OK, we have been looking at places/people/concepts in the Bible that have puzzled people. Let’s continue with a reference to how many Israelites were counted in the Old Testament.

There seems to be a problem when the total number of Israelites is discussed during the time of the Exodus. Verses in Exodus 38 indicate  600,000 men. Later references in the book of Numbers (chapters 1 and two) also suggest a similar count. If we add in women and children, we will end up with something like 2 million people. Here’s one way to visualize this number – if all of them were walking two feet apart with 10 in each row, you’d end up with a ribbon of people 75 miles long. That doesn’t seem possible, so alternatives have been proposed. It may be that a reference, for example, to one group of Israelites as 45,000 actually means 45 families/groups/tents. If that’s the case, you would end up with a total number of Israelites around 20,000. That seems reasonable. Another way of thinking about this has to do with the importance of genealogy to the Jewish people. Maybe those vast numbers include the dead with living. If we jump ahead to Joshua 4:13 and read about the Israelites as they crossed the Jordan River, we get a much smaller number – 40,000. One other place also suggests a smaller number. Take a look at Numbers 3:40-43 where there is a census of firstborn — 22,000.