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Ancient Mysteries & Interpretations

How Many Left Egypt?

Numbers counts 603,550 fighting men, implying two million or more people. That raises questions of logistics, of Sinai's resources, of the size of Canaan's population, and within the text itself. Faithful and critical scholars have offered several solutions.

Numbers in the text: clear · Their meaning: disputed

The Sinai wilderness
Site or place photographThe Sinai wilderness, from E. H. Palmer's The Desert of the Exodus (1871), written after the Ordnance Survey of Sinai.Image credit

1 What Scripture says

"All they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty" (Numbers 1:46). "All the firstborn males… were twenty and two thousand two hundred and threescore and thirteen" (3:43). "The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people" (Deuteronomy 7:7).

2 What evidence we might expect

  • A population size consistent with the wilderness, the conquest narratives, and Canaan's archaeology.
  • Internal consistency among the numbers.

3 What discoveries exist

  • Two million people with flocks would form a column hundreds of kilometers long and need enormous amounts of water and food; Exodus presents this as met by miracle.
  • Canaan's total population in the Late Bronze Age is estimated by archaeologists at a few hundred thousand at most; the early Israelite highland villages (Iron I) suggest tens of thousands.
  • Deuteronomy 7:7 calls Israel "the fewest of all people," and Exodus 23:29–30 says God would not drive out the Canaanites at once "lest the land become desolate."
  • The 22,273 firstborn sons (Numbers 3:43) for 603,550 men would mean very large families if all numbers are read in the modern sense.

4 How interpretations compare

Traditional reading

Literal numbers, miraculous provision

The numbers are exact; God's provision of manna, water and protection made the journey possible.

Assessment: Consistent with the text's own presentation of miracle, but in tension with Deuteronomy 7:7 and the archaeology of Canaan.

Scholarly reconstruction

Eleph as a unit

Eleph means a clan or military unit. "46 eleph, 500" for Reuben means 46 units totaling 500 men. Petrie (1906), Mendenhall (1958) and Humphreys (1998, about 5,550 fighting men and 20,000 people in total) proposed versions.

Assessment: Explains the census tallies elegantly, but later copyists and the text's own totals (603,550) read eleph as "thousand."

Source: W. M. F. Petrie, Researches in Sinai (1906); G. E. Mendenhall, "The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26," JBL 77 (1958); C. J. Humphreys, "The Number of People in the Exodus from Egypt," Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998)

Scholarly reconstruction

Large numbers as rhetoric

Ancient Near Eastern texts used large numbers to express significance; the census expresses that all Israel took part.

Source: D. M. Fouts, "A Defense of the Hyperbolic Interpretation of Large Numbers in the Old Testament," JETS 40 (1997)

Scholarly reconstruction

Later census

The figures come from a later census of Israel, projected onto the wilderness generation.

Source: A. Faust, Israel's Ethnogenesis (2006); I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (1988)

5 The strongest supported reconstruction

The census lists are ancient in form. How to read their large numbers remains unresolved; several solutions exist that take the text seriously. The question does not affect whether the Exodus happened, only how large the group was.

6 What remains possible or unknown

  • The original meaning of eleph in the census lists.

7 How this material came to us

The Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch have essentially the same totals, with minor differences in some tribal figures.

What the evidence shows

  • Independently documentedNumbers 1:46 totals 603,550 fighting men.
  • Independently documentedEleph can mean a clan or military unit.
  • Plausible, not confirmedAbout 20,000 people left Egypt.

    Source: C. J. Humphreys, "The Number of People in the Exodus from Egypt," Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998)

  • DisputedMore than two million people left Egypt.

Where this connects