2 Samuel 23:8 says the chief of David's mighty men raised his spear against eight hundred men and killed them all in one encounter. 1 Chronicles 11:11 — telling the same story, listing the same hero — says three hundred. Same event, same warrior, two different body counts five hundred men apart.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
800
These be the names of the mighty men whom David had: The Tachmonite that sat in the seat,
chief among the captains; the same was Adino the Eznite: he lift up his spear against eight hundred, whom he slew at one time. (KJV)
2 Samuel 23:8
These are the names of David's mighty men: Josheb-Basshebeth, a Tahkemonite, was chief of the Three;
he raised his spear against eight hundred men, whom he killed in one encounter. (NIV)
These are the names of the mighty men whom David had: Josheb-basshe'beth a Tah-che'monite;
he was chief of the three; he wielded his spear against eight hundred whom he slew at one time. (RSV)
8These are the names of the mighty men whom David had: Josheb Basshebeth a Tahchemonite, chief of the captains; he was called Adino the Eznite, who killed eight hundred at one time.
And this is the number of the mighty men whom David had; Jashobeam, an Hachmonite,
the chief of the captains: he lifted up his spear against three hundred slain by him at one time. (KJV)
1 Chronicles 11:11
this is the list of David's mighty men: Jashobeam, a Hacmonite, was chief of the officers;
he raised his spear against three hundred men, whom he killed in one encounter. (NIV)
This is an account of David's mighty men: Jasho'be-am, a Hach'monite, was chief of the three;
he wielded his spear against three hundred whom he slew at one time. (RSV)
11This is the number of the mighty men whom David had: Jashobeam, the son of a Hachmonite, the chief of the thirty; he lifted up his spear against three hundred and killed them at one time.
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.
Manuscript variants
The body count differs (800 in 2 Samuel 23:8 vs. 300 in 1 Chronicles 11:11), within the notoriously corrupt Hebrew of 2 Samuel 23 where 4QSamuel-a and the Lucianic LXX preserve divergent readings.
McCarter, II Samuel, Anchor Bible 9, pp. 489-491
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.
The two parallel hero-lists disagree on the body count of David's chief warrior: 2 Samuel 23:8 (MT) credits him with eight hundred slain "at one time," while 1 Chronicles 11:11 gives three hundred. The discrepancy does not stand alone — the warrior's name is also corrupt across the passages. The MT of 2 Samuel 23:8 reads "Josheb-basshebeth a Tahchemonite" (with the KJV's harmonizing gloss "the Tachmonite that sat in the seat... the same was Adino the Eznite"), whereas 1 Chronicles 11:11 reads "Jashobeam, a Hachmonite." Text critics widely judge Jashobeam original and Josheb-basshebeth a scribal corruption: "Josheb-basshebeth" ("sitting in the seat") looks like an accidental duplication or misreading, and the puzzling "Adino the Eznite" of the MT is generally explained as a corruption of words meaning "he wielded his spear," which is precisely what the Chronicles parallel preserves. That a demonstrable corruption already sits in the same clause is the crucial context: the verse is known-damaged.
The Archer-style harmonization posits two separate feats — three hundred slain on one occasion, eight hundred on another — so that the two texts record different battles. This is not impossible in the abstract, but it strains the wording. Both texts present the figure as the warrior's single signature exploit, both append the same qualifier ("at one time" / "in one encounter"), and both occur in the same fixed position at the head of the same list of the same heroes. The two-battle reading multiplies events the texts do not narrate in order to neutralize a numeral; it is a harmonization driven by the conclusion rather than by the data. McCarter in the Anchor Bible 2 Samuel and Tsumura in the NICOT both treat the passages as a single tradition carrying a textual variant, not two engagements.
The text-critical reading is far better supported, and 2 Samuel is the prime suspect because the Hebrew of Samuel is among the least stable in the Hebrew Bible. The Qumran scroll 4QSamuel-a repeatedly preserves readings closer to the Old Greek than to the MT, and the Lucianic (Antiochene) Greek of Samuel often reflects an older Hebrew Vorlage than the received Masoretic text. Aejmelaeus's work on the Old Greek of 1 Samuel documents in detail how frequently the Greek tradition exposes a superior or earlier Hebrew base, and how much secondary expansion the MT of Samuel accumulated. Against that backdrop, the higher number — eight hundred — is most economically read as a scribal inflation in the Samuel tradition, or alternatively the Chronicler's three hundred as a deliberate reduction of a figure he found extravagant; Knoppers and Japhet both note the Chronicler's tendency to rework his Vorlage. Either direction is an ordinary transmission phenomenon. Numerals were especially vulnerable: written with letters or with easily confused notations, they corrupt readily, which is why Samuel-Chronicles parallels are littered with divergent totals.
Where the critical reading lands: the same pattern as other Samuel/Kings-versus-Chronicles numeral splits — a single tradition transmitted in two manuscripts that diverge on a number, in a clause whose accompanying name is itself provably corrupt. The two-battle harmonization invents an episode the text never reports; the disagreement is best explained as scribal corruption, most likely in the notoriously rough Hebrew of 2 Samuel 23.
Sources for this reading
P. Kyle McCarter Jr., II Samuel (Anchor Bible 9; Doubleday, 1984) pp. 489-491on the corruption of the name and number in 2 Samuel 23:82 Samuel 23:8
David Toshio Tsumura, The Second Book of Samuel (NICOT; Eerdmans, 2019) pp. 320-324on the single tradition behind the parallel
Gary N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 10-29 (Anchor Bible 12A; Doubleday, 2004) pp. 543-547on the Chronicler's reworking and the number variant
Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary (Old Testament Library; Westminster John Knox, 1993) pp. 240-241on the Chronicler's treatment of the figure
Anneli Aejmelaeus, "How to Reach the Old Greek in 1 Samuel and What to Do with It," in Congress Volume Helsinki 2010, ed. Martti Nissinen (VTSup 148; Brill, 2012) pp. 185-205on the Old Greek Vorlage and MT expansion in Samuel
Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Zondervan, 1982) pp. 184-185two-separate-incidents harmonization
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.
The two parallel hero-lists disagree on the body count of David's chief warrior: 2 Samuel 23:8 (MT) credits him with eight hundred slain "at one time," while 1 Chronicles 11:11 gives three hundred. The discrepancy does not stand alone — the warrior's name is also corrupt across the passages. The MT of 2 Samuel 23:8 reads "Josheb-basshebeth a Tahchemonite" (with the KJV's harmonizing gloss "the Tachmonite that sat in the seat... the same was Adino the Eznite"), whereas 1 Chronicles 11:11 reads "Jashobeam, a Hachmonite." Text critics widely judge Jashobeam original and Josheb-basshebeth a scribal corruption: "Josheb-basshebeth" ("sitting in the seat") looks like an accidental duplication or misreading, and the puzzling "Adino the Eznite" of the MT is generally explained as a corruption of words meaning "he wielded his spear," which is precisely what the Chronicles parallel preserves. That a demonstrable corruption already sits in the same clause is the crucial context: the verse is known-damaged.
The Archer-style harmonization posits two separate feats — three hundred slain on one occasion, eight hundred on another — so that the two texts record different battles. This is not impossible in the abstract, but it strains the wording. Both texts present the figure as the warrior's single signature exploit, both append the same qualifier ("at one time" / "in one encounter"), and both occur in the same fixed position at the head of the same list of the same heroes. The two-battle reading multiplies events the texts do not narrate in order to neutralize a numeral; it is a harmonization driven by the conclusion rather than by the data. McCarter in the Anchor Bible 2 Samuel and Tsumura in the NICOT both treat the passages as a single tradition carrying a textual variant, not two engagements.
The text-critical reading is far better supported, and 2 Samuel is the prime suspect because the Hebrew of Samuel is among the least stable in the Hebrew Bible. The Qumran scroll 4QSamuel-a repeatedly preserves readings closer to the Old Greek than to the MT, and the Lucianic (Antiochene) Greek of Samuel often reflects an older Hebrew Vorlage than the received Masoretic text. Aejmelaeus's work on the Old Greek of 1 Samuel documents in detail how frequently the Greek tradition exposes a superior or earlier Hebrew base, and how much secondary expansion the MT of Samuel accumulated. Against that backdrop, the higher number — eight hundred — is most economically read as a scribal inflation in the Samuel tradition, or alternatively the Chronicler's three hundred as a deliberate reduction of a figure he found extravagant; Knoppers and Japhet both note the Chronicler's tendency to rework his Vorlage. Either direction is an ordinary transmission phenomenon. Numerals were especially vulnerable: written with letters or with easily confused notations, they corrupt readily, which is why Samuel-Chronicles parallels are littered with divergent totals.
Where the critical reading lands: the same pattern as other Samuel/Kings-versus-Chronicles numeral splits — a single tradition transmitted in two manuscripts that diverge on a number, in a clause whose accompanying name is itself provably corrupt. The two-battle harmonization invents an episode the text never reports; the disagreement is best explained as scribal corruption, most likely in the notoriously rough Hebrew of 2 Samuel 23.
Sources for this reading