Battle Casualty Figures in OT

T

TMK Jan 8, 2016

2 Chronicles 13:17 Then Abijah and his people struck them with a great slaughter; so five hundred thousand choice men of Israel fell slain.

In the 1st battle for the Marne in WW1, the total combatants was about 2.5 million men. The US took a total of 263k casualties, 81.7k killed. Germany took 256k total casualties.

The invasion of Normandy involved 1.3 million combatants and there was a total of about 235k casualties.

Of course these battles were fought with modern warfare.

So my question is how realistic the 500,000 killed number is in the Chronicles account, and how this can be reconciled.

sermonindex Jan 8, 2016

I wonder what the number of eternal casualties have been from false doctrine and sin, since the Early Church?

Numbers 14:16

Because THE LORD WAS NOT ABLE to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.

Is there anything the Lord is not able to do? Apparently, He will not MAKE a man follow Him.

T

Theophila Jan 8, 2016

As realistically as the Bible records it.

T

TMK Jan 9, 2016

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying the biblical numbers are not correct. I have been listening through the Bible and I am in Chronicles. I have read through the bible many times but I guess these numbers never really stood out. This time they did.

Earlier in the chapter it said that jeroboam mustered a 800,000 men army.

Now, I admit I am not very knowledgeable about the population of Israel back then. Remember that Judah had its own army and Israels army alone was said to be 800,000 men.

Is someone able to explain how this was possible?

T

TMK Jan 9, 2016

I just checked-,the total active duty for entire US armed forces is about 1.3 million.

sermonindex Jan 9, 2016

I can easily believe the Bible figures: For more perspective:

The worst genocides of the 20th Century

Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50)
49-78,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39)
23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945)
12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908)
8,000,000
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)
5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20)
1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)
1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)
1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)
1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970)
1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)
900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)
800,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88)
600,000
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987)
570,000
Sukarno (Communists 1965-66)
500,000
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39)
500,000? (Chinese civilians)
Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002)
400,000
Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001)
400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979)
300,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71)
300,000 (Bangladesh)
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII)
300,000
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97)
?
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996)
220,000
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000)
200,000
Suharto (Aceh, East Timor, New Guinea, 1975-98)
200,000
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam, 1953-56)
200,000
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972)
150,000
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99)
100,000
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999)
100,000
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79)
?
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974)
70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians)
Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83)
70,000
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71)
60,000
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic, 1930-61)
50,000
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990)
40,000
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947)
30,000 (popular uprising)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)
30,000 (dissidents executed)
Francisco Franco (Spain)
30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999)
30,000
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968)
30,000
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000)
25,000
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89)
20,000
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority)
20,000
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83)
13,000
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957)
10,000 (war in Algeria)
Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion)
10,000
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997)
6,000
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001)
3,500
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973)
3,000
Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06)
2,000

http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html