The numbers of the Israelites have long been a difficulty. On the one hand are the census lists (
Nu 1;
2;
26), with their summaries of 600,000 men besides children and a mixed multitude (
Ex 12:37,
38;
38:26;
Nu 1:46;
11:21). On the other hand there are the exact statements of there being 22,273 firstborn, that is, fathers of families (
Nu 3:43), and that 40,000 armed men entered Canaan with Joshua (
Jos 4:13), also the 35,000 who fought at Ai (
Jos 8:3,
12), and the 32,000 who fought against Midian (Jud 7:3). Besides these, there are the general considerations that only 5,000 to 10,000 people could live in Goshen, that the Amalekites with whom the Israelites were equally matched (
Ex 17:11) could not have exceeded about 5,000 in Sinai, that Moses judged all disputes, and that two midwives attended all the Israelite births, which would be 140 a day on a population of 600,000. Evidently, the statements of numbers are contradictory, and the external evidence is all in accord with lesser numbers. Proposals to reduce arbitrarily the larger numbers have been frequent; but there is one likely line of misunderstanding that may have originated the increase. In the census lists of the tribes, most of the hundreds in the numbers are 400 or 500, others are near those, and there are none whatever on 000, 100, 800 or 900. Evidently, the hundreds areindependent of the thousands. Now in writing the statements, such as "Reuben, 46,500," the original list would be 46 ?eleph, 5 hundred people, and ?eleph means either "thousands" or else "groups" or "families." Hence, a census of 46 tents, 500 people, would be ambiguous, and a later compiler might well take it as 46,500. In this way the whole census of 598 tents, 5,550 people, would be misread as 603,550 people. The checks on this are, that the number per tent should be reasonable in all cases, that the hundreds should not fluctuate more than the tents between the first and last census, and that the total should correspond to the known populations of Goshen and of Sinai; these requirements all agree with this reading of the lists. The ulterior details beyond the Egyptian period are dealt with in Egypt and Israel, 45, 55.