The Censuses That Raise Questions
Pinechas is spearing the Shimonite Zimri and the Midianite Kozbi, which led to the plague in which 24,000 perished.
In this introduction to our survey of the Book of Numbers, we would like to clarify an obscure passage in the census of Israel with which this book begins. In the following, we would like to posit to the studious reader another way to look at this, specifically in reference to the censuses of Israel in Numbers 1 and Numbers 26. The matter will become clear to the reader once we understand why the second census shows fewer numbers than that of the first one and what consequence that difference led to. We will now remove all the difficulties we have found in these censuses, as our survey begins.
Torah is compiled of five books which Mosheh wrote and gave to the children of Israel. They are:
Bereshit: From Creation to Egypt.
Shemot: From Egypt to Sinai.
Vayikra: 11 months at Sinai.
Bamidbar: 38 years in the wilderness from Sinai to the Promised Land.
Devarim: The Covenant of Renewal at the threshold of the Land.
If we use the Hebrew names of the five books of the Torah and the Hebraic grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence, we read the following: In the beginning (Bereishit), YHVH called (Vaikra) the names (Shemot), and the words (Devarim) in the wilderness (Bamidmar).
Our teacher Mosheh called the book, which will begin to study here Bamidbar, “In the wilderness”, the Sages called it the Book of the Censuses, for two censuses took place in this book, but the gentiles called it the Book of Numbers.
The children of Israel left Egypt under the mighty hand of the Elohim of Avraham, Yitschak, and Ya’akov, who led them to the Wilderness of Sinai, where they stayed in the camp for 11 months (see Exo 19:1-2 and Num 9:1-4). And the Eternal spoke to Mosheh in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day to the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,
Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male, head by head, from twenty years old and above, everyone going out to the army in Israel. Number them by their divisions, you and Aharon. (Num 1:1-3)
Literally, verse 2 reads as follows:
Lift up head of all the congregation of the sons of Israel by their families, by the house of their fathers, in the number of names, all male by their poles. (Num 1:2)
What is implied in this instruction to Mosheh was that he was take a count of all the adult males of the congregation of the Israelites by families and then add up the family totals to arrive at the total for each tribe. The people’s tribal lineage will follow their fathers. Mosheh was not to count them directly, but indirectly by taking a half shekel, as the Eternal commanded Mosheh in Exo 38:26, from each in accordance with the number of their names, one for each. Thus, Mosheh would have an exact head count of every male.
The heading of the Book the Censuses informs also us that Mosheh did not go up to Mount Sinai, as previously, since the Eternal’s glory was now present in the Tent of Meeting. After the Tabernacle was erected and began to function, according to everything the Eternal instructed Mosheh in Leviticus, now He instructed him to take a census of the people. The order of events up to this moment is as follows: Exo 40:17 , Num 1:1 , Num 7:1. The act of counting the people at this time indicated that the erection of the Tabernacle was pivotal in the history of Israel, and now the time had come to count them.
There are nine censuses of Israel since the time of the Exodus recorded in the Tanach; they are as follows: Exo 30:12, Num 1:2, Num 4:46-48, Num 26:2-4, Jdg 20:15-17, 2Sa 24:21, 1Ch 5:17, 1Ch 9:1, 2Ch 25:5, 2Ch 2:17, and Neh 7:5. The Sages say that there will be a tenth counting still waiting in the future, when Israel will be brought back home. This tenth census is found in the Book of Jeremiah, wherein we read thus,
And I shall turn back the captivity of Yehudah and the captivity of Israel, and shall build them as at the first, and shall cleanse them from all their crookedness that they have sinned against Me. And I shall pardon all their crookedness that they have sinned and by which they have transgressed against Me. … In this place, which is dried up, without man and without beast, and in all its cities, there shall once again be a home of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down. In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the low country, and in the cities of the South, and in the land of Binyamin, and in the places around Yerushalayim, and in the cities of Yehudah, the flocks once again pass under the hands of him who counts them, declares the Eternal. (Jer 33:7-13)
In the Book of Numbers, we are told, there are two censuses of the children of Israel thirty-eight years apart. They are listed in the first and in the twenty-sixth chapters of The Book of Numbers. Below are the censuses by tribes:
TRIBE FIRST CENSUS SECOND CENSUS
Reuven 46,500 43,730
Shimon 59,300 22,200
Gad 45,650 40,500
Yehudah 74,600 76,500
Issaschar 54,400 64,300
Zevulun 57,400 60,500
Ephraim 40,500 32,500
Manasheh 32,200 52,700
Binyamin 35,400 45,600
Dan 62,700 64,400
Asher 41,500 53,400
Naphtali 53,400 45,400
TOTAL 603,550 601,730
The generation that crossed Yam Suph and came into the Wilderness of Sinai is the generation that survived the Nile. This generation was counted in Numbers 1 and the numbers of those from twenty years old and above, everyone going out to the army in Israel, came to be 603,550. About forty years later, however, the generation that the inherited the land of milk and honey was the generation that was born in the desert during the thirty-eight-year Arabian exile. It turned out that that generation came to be fewer in numbers, namely, 601,730.
We could expect that during the thirty-eight years spent in the desert Israel could have been enlarged significantly just by considering the natural birth rate. If we add to it the super food (the manna which provided perfect nutrition) they ate in the desert, we should expect a much larger population than the one in the second census. At first glance, it is obvious that Israel lost 1,820 men of battle, with Reuven, Shimon, Gad, Ephraim, and Naphtali contributing much to it. What happened between these two chapters that could have decreased Israel’s population we are not told in the Torah, but there are some clues which can help us draw conclusion.
The first census numbers those Israelites who had come out of Egypt. This generation (Num 14:29), which eventually died in the desert, was one of rebellion. The second census, however, numbers the new generation, the generation filled with hope and expectation of life in the land of Israel. These censuses seem to mark a nearly mirrored division in the Book of Numbers; there is a 38-year time gap between Chapter 19 and Chapter 20 in which they camped in eighteen locations in the Wilderness of Paran, namely, from station 15 to station 32 (see Num 33:18-35).
In the first census 603,550 men twenty years old and older were numbered and only 22,273 firstborn males (see Num 3:40-43); that would make one firstborn per every twenty-seven. How can it be so?
There are two possible causes for this that can explain the apparent discrepancy. The first possible cause but less likely could have been a high mortality rate among the newborn (those who had not reached the age of thirty days, Num 3:15). The second one cause for the fewer numbers could have been decimation. In the second census, however, there was a third cause that might have led to the decrease in the population. And this will be the subject of our study, as we will explain further below.
From the table above, we notice that at the first census, the tribe of Shimon had 59,300 men of war (making it the third biggest tribe of Israel) and at the time of the second census, it turns out that it had lost 57,100 men, and with only 22,200 men of war this tribe became the smallest one in Israel. It is very unlikely that this tribe lost so many people due to natural causes. When the remnant of the tribe of Shimon along with the others entered the land, they did not inherit its own territorial tribal land; instead, this tribe inherited cities within the territory of the tribe of Yehudah (Jos 19:1-9). The reason for this is that they did not have enough number of men to dispossess the Kana’anites and took their land. We should remember that this is why YHVH did not give Israel the whole land promised to Avraham, but only a portion of it, because Israel was too small in number to conquer it. The same rule applied to Shimon, too.
In the book titled “The Exodus Case” by Dr. Lennart Moller, the author made the hypothesis that during the thirty-eight years in the desert, some of the Israelites settled in the Arabian Peninsula. In his book, Dr. Lennart Moller shows ancient maps in which one can recognize the names of these settlements; they are typical Hebrew names, and the name of one of them was even Ras Israel (p.384). Dr. Moller makes the hypothesis that Yemenite Jews may well have been the sons of Yamin (see Gen 46:10, Exo 6:15, Num 26:12), one of the major family of the tribe of Shimon, most of which most likely left Israel and gave their father’s name to the modern day Yemen (Yaman in Arabic).
Therefore, it is very possible, that Israel lost numbers in the second census, because some of the nation (Reuven, Shimon, Gad, Ephraim, and Naphtali) decided to leave Israel and establish their own settlements in Arabia. The reason for this is unknown to us. Also, while wandering there, the Israelites most likely encountered resistance of the local people (the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Avraham) and lost lives in addition to the splitting of the nation. In support of Dr. Moller’s hypothesis, a very interesting book comes for consideration. There is a book which is mentioned in Num 21:14 immediately after the 38-year exile in Arabia. We know that there are no vain words in Torah. If this book was given in Chapter 21 of Numbers, after the thirty-eight years spent in the desert, just before Israel was about to conquer the land, it was given for a reason. This book is now considered lost (or it may not be lost at all), and Mosheh called it The Book of Wars of YHVH. This book must have depicted those wars which YHVH fought for Israel because it is reasonable to expect that the Ishmaelites would have fought the Israelites to protect their homeland.
The rabbinic commentaries (Midrash Tanchuma; Rashi) explain that the large reduction in Shimon’s population was due to the fact that the Shimonites were the major perpetrator in the worship of Pe’or with the daughters of Midian. Zimri was the “prince” and leader of the tribe of Shimon. Many Shimonites were executed for their crimes (Numbers 25). Zimri himself was killed by Pinechas, as 24,000 perished in the plague.
We however have some reservation as to the reason given by the Rabbis. The plague in Numbers 25 was not the only instance in which Israel was so decimated. We read of plagues and other catastrophes prior to this plague, namely, those who died after the sin of the Golden Calf, the “complainers” and those who lusted for meat, those who rebelled and died because they believed the evil report of the Ten Spies (Numbers 13-14:38), those who died in the attempt to enter the Land (Num 14:39-45), and those who died in the rebellion of Korach (Numbers 16:1-50). Indeed, the other tribes, too, contributed to the fall in population (though none as drastic as Shimon’s). At any rate, the total number in the census was fewer despite the natural increase one would expect after a whole new generation was born in the wilderness. The commentaries further note that whole families were wiped out. In the second census there were five Shimonite clans instead of six, Gad had likewise lost a family, and Binyamin had lost five. Below is the table showing the summary of those perished in the wilderness.
|
Number of perished |
Incident |
Reference |
|
3,000 |
The Golden Calf |
Exo 32:28 |
|
Unknown |
The Golden Calf |
Exo 32:35 |
|
275 |
Korach’s rebellion |
Num 16:35 |
|
14,700 |
Korach’s rebellion |
Num 16:49 |
|
Many |
The bronze serpent |
Num 21:6 |
|
24,000 |
The Moabite women |
Num 25:6-9 |
There were two censuses of the Levites in the first census. The first counting from one month old and upward (Num 3:12-15) was for the redemption of the firstborn among the Israelites, and thus it put the tribe of Levi as the smallest tribe of Israel even though they were counted from one month old and upward. This is the counting of the Livites:
Levites one month and upward: Kohathites 7,500
Gershonites 8,600
Merarites 6,200
Total 22,300
The second counting of the Levites was for the purpose of the service of the Tabernacle. In this counting the Levites were counted from thirty to fifty years of age (Num 4:29-30).
Levites 30-50 years of age for service: Kohathites 2,750
Gershonites 2,630
Merarites 3,200
Total 8,580
Therefore, the Levites from one month to twenty-nine and from fifty-one and older were 13,720. The Levites were never counted from twenty years of age and upward, nor was the condition of their counting ever based upon their ability to go to war. This difference of duty explains why the Levites were not counted with the Israelites in the first census.
In the second census thirty-eight years later, the Levites were again counted from one month old and upward and they were numbered 23,000 (Num 26:57-62), or they had a gain of 700 people. Since the Levites did not participate in the golden calf incident, nor did they rebelled against Mosheh and Aharon, and therefore they were not punished to die in the wilderness as the other Israelites were (Num 26:63-65), we can conclude that the small gain of 700 Levites was due to natural causes.
Undoubtedly, the Rabbis are correct when they say that the whoring with the daughters of Mo’av and the aftermath had contributed to the decrease of Israel’s population, nevertheless it still cannot explain the numbers completely. For instance, between the first and second census, the tribe of Shimon had lost 57,100 men which made this tribe the smallest on Israel, even smaller than the tribe of Levi. Even if the 24,000 who perished in the plague (Num 25:9) had been all Shimonites, there are still 33,100 unexplained whom the tribe lost sometime during the 38-year wandering in the desert and definitely before the whoring with the daughters of Mo’av. Therefore, there must be another reason for Israel’s decrease, and the present author believes that a large portion of the people left the nation and settled in Arabia.
In conclusion of the matter of census, we find a decrease in Israel’s population in the second census due to: (1) a large part of Shimonites and probably others left Israel, (2) the wars they fought in Arabia, and (3) the whoring with the women of Mo’av. Thus, Israel lost 1,820 men of battle despite the expected natural increase of the population after thirty-eight years in the wilderness, and despite the gain of other tribes such as Issaschar (9,900), Manasheh (20,500), Binyamin (10,200), and Asher (11,900).
One final thought. Let us look at the matter from a different perspective. The boundaries of the land given to Avraham in Gen 15:18 are larger than those given to Mosheh and the children of Israel in Num 34:2-12. Of particular note is the eastern border of the land. According to the Avrahamic Covenant, the eastern border extends all the way to the Euphrates River, while in Numbers, the Yarden River is set to be the eastern border. According to the Avrahamic boundaries, the land east of the Yarden is clearly a part of the Promised Land and rightly so. However, to understand why smaller borders were given to Israel in the time of Mosheh, we need to realize the dangers that presents itself, the danger of too much land and too few people to possess it and defend it.
From the second census we learn that Israel had 601,730 men of war. This is not nearly enough number of people to take and hold the whole land promised to Avraham. Therefore, YHVH did not allow Israel to possess the entire land promised to Avraham but only a portion of it (Exo 23:29-30). He foreknew that Israel was not yet ready to take possession of the entire land promised to Avraham; the other reason was that they did not deserve to take it. Why? Because, if the hypothesis we defended above, namely, that Israel had lost numbers in Arabia is correct, then we understand the reason why Israel was not allowed to possess the larger land: they did not merely have enough people to conquer and possess it, and most regrettably, because of their rebellion, they were stripped of their right to have it.
Thus, the twelve tribes were given the share within the territory west of the Yarden River, with the exception of Reuven, Gad, and the half-tribe of Menasheh, whom Mosheh allowed to expand the boundaries of the land of Israel to the east. Had the Israelites been faithful to keep the unity of the camp during the 38-year exile in Arabia, at the given high birth rate, the manna from heaven, and everything else they needed to propagate in the desert (here we may recall that even their sandals were not worn out), they would have increased in numbers and thus be able to conquer and possess a larger territory than what they were given.
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