Musing – Have you ever questioned the numbers in the Exodus?

Hebraic Musing – Have you ever questioned the numbers in the Exodus?

I have always had difficultly imagining the logistical practicalities of millions of Israelites in the Exodus and the size of the clans numbered in Numbers. Derek Leman’s recent post provides the best explanation I have seen which changes the picture to 600 families/clans instead of 600,000 fighting men. Pharaoh was concerned about the size of the Hebrew population, but I have heard it said as little as 20% of the Israelites actually fled Egypt, leaving many behind.  Same has also been said of the percentage of Israelites that returned from Babylon at the end of the Exile.

The Hebrew ‘Eleph’ is traditionally translated as ‘thousand’. However it could also mean ‘families or clans or fighting men’ which would put the number of Israelites at estimates ranging from 2,500 to 20,000.  Remember that the total number in the Exodus also included many Egyptian gentiles who recognized the God of the Hebrews had defeated the Egyptians gods.

Please consider Derek Leman’s article reprinted below in its entirety as one of the best technical explanations I’ve read and yet respecting the veracity of the Bible.

Points to ponder

When the going gets tough…

how many Americans will remain under sharia law rather than resisting change?

How many Christians will fail the test rather than following the Lord?

Yosef   a.k.a.  Joe Brusherd

Author “Hebraic Insights – 95 messages exploring the Hebrew Roots of Christian faith”

Author “Biblical Marriage” (published  June 2012)

Weekly e-mails “Hebraic Musings”  To be added to distribution -- Yosef1@cox.net    

The Number of Israelites and Realism in Bible Reading  
6 May, 2013 · by Derek Leman

What I say below about the number of Israelites in Sinai may be troubling for some people. It should not be. I am not motivated by a desire to cause people doubts about the Bible. Just the opposite, I believe the Bible’s version of historical events and I believe the scriptures to be God revealing himself through prophets and sages to us.

Honestly facing a few issues and problems that have arisen as the Bible has been passed down to us today helps the cause of faith rather than hurting it. When we understand that there are some places where errors have been picked up by scribes and passed down to us we should acknowledge them. Otherwise we are asking people to have faith in obvious errors and to pretend that faith in God requires believing contradictions.

The problem of the number of Israelites is well-known, discussed in every commentary that does not ignore history, and it is the near unanimous verdict of scholars that there were vastly fewer Israelites than reported in Exodus and Numbers. The stories of the Bible themselves, especially in Joshua and Judges, demand that we see Israel as a small people, unable to conquer Canaan by military force. How did the hugely inflated figure of 600,000 fighting men (a total population of 3 million or more) come down to us?

The number of Israelites is something that has been completely misunderstood for thousands of years. The idea that Israel had 600,000 fighting men is not only impossible, it is also contradicted by other scriptures and would make the whole Exodus and conquest unremarkable. Israel would have a larger army than all of Egypt and their fighting men would outnumber those of a large Canaanite town one hundred to one!

When Israel left Egypt, Pharaoh sent 600 select chariots against them along with others (Exod 14:7). Although the exact number is not specified, the figure 600 clues us in that Pharaoh was not attacking a military force of 600,000 Israelites, which would have been a larger military force by at least ten times than any we know of in Middle Eastern history from ancient times. Later, in Numbers 13:28, the Israelites will see themselves as a small people compared to the Canaanites and will see the towns as too large for them to defeat with mere force. Yet the largest Canaanite city, Hazor, had at best a population of 45,000 people total (Israel’s total would be three or four million if the 600,000 figure was correct). Exodus 23:30 says Israel will drive out the Canaanites little by little. Jericho measured 300 by 140 meters and Hazor was about 210 acres (James Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai). If there had been 600,000 Israelite fighting men, they could have overwhelmed Canaan easily and required no help from God in doing it. The largest fighting force known from the ancient Middle East was assembled at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE, where Shalmaneser III of Assyria records that all the enemies who marched against his armies totaled 53,000 men.

So how did our Bibles get the number 603,550 here in Numbers 1:46 and “about 600,000” in Exodus 12:37? The word for “thousand” (elef) can also mean clan, tent unit, or military unit. Simply retranslating “thousand” to “military unit”, however, will not solve the problem. It seems that long ago, before the Dead Sea Scrolls even, scribes passing down the text became confused over the meaning of “elef” and the numbers were corrupted by this misunderstanding. We cannot completely reconstruct the number of Israelites, but the idea of 600 fighting units or tent groups may be a much more accurate guess. This would make the total number of Israelites closer to 20,000. This would be a large people, a people large enough to be feared in their growing power and yet small enough to be very afraid of Pharaoh and of the Canaanites, as we read in the Biblical accounts. For a fuller explanation, see James Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai, p. 153 and following, “How Many Israelites?”