Recently, a struggling brother pointed out to me the fact that in Joshua 15:21-32, a discrepancy in the Bible seems to occur between the number of villages mentioned (36), and the number the passage says are there (29). He used this with other arguments as to why he gave up on Christ and the Bible. Although this passage doesn't damage my faith, I am very curious as to why the numbering in the Bible was off in this instance. Can you please help me out?
Even though the brother's objections sound trivial, I do think it is important to address these sorts of questions. Otherwise we may leave the impression that the Bible isn't completely true, or that sloppiness is somehow divine. When I read this passage, I notice the wording "a total of twenty-nine towns and their villages." The fellow is right: there are 36 place names, not 29. Could it be that there were 29 towns plus seven villages? No, this does not hold water; the next section has "14 towns with their villages" and the total tally is only 14. We'll have to take another approach.
The fact is, there is another enumeration of the villages in the territory of Simeon. It is found in Joshua 19:1ff, where we read, "the tribe of Simeon, whose inheritance lay within the territory of Judah." Simeon had territory inside the boundaries of Judah, and this enclave of villages constituted a counting anomaly. In order not to double-count some of these villages, they are omitted in the Joshua 15 list. So in actual fact, the numeration in the Bible is not off.
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