GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
2 Samuel 3:2-5 lists David's six sons born in Hebron as Amnon, Chileab, Absalom, Adonijah, Shephatiah, and Ithream. 1 Chronicles 3:1-4 lists them as Amnon, Daniel, Absalom, Adonijah, Shephatiah, and Ithream. The lists agree on five of six, but the second son's name differs.
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Cited passages
Sons were born to David in Hebron. His firstborn was Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; and his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; and the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; and the fifth, Shephatiah the son of Abital; and the sixth, Ithream, of Eglah, David’s wife. These were born to David in Hebron.
Cited passages
Now these were the sons of David, who were born to him in Hebron: the firstborn, Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second, Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess; the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; the fifth, Shephatiah of Abital; the sixth, Ithream by Eglah his wife: six were born to him in Hebron; and he reigned there seven years and six months. He reigned thirty-three years in Jerusalem;
Notes on manuscript readings that bear on this passage — where the surviving witnesses differ over what the text says. Presented for transparency as the textual critic’s description, not as GEBible’s conclusion about the tension.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is the same discrepancy as entry 239 viewed across the full Hebron roster. Both lists agree completely on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth sons — Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah, Shephatiah, Ithream — and on every mother (Ahinoam, Maacah daughter of Talmai king of Geshur, Haggith, Abital, Eglah). They diverge at exactly one point: the second son, Chileab in 2 Samuel 3:3 and Daniel in 1 Chronicles 3:1, though both agree he was Abigail's son.
The apologetic and critical options are the same as before. The dual-name hypothesis (Archer, Keil-Delitzsch) holds that the son bore both names; the textual-corruption hypothesis (McCarter, Anderson, Japhet, Klein, Knoppers) holds that a single name was destabilized in transmission. The Greek tradition again confirms the instability: the LXX of 2 Samuel 3:3 carries forms such as Δαλουια (Daluia) rather than either Chileab or Daniel, marking this name as a known crux in the manuscript history.
What the full-list view adds is decisive for adjudicating between the two explanations: the agreement on five of six names, in identical order, with identical maternal attributions, demonstrates that these are not independent traditions but a single list transmitted through two channels. The Chronicler used Samuel (or a shared Vorlage) as his source and reproduced the Hebron list; the genealogist of 1 Chronicles 3 was a copyist of an existing roster, not an independent informant. This bears directly on the harmonization. If the lists were independent attestations, a dual name would be a natural way to explain why two genuine witnesses preserved different names. But because they are a single list reproduced twice, the lone divergence is far more plausibly a transmission event — either the Chronicler's Samuel scroll already read a Daniel-form at the second slot, or a scribe in one line substituted or corrupted the name — than a record of an otherwise-unmentioned dual name. A genealogist faithfully copying five names verbatim and silently swapping the sixth for an alternate sobriquet, with no "also called" marker, is the less economical scenario.
The dual-name reading therefore requires an unattested cultural detail (that David's second son went by two names) precisely where the manuscript record already furnishes divergent readings that explain the data. The textual-corruption reading requires only what the apparatus shows: a proper name that varied across copies. Names are the single most corruption-prone class of data in scribal transmission, and nothing theological depends on the outcome.
Where the critical reading lands: a single-name transmission variant within a shared list; the contradiction is real on the canonical surface but trivial in substance, and the dual-name harmonization, while possible, is undocumented and reads against the evident copying relationship between the two texts.
Sources for this reading