Okay Ban,
I’ve already said this in another thread, but I think it’s relevant so I’ll repeat it here.
I think we can agree that a unregenerated person can't understand the spiritual truths of the Bible, but only the historical, so looking through my "eyes" there was a moment in time when the Holy Spirit illuminated my state of being lost and going to Hell, at that moment I had the choice of accepting salvation or rejecting it, if I rejected it was like calling the Holy Spirit a liar, now, every true born again child of God has had the same experience in their lives, ...so, I have experienced the opportunity of calling the Holy Spirit a liar (blasphemy), but didn't, ...so from that experience we know the act is "literal" (occupies a point of time in the time-space domain) and we know the signification of what Jesus was saying, ... so, from our knowledge ("ginosko," knowledge that comes from experience) we can use the gift of teaching, reading the text distinctly, giving the sense and help the people to understand, to "interpretate" the verse correctly in the sense that He meant, ...the proof we have that this is correct is in the fact the Word of God is living, but these words were spoken almost two thousand years ago and yet there are people being convicted by the Holy Spirit from them today.
We are growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, I look at it like when I was framing houses, I used the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the rafter lengths, I didn't have to stop and first review the multiplication tables because I had already learned them, so it is with the Truth of God, we keep building on what He has/is teaching us and we are growing in knowledge.
The Word is like a gem with many different facets, in one facet we will see a truth and in another will we see another truth, however these truths won’t be contradictory, but rather will build on each other, compliment each other. What each child of God will see in a facet is dependent on their level of spiritual maturity, babe, child, teenager or adult, Paul taught this when he told the Corinthian church he had to feed them watered down milk because the couldn’t accept the meat of the Word and we also find the same thing in the Hebrew epistle. Heb 5:12, 14 Comprehension will also depend on the spiritual state/condition of the child with Father, there could be sin in the heart, unwillingness to submit to His authority (pride), an inattentive heart (lackadaisical study habits) , failure to do what He has already told them to do, etc., for example if a person ahs been saved for 25 years and are still in the baby stage, Father could be remaining silent until they decide in their heart to take off the dirty diaper and grow in the knowledge of the Lord.
Okay, now for the contradictions you have listed:
2 Kings 4:8, 2 Chron 36:9
As major has stated, Jehoiachin was co regent with his father starting at the age of eight and came to be king when he was eighteen, so to answer your question he was eighteen, however, man lives by every word that comes out of the mouth of God, so there is more here, let’s look at the story through another facet.
1) This story is repeated twice and Jesus set a principle that when something is stated twice we need to take notice, “Verily, Verily”
2) In both books it records “he did evil in the sight of the Lord” and what resulted from his sin, the Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, now Paul tells us in Corinthians that the Old Testament was written for us to receive instruction from, 1 Cor 10:11, which for us today the lesson in this verse is, the wages of sin is death, ..when we sin something will die, be it a relationship, ministry, or possibly our physical body, no one escapes this principle, saved or unsaved.
A different facet:
1) Eight in this Scripture is used to represent fatness, …Jehoiachin was king, he had it all.
2) Eighteen is two x nine, in this Scripture two is the number of witness (see above) and nine is the number of finality or judgment, Jehoiachin was judged by God when he was eighteen, again the answer to your question.
And another facet
Jeremiah pronounced a curse on Jehoiachin, …he would never have a descendent that would sit on the throne of David Jer 22:30, which set the stage for Jesus to receive the legal right to sit on the throne of David through his adoptive father Joseph Matt 1:12, 16
I hope you can see my point, when I come across a seeming contradiction I dig deeper to see what treasure I will find hidden there.
Matt 27:28, John 19:2
1) Matt was written to the Jews to prove Jesus is their Messiah, he used the same teaching technique as Jesus by giving references to the Old Testament, scarlet is a reference to the “tola” worm and the Jews would immediately flash on Ps 22.
2) John was written to the church (Gentiles) and was recording history, the original word purple was from Latin, the language of the soldiers, and is a reference to the dye that was extracted from a mussel, his Gospel was written in the ‘90s while he was the pastor of the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation, one of those churches was in Thyatira, well know at the time for producing this die, hence the readers would be familiar with this word.
Matt 27:34, Mark 15:23
In Matt the word for wine is sour wine and gall was added to the wine mixed with myrrh, since it was a benevolent ladies club that customarily provided this stupefant they wouldn’t add something revolting like gall to the mixture, hence it is assumed it was added by someone after it left their hands.
Matt 27:5, Acts 1:18
1) Matt was probably an eyewitness account while Acts was written by Luke gathering info from people after the fact.
2) The Pharisees used the money Judas returned to buy the Potters Field to bury the poor who didn’t have money for burial because it was blood money and couldn’t be returned to the treasury.
3) A historian, Josephus or Edersheim, I don’t remember which one tonight, recorded that Judas hung himself on the high wall of the city, either the rope broke or he hung there until his body putrefied and he fell outside of the wall into the field called Aceladama, or field of blood, so named not because of Judas , but because it was better know then Jos 15:8 as well as today as the valley of the sons of Hinnom or Gihenna where the idolatrous Jews burned their children alive to Moloch and Baal.
Now you can say I’m interpreting or even reading something in to the verse that isn’t written there, but that’s Bible study, we prayfully read the Word and the Holy Spirit teaches, He’s the one filling in the blanks, He is the one that is revealing the different facets of the Word to us.
Blessings,
Gene