Questions On Conflicting Numbers

Question 1. In Numbers 3:22-39 the numbers 7500, 8600, and 6200 don't add up to 22000.  They must add up to 2200 in order to make sense of 3:40-51. Pleas explain.  Does this mean the Bible is not infallible?  I have about 20 other examples that I've found that are similar to this in the footnotes of Ryrie's Study Bible.  He [Ryrie] dismisses them as copyist errors, but copyist errors seem to infer that God is not active in preserving His Word, which is what I've always read when it comes to inerrancy.  Help!

Answer I am unfamiliar with Ryrie's Study Bible, but I know about some of the "inaccuracies" of the Bible from other sources. Many people point to these as evidence that the Bible is not an inspired book.

However, when taken as a whole, there can be no doubt that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. The Bible records a great deal of history, and to this day there has never been a discovery that has contradicted what is written there. In fact, there are archeological discoveries every year that illustrate the veracity of the Bible.

Think about the book of Isaiah. There are prophecies concerning Christ and the details of his life and death, including calling the town of his birth by name several hundred years before he was born.

Although there have been men such as Nostrodomus who have successfully made predictions, those men have also made many predictions that never came true. The prophecies in the Bible, on the other hand, have always come true.

Consider the many different writers who wrote over 1000 years apart, and yet, they all tell pieces of the same story.

I'm sorry, but I can't tell you why the numbers in Numbers 3 don't add up to 22000 exactly. And I understand that this is a problem for you. However, it is important to make the distinction between the Lord being active in preserving His Word and the Lord inspiring the thousands of copyists over the last 4 thousand years who were making copies of the text. There are pieces of thousands of manuscripts of the Bible extant. There is no scripture that teaches that God actively guided all of the men who made those copies. There are passages, such as those in Zechariah 14, that teach that the Gospel would go out from Jerusalem and into the rest of the world. That happened, and Christ's Church continues to flourish today. Many have been the men who have tried to eradicate the Church by persecuting Christians,  banning Bibles, and banning worship services. However, Bibles are smuggled into China regularly. Christians still meet in the former Soviet Union even though it is illegal in some places for them to come together. And most importantly, people every day find the truth that is in His Word and submit themselves to His Will. That is what matters. Finding the truth in the Bible should be your ultimate goal. Don't get side tracked by the fact that there are a few minor passages that may (or may not; we don't know what the writer was thinking) contain errors. I have not found one yet that changed anything in God's plan of salvation. Contact Michael

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