|"Squeezing Fifty Years Into Twenty": A Response|
This item on 1 Samuel 7:1-2 includes such "argument by outrage" arguments as the one for Uzzah, but the main focus is on this verse:
1 Samuel 7:2 And it came to pass, while the ark abode in Kirjathjearim, that the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented after the LORD.
The problem? This all happened before Saul was king. Saul reigned forty years. David reigned another seven or so before he finally went to collect the Ark from Abinadab's place. So how can the Ark have been at Abinadab's place for 20 years (as above) when 50 had passed?
Though it isn't an option suggested by any commentators I have seen so far, I say that this is fairly obviously a case of copyist error. I am tendering the solution that 1 Samuel 7:2 originally said fifty rather than twenty.
You say there's no evidence of that? No, there isn't, not hard textual evidence, just as there's none for the error found in Tacitus and countless other ancient documents. This is a matter of assuming that a writer isn't careless or ignorant, and not taking the benefit of the doubt for ourselves. But as it happens, there are other considerations as well.
1 Samuel 7:2 says of the 20/50 years, "the time was long". The Hebrew word combination is found elsewhere in the OT:
Deut. 11:21 That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
Proverbs 9:11 For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.
In this time period, seventy years was a long life, 110 even better. Deuteronomy is said to people in their twenties and thirties. Education of young men, as those to whom wisdom like Proverbs was taught, took place in their teens and twenties. If these verses are only promising another twenty years of life, who would care? But if they offer fifty or more, they offer a reach into the long lifespan of seventy. Thus the usage of the phrase suggests a fifty was originally written for 1 Samuel 7:2.