The Bible’s Contradictions are deliberate and Godbreathed

This is pretty much the very thought that a few years back moved me into a different and richer appreciation of Biblical literature:

the men who compiled and edited the Hebrew scriptures two millennia ago had every opportunity to correct its contradictions — but chose not to Let's Appreciate the Bible’s Contradictions - OnFaith

To me  this is the big clue that in taking scripture to be God-breathed we take seriously the probability that the writers and editors knew what they were doing and felt constrained to leave those differences and contradictions unharmonised. They mostly worked orally/aurally which tends to involve a close 'actorly' attention to the text (that is one that recites it much in learning it by heart thus becoming intimately familiar with it). This would mean both awareness of differences and reflection on them.

Presumably we still have those differences because they are judged to be important clues to us for interpretation and learning: they are part of what makes these scriptures useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. As the writer of the article says looking at two angles on an OT incident:

to wonder, for instance, if propaganda plays a role in the earlier text.
It’s a good question, and it speaks to the wisdom of the Bible’s
editors that we’re given room to ask it.

Just so. I love the richness of being able to be in a dialogue within the text where the questions raised by one in relation to another become God's encouragement to us to question and to listen for the voice of the Spirit and not just take the propaganda. The difference, contradiction even, forces us to ask what the God stake in the telling is and just what is being revealed, what is being subverted and even who is doing the reading of whom!