PROM SUEZ TO SINAl/' 



265 



THE EXODUS OF THE CHH^DKEN OF ISRAEL. 

 Notes on the Census Numbers. 



The numbers mentioned in the census which was taken before 

 Mount Sinai have presented a difficulty to many students of the 

 history of the Exodus and the Wanderings of the Children of 

 Israel, as described in the early Books of the Bible. The total 

 seems to be out of harmony with certain well-known incidents in 

 the narrative as a whole ; and, moreover, it is a serious question 

 with many reverent inquirers how so large a number as that given 

 could have been led, in the orderly and disciplined manner described, 

 through such a barren, wild, inhospitable, and mountainous region 

 as the Sinai Peninsula, where, except in a few localities, lack of 

 pasturage for flocks and herds is (and probably was at that time) so 

 conspicuous a feature. 



According to the Sacred Record there were two censuses — the 

 first before Sinai (Num. i, ii), where the total is given as 603,550; 

 and the second, after an interval of from thirty to forty years, in 

 the Plains of Moab (Num. xxvi), where the total is given as 

 601,730. In each case the census was concerned with those who 

 were "able to go forth to war," that is, males of twenty years old 

 and upward. This means that if, as is generally agreed, five may 

 be taken as the average of a family — in other words, that for every 

 male of twenty years old " able to go forth to war," there were five 

 others, women, children, and old men — the community as a whole 

 reached a total of at least three million souls. If, therefore, we 

 find difficulty in the thought of 600,000 people being conducted 

 through the Wilderness with their flocks and herds, and maintained 

 there for a period of forty years, how much greater is the difficulty 

 when, as a fact, the multitude is represented as numbering three 

 million souls ! 



To those who have gone over the ground with eyes wide open, 

 the question now before us is of more than academic interest and 

 importance. Among recent investigators who have followed up 

 their travels with a suggested solution of the problem. I may 

 name (1) Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L., F.R.S., &c., the 

 eminent Egyptologist and author of numerous works on archaeo- 

 logical research ; and (2) the Rev. F. E. Hoskins, D.D., of the 

 American Mission, Beyrout, widely known for his writings on 

 Oriental travel and antiquities. 



Professor Petrie's views have been given to the world with a 

 confident reiteration which divests them of novelty — first in a paper 

 read before the Church Congress in 1906 ; then, in greater detail, in 

 a volume, Researches in Sinai, in 1906 ; and again, in a smaller work. 



