The Book of Exodus states that “about 600,000 [Hebrews] went out on foot, plus women and children” (12:37) when they fled enslavement from Egypt and Pharaoh. This verse, along with parallel census figures in the Book of Numbers (1:1–54 and 26:1-51), has led many readers to think that about two million Hebrews in total fled Egypt under the leadership of Moses toward the Promised Land of Canaan.

Part 1: The Story
Part 9: The Book of Exodus as a Post-Exilic Document
Part 11: The Number of the Migrating Hebrews [2]

In this entry, we will consider various hypotheses forwarded by leading biblical scholars to render intelligible such an improbably high figure, the issues that emerge based on literal interpretations of a two million migrating Hebrew population, and that, if there was a historical exodus at all, that the population was significantly smaller in size.

Two Million

In Numbers, the total number of males “from twenty years old and upward” (1:3) who came out of Egypt was 603,550 (1:46), a figure very similar to that of the second census, 601,730 (Num. 26:51). As generally recognized, if males over the age of twenty would have comprised around one quarter of the population, then the total number of individuals, including men, women, and children, would have exceeded two million (Clark 1955, 82; Gottwald 1979, 51; Davies 1995, 449).

Biblical scholars have, however, known that the two million figure is historically improbable (Colenso 1871, 31; Dillmann 1886, 5–8; Baentsch 1903, 446; Gray 1903, 12–15; Lucas 1944, 167; Clark 1955, 82; Wenham 1967, 19; Rogerson 1984, 220-222; Davies 1995). Biblical scholar Eryl W. Davies explains that “It has long been recognized by O. T. scholars that the figures recorded in the census lists contained in Num. i and xxvi cannot be regarded as an accurate representation of the number of Israelites who came out of Egypt with Moses” (1995, 449).

’Eleph

The Hebrew term used for thousand is ’eleph (Exodus 12:37). This little term has spawned significant scholarly discussion. Whereas terms for numbers in the biblical texts (e.g., “ten(s) and “hundred(s)”) are often unambiguous, ’eleph is a different, more complicated matter (Humphreys 1998, 3; Kitchen 2001, 264). This is not only the case regarding the Old Testament but also other ancient texts in the Ancient Near Eastern world, such as those of the Assyrians, evidence from the Moabite Stone (c. 840 BCE), and the Ugaritic texts (c. 1400-1200 BCE) (Humphreys 1998, 3).

In Hebrew, similar-looking Hebrew terms can be confused if context is missing. The internal biblical context is therefore important (Hunphreys 1998, 3). The same principle applies in English: the word “bark” can refer to the skin of a tree, the sound of a dog, an early ship, and so on. Only context informs the reader which meaning is intended. The same idea applies to ’eleph (Humphreys 1998, 3; Kitchen 2001, 286), which, depending on context, may fall into one of the following three categories:

[1] ’Eleph refers to “thousand,” as clearly the case in Genesis 20:16 (price) and Numbers 3:50 (amount).

[2] ’Eleph refers to a group (e.g., a clan, family, a (military) squad, and a rota of Levites or priests) as in the cases of the books of Joshua 22:14, Judges 6:15, 1 Samuel 10:19, Micah 5:2, and so on.

[3] Refers to a leader, chief, or officer, with a second vowel u, giving ’alluph (e.g., Genesis 36:15).

Fortunately for interpreters, the context of biblical passages can provide clues about how to interpret ’eleph. There are instances where it makes no sense if it is translated “thousand”; for example, in First Kings 20:30, there is the unlikely scenario of a wall falling on 27,000 men, killing them. But 27 men might have experienced such a death. In the previous verse, the Israelites are described as defeating a staggering 100,000 Aramean foot soldiers in a single day. This would make better sense if the Aramean losses were 100 infantrymen.

Proposed Hypotheses for Interpreting the Migrating Hebrew Population Figures

As Davies explains, because of the widely recognized “insuperable difficulties in accepting the figures given in Num. i and xxvi as a correct representation of the number of Israelites who came out of Egypt… [I]t is not surprising, then, that various attempts have been made by scholars to explain these improbably high computations” (1995, 452).

Egyptologist W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) interpreted the figures in the two census lists in Numbers 1 and 26 respectively as representing families (“tents”) (1906). So, for example, when “The number from the tribe of Reuben was 46,500” (1:21), this refers not to 46,500 men, but 46 families/tents of 500 (averaging up to eight or nine people to a tent). If correct, the figure for the migrating Hebrew population journeying to Canaan was about 5,500 people (the sum of the 100s in the tribal list of Numbers 1) in 598 tented families (the sum of the “thousands” in Numbers 1) (see Kitchen 2001, 263–264 for discussion). Petrie, however, could not account for the numbers of Levites and various other figures in the books of Exodus and Numbers.

The biblical scholar George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) modified Petrie’s theory and interpreted the ’elephs as military squads, troops, or contingents under leaders. The two census lists in Numbers account for each tribe’s number of troops, followed by the number of individuals in each unit who were capable of bearing arms. For example, the first census for Reuben described this tribe as consisting of 46 troops with a total of 500 men (there would be approximately eleven men in each troop). Extrapolating this to all twelve tribes, there would be 598 units consisting of a total of 5,550 men (according to the first census) or 596 units consisting of a total of 5,750 men (according to the second census), yielding a number of fleeing and wandering Hebrews at 20,000 plus. Other scholars, however, maintained the ’elephs were for clans, not just military squads (Sarna 1987).

R. E. D. Clark (1955) considered the ’elephs to refer to leaders and arrived at a large figure of 140,000 migrating Hebrews. In his view, ’eleph is used often to mean captains or mighty men or some similar equivalent, which is consistent with the large numbers of the Old Testament and biblical statements that the Israelites had captains over thousands, over hundreds, and over fifties, and that the word ‘eleph was used for all three. Fifty ’eleph, then, means not 50,000 but fifty officers, rendering the “numbers… quite reasonable and quite small” (Clark 1955, 84). Clark points to the account of Jehoshaphat’s group at Jerusalem where the meaning of ’eleph is given: “’eleph, mighty men of valour” (2 Chron. 17: 16). Descriptions of large numbers of those who fell in battle or as a result of plagues become more reasonable. In some instances, Clark admits that it is difficult to be sure whether the word used really refers to thousands or to captains (1955, 84).

Clark also urges readers to keep in mind that, by and large, ancient battles were unlike modern ones. It was not, as a rule, the ordinary men who did most of the fighting, but the mighty men, the captains, the charioteers, and the knights in armor. It was the ’elephs, the mighty men, who fell in battle rather than the common soldiers, though on occasions, the latter suffered also.

J. W. Wenham (1967) also interpreted ’eleph as meaning leader in these contexts but reasoned to a figure of 72,000. Like Clark, he incorporated the figures for Leviticus into his solution. Criticisms (see Davies 1995, 463–464) of this hypothesis is the term ’eleph not being a term used specifically to designate a fighting unit derived from a particular tribe. Although the term does sometimes appear in military contexts, this does not in itself prove that it was a technical military term. Also, interpreting ’eleph as a fighting unit can lead to some extremely small military figures. For example, each unit in the tribe of Simeon would have consisted (according to the first census) of just five men, as would each unit in the tribe of Issachar according to the second census. On the other hand, the largest unit, derived from the tribe of Gad, according to the first census, would have comprised no more than fourteen men, whereas the largest unit in the second census (the tribe of Reuben) would have consisted of only seventeen men.

According to Heinrich Holzinger (1903, 5-6, 134), the population numbers are symbolic and based on gematria. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is given a numerical value; for example, the first ten letters of the alphabet represented the numbers one to ten, the next ten letters represented the number of tens, and the remaining letters the number of hundreds. Holzinger argued that the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in “the Israelite community” is 603 and in “all the men… who are able to serve in the army” (Num. 1:3) is 551. Putting these together gives 603,551, which is as close as one can get to the census total of 603,550 of 1:46. Some counter that the idea of the gematria system was not known in Israel prior to the Hellenistic period, so cannot be a suitable explanation (Noth 2012, 111–123).

Colin Humphreys (1998) provided a detailed mathematical analysis. In his view, there were eight to nine males (aged over one month) in the average Hebrew family at the time of the exodus, which is consistent with the detail of the Hebrews multiplying greatly while they were in Egypt (Exod. 1:7). Humphreys’ calculations lead to the end result of 598 troops (squads) consisting of 5,500 men (averaging about 9 men each) in the first census and 596 squads numbering 5,730 men later in the second census. At a later period, the 598 + 5 ’eleph gave the 603,530 men of Numbers 1-2, and the 596 + 5 ’eleph gave the 601,730 men of Numbers 26. The Levites came out at about 1,000 men in twenty-one rotas of about 50. The number of Hebrews who fled from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan then totaled about 20,000 to 22,000, close to the figure proposed by Mendenhall earlier. So, a population of 50,000 to 70,000 by 1150 BCE in Canaan might have included 20,000 Hebrews.

References

Baentsch, Βruno. 1903. Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri. Gottingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Clark, R. E. D. 1955. “The Large Numbers of the Old Testament—Especially in Connexion with the Exodus.” Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute 87:82-92.

Colenso, John W. 1863. The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined. London, England, United Kingdom: London, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green.

Davies, E. W. 1995. “A mathematical conundrum: the problem of the large numbers in Numbers I and XXVI.” Vetus Testamentum 45:449-469.

Dillmann, August. 1886. Die Bucher Numeri, Deuteronomium und Josua. Leipzig, Germany: S. Hirzel.

Flinders Petrie, William Matthew. 1906. Researches in Sinai. New York City, New York State, United States: Dutton.

Gottwald, Norman K. 1979. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 ΒCE. Orbis Books: Ossining, New York State: United States.

Gray, George B. 1903. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Numbers. Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom: T. & T. Clark.

Humphreys, Colin J. 1998. “The Number of People in the Exodus from Egypt: Decoding Mathematically the Very Large Numbers in Numbers I and XXVI.” Vetus Testamentum 48(2):196-213.

Kitchen, Kenneth A. 2003. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Lucas, A. 1944. “The Number of Israelites at the Exodus.” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 76: 164-168.

Mendenhall, George E. 1958. “The Census of Numbers 1 and 26.” Journal of Biblical Literature 77(1):52-66.

Noth, Martin. 2012. “Das System der zwölf Stamme Israels.” In Fortschreibungen Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament, edited by Christoph Levin, 111–123. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter.

Rogerson, John W. 1984. Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century, England and Germany. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Fortress Press.

Wenham, J. W. 1967. “Large numbers in the old Testament.” Tyndale Bulletin 18(1):19–53.