Strengthen your faith in God's word

Paul said in the synagogue at Antioch, “And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet” (Acts 13:20). But Solomon began the temple “in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 6:1), and those years hold more than the judges: the forty in the wilderness, the wars of Joshua, Saul’s forty (Acts 13:21), David’s forty (1 Kings 2:11), and three of Solomon’s. Gill reckons that this leaves the judges “less than four hundred years.”

Modern versions move the number into the verse before, following the order of the Alexandrian copies: “All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges” (ESV). The KJV keeps the order of the Received Text.

Preferred: The words “after that” look back over all Paul had told: God “chose our fathers” (Acts 13:17), brought them out of Egypt, suffered them in the wilderness, destroyed the seven nations, and “divided their land to them by lot” (13:19). The four hundred and fifty years measure that time, from the choosing of the fathers to the dividing of the land; and after that, God gave them judges until Samuel. Gill: the meaning is “not that there was such a space of time … from the distribution of the land of Canaan until the times of Samuel the prophet, during which space judges were given; but that after that term of time was expired God gave them judges.”

The years agree. The choosing of the seed took place at Isaac’s birth: “in Isaac shall thy seed be called” (Genesis 21:12). Gill counts from it sixty years to Jacob’s birth (Genesis 25:26), a hundred and thirty to his going down into Egypt (47:9), two hundred and ten to the Exodus, forty in the wilderness, and seven to the dividing of the land: 447 years, “only three years wanting of the sum in the text,” so Paul says “about.” Ussher counts 452 from Isaac’s birth and 447 from Ishmael’s casting out, “but between both, we may count, 450. years.” The judges then fill the time the temple’s 480 years leave them, and both numbers stand as printed.

Also given: That Paul gives the judges’ years as the book of Judges records them. Haley: “Adding together the several periods of rest, judgeship, and oppression … and allowing twenty years for Joshua’s rule, we obtain four hundred and fifty years.” Some of those periods ran at the same time (Judges 10:7), so on this reading the four hundred and fifty would be the sum of the years recorded rather than the time that passed, which the words “the space of” don’t easily allow; it isn’t preferred.