1 Samuel 11 Footnotes

11:8 Did Saul’s fighting force in the battle against Nahash the Ammonite number a few thousand men, three hundred thousand, or six hundred thousand? Many recent scholars argue that Israel’s population at the time was too small to support an army of more than a few thousand men. The Septuagint, the Greek version of the OT that dates to the pre-Christian era, states that a total of six hundred thousand men were mustered for the conflict. The Hebrew text provides the number three hundred thousand. This is about half the total of men counted in the military census Moses had taken four hundred years earlier (Nm 1:46), and probably represents the one supplied by the original writer.