My Thoughts on the KJV Translation of Absalom's 40 Years VS. Four Years By Modern Translations

One of the reasons why some critics of the King James Version (KJV) has always been linked to some years that were too long. One controversy was with Ahaziah's age (22 and 42) without knowing that one meant the biological age and the other meant the number of years since the House of Omri got established. Reading through classical commentaries that used the Textus Receptus and the KJV would be helpful in finding out why the KJV translators wrote such numbers. Another issue is that 1 Samuel 15:7 writes that Absalom waited for 40 years while other translations (which also used the historical accounts of Josephus as the source) wrote the literal, four years. So how do we try to reconcile this?

John Gill's commentary on 1 Samuel 15:7 writes as follows:

And it came to pass after forty years,.... Or four years; so long it was from the reconciliation of Absalom to David, as Josephus says; and so read Theodoret on the place, the Syriac and Arabic versions: but some say it was either forty years from the time Israel first had a king; and which might be an era of reckoning with the Jews, as the era of Seleucidae was with the Greeks, on the like account; or from the time Saul slew the priests at Nob, as Jerom; or from the time of David's being anointed by Samuel; or this was the year of Absalom's age, or of David's reign: but these, and other attempts made to account for this passage, are not entirely satisfactory; and therefore one may be tempted to conclude there must be a mistake in the copy, of "arbaim" for "arba", forty for four; which makes it quite easy, and confirms the first sense:

Meanwhile, Matthew Henry also writes the following:

We have here the breaking out of Absalom’s rebellion, which he had long been contriving. It is said to be after forty years, v. 7. But whence it is to be dated we are not told; not from David’s beginning his reign, for then it would fall in the last year of his life, which is not probable; but either from his first anointing by Samuel seven years before, or rather (I think) from the people’s desiring a king, and the first change of the government into a monarchy, which might be about ten years before David began to reign; it is fitly dated thence, to show that the same restless spirit was still working, and still they were given to change: as fond now of a new man as then of a new model. So it fell about the thirtieth year of David’s reign.

While there's the point that there was supposedly a copyist error but I reckon that the KJV translators stuck with the non-literal 40 over the literal and actual four years for a reason. Using 40 years (which I think that maybe Absalom was really 40 years old when the battle happened or that it was the time. Modern translators chose the literal four years (which was probably done to avoid confusing readers) while the KJV decided to go with the figurative sense. 

So pretty much, the preservation of the Masoretic text (which is the Hebrew source of the translators for the KJV and its predecessors) chose to go with the figurative 40 than the literal four years. However, I have no problem going with the literal four years as told by Jewish history either. Though, I'm still somewhat stubborn in the KJV Only (like David W. Cloud) while I don't approve of extreme KJV Onlyism.