Does the Bible ever contradict itself?
No, that is an absolute impossibility! The word “contradiction” means “two statements that are opposed to one another.” If the Bible could contradict itself, it would mean that God, the Author of the Bible, states a truth in one passage and then gives us the opposite meaning in another passage, which means God is guilty of INCONSISTENCY and ERROR. The truth is “God cannot lie” (see Numbers 23:19; Hebrews 6:18; and Titus 1:2), nor can God “make mistakes.” Jesus said in His prayer to God the Father, “Your Word is TRUTH” (John 17:17), so there are NO LIES in the Bible. King David declared, “the law of the LORD is PERFECT” (Psalm 19:7), so there are NO MISTAKES. This means there are NO CONTRADICTIONS. I had said that God is the Author of the Bible. How do we know that? Ah, because we have two clear verses that tell us that. In 2 Timothy 3;16 we read, “All Scripture is given by INSPIRATION OF GOD” and in 2 Peter 1:21 we read, “Holy men of God spoke as they were MOVED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT.” This means the whole Bible is “God-breathed.” God gave revelations to devoted men and then He MOVED THEM to write down the exact words to reveal to us His Divine revelations. These “holy men of God” were simply human instruments used by God to communicate His Word to mankind. God “dictated the very words they should write, and they wrote them down” (see 1 Corinthians 2:9-13).
Now we need to realize that when these men wrote God’s Word, they were the ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS. In time, other men made COPIES that could be used by many people in many different languages. We call them TRANSLATIONS and in the process of making these copies (which was a very tedious job) “mistakes were made” which we call “copyist errors.” One such example is found in comparing 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2. 2 Kings 8:26 reads, “TWO AND TWENTY YEARS OLD was Ahaziah when he began to reign” and in 1 Chronicles 22:2 we read, “FORTY AND TWO YEARS OLD was Ahaziah when he began to reign.” These have been used by enemies of the Bible to show a clear contradiction but as we have seen “God cannot lie or contradict Himself.” Thankfully this “seeming contradiction” was corrected in other translations which have both verses stating that Ahaziah was TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD (see the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, Darby’s New Translation).
In closing, there are also accurate translations where men have thought there were contradictions in two verses because they failed to see the real meaning in them. For example, In Acts 9:7 we read, “And the men who journeyed with him (Saul) stood by speechless, HEARING A VOICE but seeing no one.” Later, in Acts 22:9, we read, “And those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they DID NOT HEAR THE VOICE of Him who spoke to me.” This does sound like an obvious contradiction, right? But there is a clear explanation that reveals there is NO CONTRADICTION. In Acts 9:7 they “heard a voice” but they did not understand it or recognize that it was the Lord of glory that was speaking to Saul. That’s what is meant by the words in Acts 22:9, “they did not hear THE VOICE OF HIM (the Lord of glory) who spoke to me (Saul).” In other words, the voice was “unintelligible to them.” We have another example in Scripture where God spoke from heaven and men “heard the voice” but couldn’t understand that it was God’s voice. In fact, they thought it was THUNDER or an ANGEL. I’m speaking of John 12:28-29 which says, “Father, glorify Your name. then A VOICE came from heaven, saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’ Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had THUNDERED. Others said, ‘An ANGEL has spoken to Him.” The people clearly “heard the Father’s VOICE (just as those who were with Saul heard the VOICE of Jesus), yet they did NOT UNDERSTAND IT. This proves that men can conclude they see errors (called contradictions) in the Bible when in fact they are in error by not seeing the true meaning of certain passages. (DO) (630.3)