like theirs. (Thus their first king was named Salitis, representing the Semitic term
sallit
; they named their cities in Egypt Succoth, Baalzephon, and Migdol, all good Canaanite names.) It is therefore inconceivable that they would have regarded other visitors from Palestine as an inferior breed of humanity.

But the ethnic Egyptians certainly did so, as their literature abundantly testifies.

2. Joseph is obviously uneasy about his family admitting to the Egyptian authorities that they were shepherds as well as cattle raisers. (Gen. 46:34 states quite plainly: "For every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.") But this could scarcely have been true of the Hyksos, who were so closely associated with sheep-herding in the recollection of the later Egyptians that they (like Manetho) construed the name "Hyksos" to mean

"Shepherd Kings." During their era certainly there could have been no reproach attachable to the raising of sheep.

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3. The Pharaoh "who knew not Joseph" came to power a considerable interval after Joseph's death and after his family had already settled in Goshen. Therefore we are warranted in assuming that this new Pharaoh was a Hyksos rather than a native Egyptian.

This emerges from his concern expressed in Exodus 1:8-10 as to the alarming population growth of the Hebrews, whom he states to be "more and mightier than we" (NASB). The population of Egypt was unquestionably much larger than the two million or so Israelites (who only became that numerous by the time of the Exodus, many years later). But for the leader of the warrior caste of the Hyksos, who dominated the native population only through their superior military organization (something like the Spartans as they kept the more numerous Helots and Messenians subject to their rule), this would not have been an exaggerated apprehension. Because of the steadfast loyalty of Joseph and his family to the Egyptian government, a Hyksos monarch might well have feared that they might make common cause with a native Egyptian uprising ("Let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and in the event of war, they also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us" [v.10]). It was at a later time, then, after the Hyksos themselves had finally been expelled from Egypt by Ahmose--who however left the Hebrews undisturbed in Goshen because of their consistent loyalty to the native Egyptians--that Amenhotep I of the Eighteenth Dynasty adopted the oppressive policy of the Hyksos rulers.

Amenhotep I also was uneasy at the phenomenal growth of the Hebrew population in Goshen and tried to discourage this growth by hard labor and, finally, by the time of Moses' birth, by infanticide. If it is at v.13 that this Eighteenth-Dynasty oppression begins, then we must understand the Hyksos as having compelled the Israelites to work on the storage cities of Pithom and Raamses. In this connection it might be pointed out that the name "Raamses" itself may have been of Hyksos origin. The father of Rameses II was "Seti," which means "Follower of Seth" or "Sutekh," the Egyptian equivalent of

"Baal," who was the patron god of the Hyksos dynasties. A great many of the Hyksos royal names ended likewise in "Ra," the name of the sun god of Egypt (names such as Aa-woser-Ra, Neb-khepesh-ra, Aa-qenen-ra, etc.), and Ra-mose (a name already current in the Eighteenth Dynasty, by the way) means "Born of Ra." (Ra-mes-su, the Egyptian spelling of Rameses, actually means "Ra has begotten him.") But it is most significant that Rameses II went to great effort and expense to restore and build up the old Hyksos capital of Avaris, even though he named it after himself. At all events, nothing could be more unlikely than that Joseph and his family moved into Egypt during the Hyksos period. Hence this objection to the 1445 Exodus is without weight.