A Tragic Narrative

The Hebrew title is taken from the words of the scroll, “the LORD said” but when translated into Greek LXX, the title became, arithmoi (our word arithmetic), translated into the Latin Vulgate it becomes “Numbers.” It begins and ends with 2 censuses, - the first was taken when they left Sinai, the number of Israelites was 603,550 (males). The second was taken at Moab, prior to their entering the Promised Land, when the number of Israelites was 601,730 (males), almost 40 years later. These were men who could be conscripted to fight (age 20+). There were over 38 years between the 2 censuses, one whole generation had perished in the wilderness, except for Joshua and Caleb. This is therefore a tragic narrative, with such loss of lives, in actual fact the Israelites could have reached the Promised Land in 11 days on foot, but instead it took 13,780 days with the loss of a whole generation.