The Bible Slam: Numbers Chapter 01

The tribes of Israel and their war-ready populations are identified.   Men 20 years and up were all added to each army.

The Levites were not numbered amongst the armies because their job was to assemble, disassemble and move the tabernacle around and perform the priestly functions.

See the discussion points below about the absurdity of the population polls and army listed in this chapter of the Bible.

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Discussion Points.

At first glance, the numbers add up:

Although the military members of the tribal tallies add up, the 603,550 number is absurd.   Not accounting for the "fact" that the Levites were not numbered, women were not numbered, children and teenagers under the age of 20 were not numbered, and people unable to go to war were not numbered — based on the Old Testament accounts — each woman would need to have an average of 51.6 children with no infant mortality.   This means that each would have to be constantly pregnant from ages 15-40 with twins (see discussion).

According to Numbers 1:17 through 1:18, Moses and Aaron had everyone gather up for the military poll.   How did these two men, with no computers, pens, ink or paper keep track of over 600,000 people?

Compare the ancient Hebrew's military size of approximately 600,000 with that of the United States military as of 2008/2009 (info from Wikipedia):

Component	Military	Enlisted	Officer	Female	Civilian
Army	548,000	456,651	88,093	73,902	243,172
Marine Corps	203,095	182,147	20,639	12,290
Navy	332,000	276,276	51,093	50,008	182,845
Air Force	323,000	261,193	64,370	64,137	154,032
Coast Guard	41,000	32,647	8,051	4,965	7,396
Total Active	1,445,000	1,174,563	224,144	200,337	580,049
Army National Guard	353,000
Army Reserve	205,000
Marine Forces Reserve	40,000
Navy Reserve	67,000
Air National Guard	107,000
Air Force Reserve	67,000
Coast Guard Reserve	11,000
Total Reserve	850,000
Other DOD Personnel					97,976

The Levites must have been almost as mighty as the Biblical armed forces, since the tabernacle that they were charged with moving around weighed at least 11 tons .  This doesn't account for the weight and size of the ark and other items they were charged with transporting.

The numbers are fanciful, at best.   They're reminiscent of other exaggerated headcounts (this video includes someone's political statement, but the numbers tossed around illustrate the point):

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