The Book of Numbers… But Are The Numbers Accurate?

Parshat B'Midbar

by Rabbi Avi Billet

Shortly after being introduced to the leaders of the tribes we find each tribe being counted – twice (1:46 and 2:32). Each time the tally of Israelites (minus the tribe of Levi) is 603,550 males over the age of 20. This is the same number given to us in Shmot 38:26 based on the counting of the ½ shekel – though it is possible that the number then included the tribe of Levi. 

Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Esptein wondered about the rounded nature of the numbers of each tribe, all of which end in a round hundreds number, except for the tribe of Gad which ends with a “50.” In Parshat Pinchas, there is another census which amounts to 601,730 Israelites (not including Levites) where among all the rounded-to-hundreds the number 30 appears, this time for the tribe of Naftali. 

 And so Rabbi Epstein asked if this is meant to be taken as accurate numbers, or could the people (or the Torah) have been rounding things. 

Rabbenu Asher writes in Pesachim (Siman 40) that the Torah’s way when it comes to numbers in the tens that end in 9, is to give us the rounded tens number paying no attention to the discrepancy. To bring a few examples: 

• We are told 70 members of the family descended to Egypt, when the actual number was 69. 
• The Torah tells us to count “50 days” (Vayikra 23:16) when in reality we are counting 49. 

Those examples are recorded by Rabbenu Asher. Rabbi Epstein presents other examples:

• The spies really spied 39 days, not 40 (see Bavli Taanis 29a)
• Lashes are presented as 40 (Devarim 25:3) while the true number is 39
• We are told that the people ate מן (manna) for 40 years, except that they were provided it in the wilderness for 40 years minus 30 days (see the “aside” below)
• King David was king in Hebron for 7 years and 6 months, then in Jerusalem for 33 years. Yet the verse tells us he was king for 40 years.
• The Sages refer to the days “between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur” as the Ten Days of Repentance, when in reality there are only 7 days (since RH and YK are in reality their own entities).

As a very related aside, this leads me to wonder about the “40 years” in the wilderness, as to whether it was actually 40 years or really 39, for two reasons. 

1. If, as noted above, the spies were in the land 39 days, and the Torah says the people were punished to be in the wilderness “for each day - a year,” then the total would be 39 years 
2. Moshe Rabbenu was listed in the Torah as being 80, with his brother Aharon being 83, when they came before Pharoah. We have a tradition that the plagues spanned anywhere from several months to an entire year. Even if Moshe first came before Pharaoh on his 80th birthday, on the last day of his life he declares to us “I am 120 years old today” indicating that 40 years at most have passed since he first came before Pharaoh. That would be impossible, unless they were in the wilderness less than 40 years (and therefore also ate מן for fewer than 40 years)

Rabbi Epstein thus concludes that since when we are dealing with numbers in the tens the tradition is to round, and when it comes to counting years the tradition is to drop the extra months, when we are dealing with thousands and tens of thousands, the tens column is rounded down or up to the closest hundred, unless it falls exactly in between as per the singular example of 50 for the tribe of Gad. [He offers that the number 30 attached to the tribe of Naftali in Parshat Pinchas may have been preserved because in that kind of count, specifically for military purposes, for which there is a typical division of units into 30 people (שלשים) and there is a שליש (officer) above them, there is good reason to leave a number 30 as it is a recognized military number. See Shoftim 10:4, 20:31, Shmuel I 9:22, Shmuel II 23:13,23, Divrei Hayamim I 12:4]

Even in the count of the Leviim in our Parsha, we are told that Gershon had 7,500, Kehat had 8,600, and Merari had 6,200. Add them together and there are 22,300, yet the Torah says there were 22,000 (there are numerous answers that address this discrepancy, but Rabbi Epstein’s point is certainly supported in this most obvious rounding of the number). 

By comparison, look at the specificity of numbers when it comes to items designated for hekdesh in Parshat Matot (Bamidbar 31:37-40), in the latter part of each verse. The specific, unrounded numbers are because when it comes to things belonging to kodesh, there is no such thing as rounding.

In light of this last insight, there is a question that can be asked against Rabbi Epstein’s argument regarding the census, and that is that if kodesh items are not rounded, and we have a specific amount of silver that was collected for the ½ shekel and used for the Mishkan, 100 kikar (equivalent of 300,000 shekels) plus 1,775 shekels (Shmot 38:25), which perfectly parallels 603,550, then there were in fact that exact number of adult males, at least in the census of the book of Sh’mot, if not the census in our parsha as well. Which would leave the numbers as given fascinating in their roundness!

 The main takeaway, however, is that while numbers have their significance in various ways, we ought not to get caught up in the numbers. In our lives, every Jewish soul is significant, and we cannot get lost in ever saying “only x number of people died in that terrorist attack, IDF military operation, or other catastrophe.” We know, for example, that likely more than 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, yet we use that number for relative ease because those numbers are so unfathomable. On Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day), we try to be more specific as to numbers of fallen soldiers and terror victims, though the number only reflects those we know about, and may not be completely accurate.

Years ago I met a modern Orthodox Jew who was living in a community where the general custom was to have 3 or 4 children. At the Shalom Zachar for their fifth child, some people came in and expressed a little shock at their having a 5th child (as if they did not know the woman had been pregnant). Needless to say this is a “lack of sechel” kind of comment. Anyway, the gentleman turned to me, after dismissing those comments for what they were, and said, “Hitler took 6 million. We need to do what we can to replenish what was lost.”

It’s not a competition and should never be a competition. We should always be proud of every Jewish child we see, and hope and pray that their parents and our communities can be successful in raising these children to carry the banner of our people. Specific numbers are not as important as our very survival, and we hope every child has a chance to be born and a chance to contribute to the continuation of our people, a People which began with a counting as they marched across the wilderness towards the Promised Land.