Weekly Torah Lesson
Parasha: B’midbar – In the wilderness
Torah: B’midbar 1:1 – 4:20
** Taking a census in Israel was a big deal. Only a few were taken in ancient Israel and the last one cost seventy thousand Israelites their lives.
I think that Avinu asked for the census for Moshe’s sake rather than for His information.
B’midbar 1:1 ¶ And Avinu spoke to Moshe in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, 2 Take you the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; 3 From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: you and Aharon shall number them by their armies.
** As expected, Moshe did everything that Avinu commanded him to do. The leader of every tribe, minus Levi, appeared before Moshe and Aharon and reported the number of eligible males.
19 As Avinu commanded Moshe, so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai.
46 Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.
** If we extrapolate from the number of males between twenty and sixty years of age we find a very interesting number.
Most of these men had wives, children parents brothers and sisters. The mean age for the group of males is fourty years old. The average family probably had four children. They probably had three hundred thousand different parents for the group. One wife and one sister for each male.
When the math is finished, it looks like approximately three million Israelites marched out of Egypt!
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