So did God round these numbers or did He ensure there were a rounded number of fighting men? Each tribe had totals ending in ‘hundred’ or ‘fifty’. The likelihood that twelve large groups of people had such even and neat amounts of men over 30 able to fight is likely astronomical. Just a thought. I find some of the numbers in the Bible interesting and wonder why they are there like that, why they are sometimes specifically mentioned like the 153 large 🐠. God is Sovreign, the Bible is true, so why these seeming rounded numbers? Just curious if you had some thoughts.
I'm just spitballing here, so bear with me. First, if you were to assume an average of, say, five family members per household for each fighting man counted (which actually seems kind of low, but who knows how many single men there may have been?)....you'd come up with a total population of 3,017,750...plus the rest of the sojourners/mixed multitude. And in Chapter One, they had not yet "set up" the organization of the camp. That's a big group of people to survey...
So I would say with that many people to go through, it would take some time. It's also reasonable to assume that there would be movement of the population during the census - just normal stuff like "Jeffrey went over to that section to visit his parents, but he lives here, so count him"...and maybe Jeffrey also got counted in that other place along with the others there. It's reasonable that some of that could have happened...
I mentioned back in our Exodus 25 - 27 post/discussion that it's plausible the tabernacle could have been built in something like a dome/snow globe shape. If that were the case, then it's also plausible that the layout of the camp as described here in Chapter 2 (combined with the Levites' arrangement in Chapter 3) could be something like a calzone-type thing, with the round tabernacle in the middle, and perhaps twelve sections spanning out from that "inner ring" to the outer edge, like slices of the calzone. (with the Levites camping in a ring between the tabernacle and the other tribes). I don't have fancy schematics and CAD models like Andrew Hoy, just a badly sketched layout from last year's Bible Study notes. I should probably revisit and revise that one, maybe check my work and see if it still holds up. I'll put it on the list of things to do, lol. - jeffrey
So did God round these numbers or did He ensure there were a rounded number of fighting men? Each tribe had totals ending in ‘hundred’ or ‘fifty’. The likelihood that twelve large groups of people had such even and neat amounts of men over 30 able to fight is likely astronomical. Just a thought. I find some of the numbers in the Bible interesting and wonder why they are there like that, why they are sometimes specifically mentioned like the 153 large 🐠. God is Sovreign, the Bible is true, so why these seeming rounded numbers? Just curious if you had some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI'm just spitballing here, so bear with me. First, if you were to assume an average of, say, five family members per household for each fighting man counted (which actually seems kind of low, but who knows how many single men there may have been?)....you'd come up with a total population of 3,017,750...plus the rest of the sojourners/mixed multitude. And in Chapter One, they had not yet "set up" the organization of the camp. That's a big group of people to survey...
DeleteSo I would say with that many people to go through, it would take some time. It's also reasonable to assume that there would be movement of the population during the census - just normal stuff like "Jeffrey went over to that section to visit his parents, but he lives here, so count him"...and maybe Jeffrey also got counted in that other place along with the others there. It's reasonable that some of that could have happened...
DeleteI mentioned back in our Exodus 25 - 27 post/discussion that it's plausible the tabernacle could have been built in something like a dome/snow globe shape. If that were the case, then it's also plausible that the layout of the camp as described here in Chapter 2 (combined with the Levites' arrangement in Chapter 3) could be something like a calzone-type thing, with the round tabernacle in the middle, and perhaps twelve sections spanning out from that "inner ring" to the outer edge, like slices of the calzone. (with the Levites camping in a ring between the tabernacle and the other tribes). I don't have fancy schematics and CAD models like Andrew Hoy, just a badly sketched layout from last year's Bible Study notes. I should probably revisit and revise that one, maybe check my work and see if it still holds up. I'll put it on the list of things to do, lol.
ReplyDelete- jeffrey