^1:17So Moses and Aaron took these men who had been mentioned specifically by name, ^1:18and they assembled³⁵ the entire community together on the first day of the second month.³⁶ Then the people recorded their ancestry³⁷ by their clans and families, and the men who were twenty years old or older were listed³⁸ by name individually, ^1:19just as the Lord had commanded Moses. And so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai.

^1:20And they were as follows:

The descendants of Reuben, the firstborn son of Israel: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name individually. ^1:21Those of them who were numbered³⁹ from the tribe of Reuben were 46,500.⁴⁰

^1:22From the descendants of Simeon: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males numbered of them⁴¹ twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name individually. ^1:23Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Simeon were 59,300.

^1:24⁴² From the descendants of Gad: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:25Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Gad were 45,650.

^1:26From the descendants of Judah: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:27Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Judah were 74,600.

^1:28From the descendants of Issachar: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:29Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Issachar were 54,400.

^1:30From the descendants of Zebulun: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:31Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Zebulun were 57,400.

^1:32From the sons of Joseph:

From the descendants of Ephraim: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:33Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Ephraim were 40,500. ^1:34From the descendants of Manasseh: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:35Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Manasseh were 32,200.

^1:36From the descendants of Benjamin: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:37Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Benjamin were 35,400.

^1:38From the descendants of Dan: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:39Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Dan were 62,700.

^1:40From the descendants of Asher: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:41Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Asher were 41,500.

^1:42From⁴³ the descendants of Naphtali: According to the records of their clans and families, all the males twenty years old or older who could serve in the army were listed by name. ^1:43Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Naphtali were 53,400.

^1:44These were the men whom Moses and Aaron numbered⁴⁴ along with the twelve leaders of Israel, each of whom⁴⁵ was from his own family. ^1:45All the Israelites who were twenty years old or older, who could serve in Israel’s army, were numbered⁴⁶ according to their families. ^1:46And all those numbered totaled 603,550.

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Footnotes

35 The verb is the Hiphil of the root קָהַל (qahal), meaning “to call, assemble”; the related noun is an “assembly.”
36 The adds “of the second year.”
37 The verb is the Hitpael preterite form וַיִּתְיַלְדוּ (vayyityaldu). The cognate noun תּוֹלְדוֹת (tolédot) is the word that means “genealogies, family records, records of ancestry.” The root is יָלַד (yalad, “to bear, give birth to”). Here they were recording their family connections, and not, of course, producing children. The verbal stem seems to be both declarative and reflexive.
38 The verb is supplied. The Hebrew text simply has “in/with the number of names of those who are twenty years old and higher according to their skulls.”
39 Heb “those numbered of them.” The form is פְּקֻדֵיהֶם (péqudehem), the passive participle with the pronominal suffix. This indicates that the number came to 46,500, but it specifically refers to “those numbered.” This expression occurs frequently throughout the book of Numbers.
40 There has been much discussion about the numbers in the Israelite wilderness experience. The immediate difficulty for even the casual reader is the enormous number of the population. If indeed there were 603,550 men twenty years of age and older who could fight, the total population of the exodus community counting women and children would have been well over a million, or even two million as calculated by some. This is not a figure that the Bible ever gives, but given the sizes of families the estimate would not be far off. This is a staggering number to have cross the Sea, drink from the oases, or assemble in the plain by Sinai. It is not a question of whether or not God could provide for such a number; it is rather a problem of logistics for a population of that size in that period of time. The problem is not with the text itself, but with the interpretation of the word אֶלֶף (’elef), traditionally translated “thousand.” The word certainly can be taken as “thousand,” and most often is. But in view of the problem of the large number here, some scholars have chosen one of the other meanings attested in literature for this word, perhaps “troop,” or “family,” or “tent group,” even though a word for “family” has already been used (see A. H. McNeile, Numbers, ; J. Garstang, Joshua-Judges, 120; J. Bright, History of Israel, 144). Another suggestion is to take the word as a “chief” or “captain” based on Ugaritic usage (see R. E. D. Clarke, “The Large Numbers of the Old Testament,” 87 [1955]: 82–92; and J. W. Wenham, “Large Numbers in the Old Testament,” 18 [1967]: ). This interpretation would reduce the size of the Israelite army to about 18,000 men from a population of about 72,000 people. That is a radical change from the traditional reading and may be too arbitrary an estimate. A more unlikely calculation following the idea of a new meaning would attempt to divide the numbers and use the first part to refer to the units and the second the measurement (e.g., 65 thousand and four hundred would become 65 units of four hundred). Another approach has been to study the numbers rhetorically, analyzing the numerical values of letters and words. But this method, known as gematria, came in much later than the biblical period (see for it G. Fohrer, Introduction to the Old Testament, 184; and A. Noordtzij, Numbers [], 24). On this system the numbers for “the sons of Israel” would be 603. But the number of the people in the is 603,550. Another rhetorical approach is that which says the text used exaggerations in the numbers on an epic scale to make the point of God’s blessing. R. B. Allen’s view that the numbers have been magnified by a factor of ten (“Numbers,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 2:688–91), which would mean the army was only 60,000 men, seems every bit as arbitrary as Wenham’s view to get down to 18,000. Moreover, such views cannot be harmonized with the instructions in the chapter for them to count every individual skull—that seems very clear. This is not the same kind of general expression one finds in “Saul has killed his thousands, David his ten thousands” (1 Sam 18:7). There one expects the bragging and the exaggerations. But in a text of numbering each male, to argue that the numbers have been inflated ten-fold to form the rhetoric of praise for the way God has blessed the nation demands a much more convincing argument than has typically been given. On the surface it seems satisfactory, but it raises a lot of questions. Everything in Exodus and Numbers attests to the fact that the Israelites were in a population explosion, that their numbers were greater than their Egyptian overlords. Pharaoh had attempted to counter their growth by killing males from the ranks. That only two midwives are named must be taken to mean that they were heads of the guilds, for two could not service a population—even of the smaller estimate given above. But even though the size had to have been great and seen as a…
41 Some witnesses have omitted “those that were numbered of them,” to preserve the literary pattern of the text. The omission is supported by the absence of the expression in the Greek as well as in some Most modern commentators follow this.
42 The has vv. 24–35 after v. 37.
43 The verse does not have the preposition, only “the descendants of Naphtali.”
44 The construction uses both the passive participle הַפְּקֻדִים (happéqudim) and the verb פָּקַד (paqad), giving a literal translation of “these were the numbered ones, whom Moses and Aaron numbered.”
45 Heb “they were one man for the house of his fathers.”
46 Literally the text has, “and all the numbered of the Israelites were according to their families.” The verb in the sentence is actually without a complement (see v. 46).