I SAMUEL 13:1

Q: The passage says Saul reigned over Israel “forty” years. The word forty is bracketed with a footnote which says “Hebrew does not have 'forty'.” What does that mean exactly?

“One can do little with this verse. Some have supposed that it contains two numbers, the first giving Saul's age when he became king, and the second, the length of his reign. This is what one would expect the verse to say. Both numbers, however, appear to be missing, and, although in 1b there is the number 'two', yet, it fits neither his age nor the length of his reign.” (Old Testament Translation Problems, United Bible Societies)

The problem with this verse is that apparently at an early stage in the manuscript being copied, a scribe accidentally left out some needed information. This happens inevitably when any document is copied by hand, but the problem is usually easily remedied in subsequent copying due to the redundancy that is built into all written languages. In other words, accidentally missing letters or words can be restored because language contains more information than is really needed for us to understand it. A current example is the shorthand used in texting-- we can understand it even if all the vowels are removed.

The problem in this case is that the missing information consists of numbers, not words; and numbers possess virtually no redundancy. Once they are gone, they cannot be easily restored.

So what have translators done with this verse? One can often go to an early translation of the Hebrew text into another language to see if that helps, but in this case the Greek Septuagint actually omits the whole verse. The King James Version (followed by The Living Bible) reads, “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel...” but breaks several rules of Hebrew grammar even to come up with this reading. The New English Bible gives Saul's age as 50 and length of reign as 22 years while NIV guesses at 30 and 42 years, respectively, partially based on information in Acts13:21.

Fortunately, as with other textual problems encountered in the Bible, there are no key doctrinal issues thrown into doubt by any uncertainties in the original text.