"Numbers 1: 603,550 Names, and One Tribe Left Off the List"

Leviticus ended on Saturday, and the book that follows it opens with a head count. I wrote about Leviticus 27 and the priest's call on good or bad that day, so I won't go back. This chapter has a different problem, which is that twenty-four of its fifty-four verses are two sentences repeated with a tribe's name and a number swapped in, and most of us skate across them to get to the Levites.

Do the totals in Numbers 1 add up?

Yes. The twelve tribe totals sit in verses 21 through 43 and come to 603,550, which is what verse 46 says the long way:

Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.

Numbers 1:46

Judah is the largest at 74,600 (verse 27) and Manasseh the smallest at 32,200 (verse 35). Dan comes second at 62,700, which I would not have guessed. Gad, for what it's worth, is next to last in the list of princes in verse 14 and third in the counts, in verse 25, and the chapter lets that sit. Reuben, called "Israel's eldest son" in verse 20, lands seventh of the twelve at 46,500.

The number is men from twenty years old and upward who could go to war (verse 3), so it isn't a headcount of the whole camp. Any figure you've seen for the total population was built by someone else, not by this chapter. The date in verse 1 is the first day of the second month in the second year, a month to the day after the tabernacle was reared up in Exodus 40:17.

Why does the chapter keep saying "the number of the names"?

Verse 2 sets the terms: "with the number of their names, every male by their polls." Polls is an old word for heads. In verse 18 the whole congregation assembles and each man declares his pedigree, and from verse 20 on, each tribe's opening verse says the count was "according to the number of the names." So the 603,550 was never an estimate made from a hilltop. Each man declared whose house he belonged to.

My mother called on Tuesday night to ask how many would be at the table for Thanksgiving. It's at their place in Bountiful on the 26th. I said six. She said, "Tell me who," and I could hear a pen start up, so I went through them: Melissa, Caleb, Lily, Ben, me, and Emma if her schedule lets her get up from Provo. She asked whether Ben was still in the booster seat or had moved up to a regular chair at three. I said booster. She said she'd look in the hall closet.

In the background my father wanted to know if the leaf for the table was in the garage or in the basement. "Garage," she told him, not me. She wrote the names on the back of an envelope, I think, because I heard her ask Dad where the good envelopes were and he said there weren't any. Then she asked if I'd eaten, which at nine o'clock on a Tuesday was a fair question.

Besides Moses and Aaron, the only men the chapter names are the twelve princes of verses 5 through 15 and their fathers. The princes are "the renowned of the congregation" in verse 16, and verse 4 says each one is "head of the house of his fathers." The men they stood for are in the total and not in the text.

Where did the Levites go?

Out of the count, but not out of the camp.

Verse 47 says it flatly: "But the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not numbered among them." Verse 48 gives the authority, "For the Lord had spoken unto Moses," and verse 49 gives the instruction:

Only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel:

Numbers 1:49

The chapter doesn't say why the Levites were left out of this count. What it gives them is a job. They are put over the tabernacle and everything in it (verse 50), they take it down when the camp moves and set it up when the camp stops (verse 51), and they camp around it. Verse 53 does give a reason for that last part, that the Levites pitch round about the tabernacle "that there be no wrath upon the congregation of the children of Israel." The other tribes pitch "every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard" (verse 52), so the Levites sit between the tent and everybody else. Numbers 2:17 has the same picture on the march, with the tabernacle setting forward "with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camp."

Being left out of this list doesn't mean being left uncounted. In Numbers 3 the Lord has Moses number the Levites on a different rule. Verse 15 says "every male from a month old and upward," and the total in verse 39 is twenty and two thousand. Numbers 26, the second census, counts them again on that rule and gets twenty and three thousand (verse 62). These are two separate counts, one at Sinai and one in the plains of Moab (Numbers 26:63), so there's nothing to reconcile. Verse 62 also says why the Levites were not numbered among the children of Israel in that second census: "because there was no inheritance given them among the children of Israel." Numbers 1 doesn't say that about its own count.

Numbers 3 also has the Levites standing in for something. In verse 12 the Lord says he has taken them "instead of all the firstborn" of Israel, and in verse 40 Moses is told to number the firstborn males from a month old and upward and "take the number of their names." There it is again, names. The firstborn come to 22,273 (verse 43) and the Levites to 22,000, so 273 firstborn have no Levite to stand for them. Verses 46 and 47 charge five shekels apiece for those 273, and verse 50 gives the money as 1,365 shekels. I multiplied it out and it matches, which pleased me more than it should have.

What happened to the 603,550?

Numbers 26 counts Israel again, this time in the plains of Moab (verse 63). Verse 51 puts the total at "six hundred thousand and a thousand seven hundred and thirty," which is 601,730, within 1,820 of the first number. That sounds like the same people counted twice. Then verse 64:

But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai.

Numbers 26:64

Verse 65 gives the reason and names the two exceptions: "For the Lord had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun."

The two lists are close in size and have almost no one in common, which is a hard thing to take in from a page of numbers. Numbers 1 ends at verse 54 with "And the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they." I read it differently with Numbers 26 open beside it, because almost every man it covers is gone by the time the second list is taken.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why weren't the Levites counted in Numbers 1?

The chapter says the Lord told Moses not to (verses 48 and 49) and then gives them the care of the tabernacle (verses 50 through 53). It never says why they were left out of this count. Verse 53 gives a purpose for where they camp, and Numbers 26:62 says the Levites weren't numbered among Israel in the second census because they had no inheritance.

How many men were counted?

603,550, from twenty years old and upward and able to go to war (verses 3 and 46). The twelve tribe totals add up to that, and Exodus 38:26 gives the same number for the men who paid the half shekel.

Is it a sin to count the people?

Numbers 1 doesn't treat it as one. It starts with a command in verse 2 and ends with Israel doing "according to all that the Lord commanded Moses" in verse 54. Exodus 30:12 mentions a ransom given "that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them," which is in Exodus and not in this chapter. David's count in 2 Samuel 24 opens with the Lord's anger in verse 1 and ends in a pestilence in verse 15. I read that as a separate story.

Why does the chapter repeat the same sentence twelve times?

Each tribe is counted by its own fathers' houses, and the chapter gives each one its own verse and its own total. It reads like filler until you notice that.

Are the Levites in the 603,550?

No. Verse 47 leaves them out, and verse 49 says not to take their sum among the children of Israel.

This weekend

Saturday morning I'm going to read Numbers 26 straight through with Numbers 1 open beside it, and put the two lists on a sheet of paper, tribe by tribe. I'd like to see which tribes grew and which shrank, and to check my own sums against verse 51.

— D.