Way back in Genesis 46:27, God gave us the number of people that went down to Egypt from Canaan. That number, including wives and children of the original twelve sons of Israel, came out to 70 people in all.
That’s a good sized family. You would need at least two large AirBnBs in order to accommodate everyone for a family reunion.
Four hundred years later, after the nation of Israel has officially left Egypt and is on their way to Canaan, we don’t get a single number for the nation of Israel, but for individual tribes.
According to Numbers 1:46, the total population of the nation of Israel is exactly 603,550 fighting men.
There are a couple caveats to that number, though. First off, as stated, that number only includes “fighting men,” which are specified as males from the ages of twenty and up.
There is no age limit to this number, like there is with the priesthood (service is between thirty and fifty years old). Instead, it simply says that these men must be “able to go out to war in Israel.” Theoretically, that could mean a person could fight for as long as they’re fit for battle.
That’s exactly what King David did. 2 Samuel 21:18 records that David killed one of Goliath’s descendants, which we can only assume was several decades after the original battle with Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Only by the intervention of one of David’s commanders did he decide to retire from leading troops into battle.
Secondly, Numbers 1:46 only includes the men—women and children are exempt. Why? Because it’s a military census. What Moses needs to know is how many warriors he has at his disposal.
But that leaves an enormous question: If there were around 600,000 men over the age of 20, how many people were there total?
The reason this question bothers so many people is part translation issues, and part consistency. They claim that “scribal errors” are responsible for the inflated number, especially considering later “calls-to-arms,” such as Deborah’s in the book of Judges, which only rallied a fraction of the number.
I’m not a Hebrew scholar, so I’m at the mercy of the Text. But I do have to trust that the numbers we’ve been given, handed down through endless cycles of expert translators, are more accurate than whatever random Google search I could perform.
But more than that, I choose to trust the Bible.
Because of that, if I take the number of 603,550 at face value, and account for wives and kids, the generally accepted number of Israelites in the wilderness is around 2 million people.
No matter if that’s the exact number or not, one thing is for certain: Pharaoh lost a huge piece of his population and labor force when the Israelites left. And those people in Canaan now have a large problem heading their way.
