And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there.
And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there.
And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew of the Syrians the men of'seven hundred chariots, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach the captain of their host, so that he died there.
And the Aramaeans went in flight before Israel; and David put to the sword the men of seven hundred Aramaean war-carriages and forty thousand footmen, and Shobach, the captain of the army, was wounded, and came to his death there.
And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there.
The Syrians fled before Israel; and David killed of the Syrians [the men of] seven hundred chariots, and forty thousand horsemen, and struck Shobach the captain of their army, so that he died there.
And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew of the Syrians the men of seven hundred chariots, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach the captain of their host, that he died there.
Seven Hundred chariots - and forty thousand Horsemen - In the parallel place, 1 Chronicles 19:18, it is said, David slew of the Syrians Seven Thousand men, which fought in chariots. It is difficult to ascertain the right number in this and similar places. It is very probable that, in former times, the Jews expressed, as they often do now, their numbers, not by words at full length, but by numeral letters; and, as many of the letters bear a great similarity to each other, mistakes might easily creep in when the numeral letters came to be expressed by words at full length. This alone will account for the many mistakes which we find in the numbers in these books, and renders a mistake here very probable. The letter ז zain, with a dot above, stands for seven thousand, נ nun for seven hundred: the great similarity of these letters might easily cause the one to be mistaken for the other, and so produce an error in this place.
Seven hundred chariots - More probable than the "seven thousand" of 1 Chronicles 19:18. The frequent errors in numbers arise from the practice of expressing numerals by letters, with one or more dots or dashes to indicate hundreds, thousands, etc.