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21. The affair of Gibeah, as recorded in the last three 
chapters of Judges, introduces us to some more apparently 
excessive and inconsistent numbers. This affair is generally 
referred to the earlier period of the Judges ; some put it 
within fifty years from the passage of Jordan. In it we are 
told that the men of Israel, beside Benjamin, were 400,000 
men ; and it is particularly stated that all Israel, including 
Gilead, that is, the trans-Jordanic tribes, were gathered, 
together. Benjamin amounted to 26,700. So Israel had 
decreased by nearly 200,000, and the tribe of Benjamin by 
some 9,000, since the Exodus. At the second numbering 
Benjamin is said to have mustered 45,600 men ; so that the 
tribe must have decreased by nearly 19,000 in no very great 
space of time. But these 26,700 men, of a rapidly decreasing 
tribe, were able to kill first 22,000, and then 18,000 of Israel, 
and that without the loss of more than 1,000 men; for 25,100 
Benjamites were slain subsequently at Gibeah, Rimmon, and 
Gideon, aud 600 escaped, and ultimately resuscitated the 
tribe, to become, though small, a very important one, inas- 
much as it produced two Sauls, the King and the Apostle. It 
could muster 1,000 repentant men to meet David on his return 
from banishment, in spite of the loss of 360 in Ish-bosheth's 
rebellion, and furnish 380,000 body-guards in the time of 
Jehoshaphat. 
22. The fifty children of Priam have always been considered 
as legendary ; but they are nearly equalled by the forty sons 
of Abdon, and the forty-two brethren of Ahaziah, King of 
Judah, if they were brothers, not relatives only, and surpassed 
by the thirty sons and thirty daughters of Ibzan, and the 
seventy sons of Jerubbaal and King Ahab. Polygamy, per- 
haps, may render these numbers possible; there may be in 
Utah at the present day families as numerous. Still it is 
rather remarkable that we hear of but one single child of 
Solomon's, though his harem is said to have contained the 
enormous number of 1,000 women. 
23. I have already discussed the 50,070 men said to have 
been smitten in Beth-shemesh. Besides this, the books of 
Samuel present us with two other apparently inconsistent 
numbers. The whole force of Israel and Judah mustered by 
Saul after a solemn summons amounts to 330,000. It is pro- 
bable, however, that this and the 300,000 gathered in Telaim 
represents only a fraction of the whole fighting force. If not, 
it is quite irreconcileable with the census held by David some 
seventy or eighty years after, when the adult male population 
of Israel and .Judah amounted, according to the Book of 
Samuel, to 1,300,000 ; according to that of Chronicles, 
