Counting the Men of Israel Numbers 1 and 2
HOW many men do you think there were in the big camp at Mt. Sinai? We find about this in Moses’ fourth book called Numbers. You know these people were from the twelve sons of Israel (also named Jacob), and after so many years had become so great, that those of each son were called a tribe, only that Joseph’s tribe was counted as two, named for his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, so there really were thirteen tribes.
Moses and Aaron, with a man from each tribe, took the count of all the men able to go to war in the twelve tribes. The tribe of Judah had the largest number of men, 74,600: altogether there were 603,550 men. The men of Levi were counted separately and kept for the service of the Tabernacle (Chapter 1:46, 47).
The number of the women and children is not given, so we do not know how many people there were in all, but we may be sure it was a very large number, and that none of us have ever seen such a camp.
The Tent, of God, with the court around it, was set in the center, the gate toward the east. The tents of Moses and Aaron were in front of the gate. The rest of the Levites had their tents on the other sides of the court. The tents of the other tribes were farther away from the court; three on the east; three on the south; three on die west; and three on the north.
Each tribe had a standard set up, and a leader (Chapter 1:52; 3:38).
Aaron and his sons had silver trumpets to call the people together to tell them God’s words, or for the feasts, and also to give the signals when the camp moved, So all was in the order God gave.
These are words of blessing Aaron was to say to the people:
“The Lord bless thee, and keep thee, ... . and give thee peace”. Numbers 6:23-27.
ML 09/12/1937