Israelites at the Exodus

Ibn Khaldun, a Neglected Source of Antichristianity or Attacks on the Bible · Responding to Tim Zeak on Exodus, part I · More on Exodus, not on Tim Zeak, for now · Some Have Claimed Ezra Wrote Moses · Israelites at the Exodus

First of all, like the traditional Christian chronographers and, as I believe, in agreement with the words of St. Stephen Proto-Martyr in Acts, or St. Paul's words in Galatians, I hold to a short soujourn.

The Exodus happened 430 years after God's promise to Abraham. Meaning 215 years after Jacob arrived in Egypt.

The statement "430 years in Egypt" in the text of Exodus look like this in Douey Rheims:

And the abode of the children of Israel that they made in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.
[Exodus 12:40]

Ellopos site has LXX Greek and an English translation side by side:

And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Chanaan, [was] four hundred and thirty years.

This obviously means that "the children of Israel" start out with Abraham, who was not a child of Jacob, but his grandfather. But that's no problem, since it is a continuity, this family that becomes a people is named "children of Israel" from a bit before half of the 430 years, but what precedes is actually identical.

GotQuestions wrongly assumed a long soujourn. But they sum up a nice little problem:

How many Israelites left Egypt in the exodus?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Israelites-exodus.html

What can I answer?

Exodus 12:37, Numbers 1:46, and Numbers 2:32 all describe Israel’s population of men, not including women and children. Numbers 1:21–43 gives an account from each tribe, using Hebrew words, not symbols, to represent quantities. Adding these up, one arrives at the figure given in Numbers 1:46. This phrasing is traditionally interpreted to mean just over 600,000 adult men, implying a total population about four times that size, or 2.4 million.

I agree with tradition.

What is the major problem? Feeding them in the desert is a miracle. There was space for the mannah, but God had to give it. Another problem is, the armies of back then are, apart from the Israelites, considered as numerically smaller than 600 000 men. Why would they react as if facing supreme odds if they were in fact the bigger army?

One possibility is, their impression of facing supreme odds are overblown. It says more about their fears than about the real odds. But there are two more possibilities which complete each other and match God's words in Deuteronomy 7 better:

• armies back then were in fact bigger than archaeologists estimate, as well as populations;
• other peoples had well trained élite armies, Israel just a makeshift militia, consisting of men who had other things to do, and who therefore are not the best well trained soldiers. Case in point, the Temple Guard is what caught Jesus, in Gethsemani, and they were so inefficient that Petrus could cut off a man's ear and survive that. That would never have happened with the Romans doing the arrest. Picture other nations as having well trained professional armies, except Moab, and then the odds are what they would seem to be according to Deuteronomy 7.

Now, there is another problem — how did they grow from a population of 70 to a population of 2.4 million or whatever, in 215 years?

70 * 1.05²¹⁵ = 2 516 502, pretty exactly the 2.4 million described.

A further possibility is, after the 40 years, the Israelites in the Desert had actually become fewer, not more numerous, than just after the Exodus.

Other problem, third one:

When Israel conducted their census of the Levites and the firstborn from the rest of the tribes (Numbers 3:39, 46), the number of firstborn males is recorded as just over twenty thousand. Using the traditional interpretation of 600,000 adult males implies that firstborns made up only 1 out of every 30 men. If that were the case, the average Israelite family would have about 60 children, boys and girls combined. This reckoning seems unreasonable.

Here is a tentative solution:

39 All the Levites, that Moses and Aaron numbered according to the precept of the Lord, by their families, of the male kind from one month and upward, were twenty-two thousand. 40 And the Lord said to Moses: Number the firstborn of the male sex of the children of Israel, from one month and upward, and thou shalt take the sum of them.

41 And thou shalt take the Levites to me for all the firstborn of the children of Israel, I am the Lord: and their cattle for all the firstborn of the cattle of the children of Israel: 42 Moses reckoned up, as the Lord had commanded, the firstborn of the children of Israel: 43 And the males by their names, from one month and upward, were twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-three.

I think the solution is, they were only counting first born who were still children, not adolescents or people serving in the militia. The first-born children of the other tribes correspond roughly speaking to the total of males in the Levite tribe. If someone was an adolescent or fully adult before the Exodus, before the law was given, the sacrifice did not apply. So, no, the text would not suggest families of 60 children per couple, unless the population were trimmed downward.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Dominica in Albis
7.IV.2024