"How many stalls and horsemen did Solomon have?" (Alleged Contradiction #E3937)
And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.
1 Kings 4:26
And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.
II Chronicles 9:25
Response
There were four thousand large, main stalls (for horses and chariots). Each main stall contained ten sub-stalls for the individual horses (forty thousand).
Analyzing these numbers, each chariot was assigned ten horses and three horsemen. 1 One possibility is that each chariot was dragged by six horses with an escort of three additional horsemen. The extra tenth horse could have been a backup in the event that one of the others had a bad leg, was sick, or was killed in battle.
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Notes
- Forty thousand horses for four thousand chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen for four thousand chariots. ↩