THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
The answer
Nearly the same. The first census, at Sinai, counts 603,550 men aged twenty and up (Numbers 1:46). The second, near the end of the journey, counts 601,730 (Numbers 26:51). Both are close to Exodus 12:37, which counts about six hundred thousand men on foot. Exodus 38:26 gives the same 603,550 as the first census. A study Bible, the New Oxford Annotated Bible, calls the precise numbers difficult to interpret.
Why it’s interesting
Michael Coogan and Cynthia Chapman, in their Old Testament textbook, call the totals impossibly high. They point out that Numbers 3:43 counts 22,273 firstborn sons. Divide 603,550 by that number and each family has about twenty-seven sons.
Open question
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