b. So-oA..LLED STATISTICAL ERRORS. I. THE NUMBER OF tRE FIGHTING MEN. It appears from the record that on three several occa.sions,-in the third month of the first year after the exodus for the purpose of raising a poll tax (Exod. x:xx. 11 sqg_. ; cf. xxxvii. 25, 26), in the second month of the second year for the organisation of an army (eh. i. 3), and in the fortieth year, in the steppes of ,Moa.b, with a view to the prospective division of Oana.a.n among the tribes (eh. xxvi. 4),-in accorda.nce with Divine instructions, a formal registration of the male heads of the people from twenty years old and upward was effected, the result being that in ea.oh case the numbers were practically the sa.me--603,550, 603,550, and 601,730; the Levites, who were reckoned separately, numbering 221 000 in the second census, and 23,000 in the third. In the corre- spondence between the third summation and the second, although not a single individual survived in the third that was numbered in the second except Caleb and .Joshua, and although the tribe of Levi showed an increase of 300, it is unnecessary, with Ilohlen, to detect an exemplification of the "inventive process," since it is .al.most certain that a fictitious writer would have either equated the two numbers J>recisely, or rendered the divergence between them more striking, and since it wa..s clearly not impossible, considering the special mortality that is represented as having -overtaken the old nation during the years of penal wandering, that the deaths should have been as many as the births, while, if we have regard to the Divine purpose of supplanting the adult congregation of unbelievers with a fresh population of desert-born warriors, inured to hardship and trained to confidence in God, th.ira will appear a special fitness in arranging that the regenerated nation, in resuming, .as it were, the interrupted thread of its history, should be of exactly the dimensions, or nearly so, of the community which had perished. The historic accuracy of the two lists, besides, receives authentication from the circumstance that, while the tote.ls of both so nearly approximate, the di1ference being only 1820, considerable variations exist in the numbers of the individual tribes, as appears Crom the appended .table, and that these can in no small degree be accounted for. vi THE AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORSHIP OJ.l'
.A.t Sino.i; In tho plains of MOA '), Reuben 46,500 43,730 Simeon 69,300 22,200. Gad 45,650 40,600 Judah 74,600 76,600 Issachar .54,400 64,300 Zebulun 57,400 60,500 Ephraim 40,500 32,500 Manasseh 32,200 52,700 Benjamin 35,400 45,600 Dan 62,700 64,400 Asher 41,500 53,400 Naphtali 53,400 45,400 Total 603,550 601,730
Thus Judah shows an increase in the second computation of . 1900,. which wae a.mply sufficient t.o enable him to retain the precedence of hie brethren, in.a.ccord- a.nce with the prophetic benediction pronoUilced upon him by his venerable ancestor (Gen. :x:lix. 8-12). The increase of Iaeacharwas 9900, of Zebulun 3100, of Manasseh 20,900, of Benjamin 10,200, of Dan 1700, and of Asher 11,900; but not even the· largest of these indicates a. proportion which can be said t.o be absolutely un- paralleled; and, considering the highly favourable circumstances under which the- new race grew up in comparison with the enervating bondage of Egypt, it can hardly be required t.o show that it was by no means impossible. The prinoipa.l difficulty attaching t.o the ceneue lists is not to account for the increase of certain tribes, but satisfactorily to explain the decrease in others. Thus the diminution of ll.euben amoUilted t.o 2770, and it is commonly enppoeed that its cause must be- 1,1ought in the destruction of the Korahite company, De.than and Abira.m bein~ distingnished members of this particular tribe (eh. xxvi. 9, 10). The extra- ordinary fall of 37,100 which Simeon exhibited has with much probability been, ascribed to the plague which had recently cut off 24,000 persons, most of whom, it has been conjectured, were Simeonitee-Zimri, whose wickedness "in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a. prince of Midian," provoked the jus zelotarum of Phinehae, having been "a. prince of a chief house among the Simeonites" (eh. :u:v. 14). Then the remarkable paucity of numbers in the tribe of Levi, in the one census 22,000, a.nd in the other 2~,000, has been explained by considering '' that this tribe 1,ustained two heavy strokes," it being expressly mentioned that the sons of Aaron, N ada.b and Abiha, died childless (eh. iii. 4), and "the stress put upon the fact that the children of Korah were not destroyed with their father" (eh. xxvi. 11) pointing directly "to the implied antithesis that after all many Levites did perish 0 in the conspiracy of Korah" (Lange • on Numbers,' p. 11); while if the rate of increase, 1000 persons, or Ieee than five per cent., was small when compared with that of the other tribes, it has been shown that " in the interval between Moses and David their rate of increase was still below that of other tribes" (Keil• on Numbers,' p. 9), so that the peculiarity here a.dverted to was at least not exceptional in the history of Levi. Thus the difficulties connected with the second and the third enumerations of the people may be regarded as completely vanishing on a. little close examination; and the same will suffice to dispose of the objection that the numbers in the first and second censuses should have been exactly the ea.me, which, it is alleged, could hardly have been the ca.ee, even in roUild numbers, considering thRt THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. vii