Bible Contradiction? What was Solomon’s payment to Hiram?

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: What was Solomon’s payment to Hiram?

Here are the two answers which the skeptic believes shows a Bible contradiction:

Wheat and oil

“Solomon then gave Hiram twenty thousand kors of wheat as food for his household, and twenty kors of pure oil; this is what Solomon would give Hiram year by year.” (1 Kings 5:11)

Wheat, barley, wine, and oil.

“Now behold, I will give your servants, the woodsmen who cut the timber, twenty thousand kors of crushed wheat, twenty thousand kors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.”” (2 Chronicles 2:10)

(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

1. When dealing with skeptics’ claim of Bible contradictions it seems one can never be reminded enough of what exactly is a contradiction.  A contradiction occurs when two or more claims conflict with one another so that they cannot simultaneously be true in the same sense and at the same time.  To put it another way, a Bible contradiction exists when there are claims within the Bible that are mutually exclusive in the same sense and at the same time.
2. One should be skeptical of whether this is a Bible contradiction given the Skeptic Annotated Bible’s track record of inaccurately handling the Bible.  See the many examples of their error which we have responded to in this post: Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.  Of course that does not take away the need to respond to this claim of a contradiction, which is what the remainder of this post will do.  But this observation should caution us to slow down and look more closely at the passages cited by the Skeptic Annotated Bible to see if they interpreted the passages properly to support their conclusion that it is a Bible contradiction.
3. The skeptic tries to pit 1 Kings 5:11 as affirming the claim “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was wheat and oil” against 2 Chronicles 2:10 as affirming “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was wheat, barley, wine, and oil.”
4. In handling the passages the skeptics cited it is important to know the context of what’s going on with the verses.  Both 1 Kings 5 and 2 Chronicles 2 record King Solomon communicating with King Hiram in Tyre concerning purchasing materials to build the Temple.
5. Also the skeptics did properly cited the passage to support the claims being made.  That is not always a given with every contradiction and it is important to pay attention to that.
6. Logically speaking the two claims as stated by the skeptics are not contradictory.
   1. Logically the contradictory to the claim “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was wheat and oil” would be “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was NOT wheat and oil” or “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was ONLY X and Y” (with X and Y being something that is not wheat or oil).  We don’t have a contradiction here because the claim from 2 Chronicles 2:10 that “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was wheat, barley, wine, and oil” is not the same thing as “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was NOT wheat and oil” or “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was ONLY X and Y” (with X and Y being something that is not wheat or oil).
   2. Likewise logically the contradictory to the claim “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was wheat, barley, wine, and oil” would be “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was NOT wheat, barley, wine, and oil” or “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was ONLY X and Y” (with X and Y being something that is not wheat, barley, wine and oil).  We don’t have a contradiction here because the claim from 1 Kings 5:11 that “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was wheat and oil” is not the same thing as “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was NOT wheat, barley, wine, and oil” or “Solomon’s payment to Hiram was ONLY X and Y” (with X and Y being something that is not wheat, barley, wine and oil).
7. Outside of the Bible we also see that if there’s multiple historical account of the same thing and one historical account did not mentioned a detail that doesn’t mean another account that did mentioned the detail is somehow contradicting with the first account.  See for example my posts on the Gold Medal at the Cambrian Patrol, the Louisiana Purchase, the Thanksgiving Story, and September 11th.
8. Furthermore note the agreement in both passages that Solomon paid Hiram “twenty thousand kors of wheat.“
9. I want to go further to ask why the details are different in 1 Kings 5:11 and 2 Chronicles 2:10 as I believe if we explore the reason why additional details are given in 2 Chronicles 2:10 that would fortify my argument that there’s not a Bible contradiction.
   1. If one pay attention to 2 Chronicles 2 one would notice the chapter’s account of the correspondence between the King of Tyre and Solomon is focused on not just building God’s temple but also Solmon’s royal palace.  2 Chronicles 2:1 states “Now Solomon decided to build a house for the name of the Lord, and a royal palace for himself.” Note the bold is mine for emphasis.  Unlike 2 Chronicles 2 in 1 Kings 5 there is no discussion about Solomon building his temple and in 1 Kings 5:5 the focus is only on building the Temple for God.
   2. Given the additional focus in 2 Chronicles 2 of Solomon’s correspondence to acquire natural resources to build his own Palace we are not surprised that they “receipts” found in 2 Chronicles 2 has more items for payment from Solomon.
   3. Reinforcing my point note how the requests in 2 Chronicles 2 from Solomon include more items requested than in 1 Kings 5.  2 Chronicles 2:7-9 states “Now send me a skilled man to work in gold, silver, brass, iron, and in purple, crimson, and violet fabrics, one who knows how to make engravings, to work with the skilled workers [h]whom I have in Judah and Jerusalem, whom my father David provided. 8 Send me also cedar, juniper, and algum timber from Lebanon, for I know that your servants know how to cut timber of Lebanon; and indeed my servants will work with your servants, 9 to prepare timber in abundance for me, for the house which I am about to build will be great and wonderful.”  There is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 2 of Solomon requesting “algum timber” that is not included in 1 Kings 5.  While 1 Kings 5 mentioned Solomon requests workers from Hiram in general without specific identification of their specializations in 2 Chronicles 2 they are specified as those “work in gold, silver, brass, iron, and in purple, crimson, and violet fabrics” and engravings.
   4. The specificity of more items requested and also two building projects being focused upon in 2 Chronicles 2 in comparison to the single building project in view in 1 Kings 5 means that we should expect 2 Chronicles 2 to record for us a larger payment Solomon made.
   5. What is recorded in 2 Chronicles 2 and 1 Kings 5 is no different than what happen in our world today.  The government could pay a construction company to build or innovate the capitol building while also having another contract with the same company to do work with a lesser government administrative building.  One document might exist for only the expense paid by the government for the capitol building while there can exist another document that record the payment spent for both building project that was paid to the same construction company.  Anyone who thinks these two documents are contradictions would have the response form an accountant or official to the accuser that he or she should pay better attention to details.
10. There is no contradiction here.  Seems the skeptic needs to learn of How to Handle Bible Contradictions.
11. We shouldn’t miss that worldviews are at play even with the skeptic’s objection to Christianity.  The worldview of the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible actually doesn’t even allow for such a thing as the law of non-contradiction to be meaningful and intelligible.  In other words for him to try to disprove the Bible by pointing out that there’s a Bible contradiction doesn’t even make sense within his own worldview.  Check out our post “Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview.”