1 Chronicles 22:14
A hundred thousand talents of gold
All witnesses give 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver, roughly 3,400 and 34,000 tonnes, far more than any known ancient treasury. The text is stable; the meaning of the figures is the question.
Stable text: no manuscript differences in meaning
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains this verse · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Every witness, in order
Composed c. 4th century BC (debated)
Original Chronicles
No original survives; no certain Qumran copy of 1 Chronicles.
Translated c. 2nd century BC
Septuagint, 1 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
cent mille talents d'or, un million de talents d'argent
One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
auri talenta centum millia, et argenti mille millia talentorum
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
זָהָב כִּכָּרִים מֵאָה־אֶלֶף וְכֶסֶף אֶלֶף אֲלָפִים כִּכָּרִים
gold, a hundred thousand talents, and silver, a thousand thousand talents
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver
What changed, and why
Proposals: hyperbole expressing the temple's glory; a lighter talent; or numbers inflated in transmission. Compare 1 Kings 10:14 (666 talents a year). The NET Bible notes the scale. The site does not convert the figures into modern currency.
What the evidence shows
- All checked witnesses agree on the figures.
- The figures are literal.
Sources
Related lessons
- David's Preparations for the Temple →David gathers stonecutters among the foreigners, iron, bronze and cedar "without number." He tells Solomon that he could not build because he had shed much blood; Solomon, "a man of rest," will build. He hands over a hundred thousand talents of gold and a million talents of silver and commands the leaders to help.