[Avodah] The census numbers in bamidbar
Marty Bluke
marty.bluke at gmail.com
Sat May 31 11:32:19 PDT 2025
If you look at the numbers 12 of the 13 tribes end in 00 and the 13th
Yehuda ends with 50. So the numbers seem to be clearly rounded and so says
the Meshech Chochma. However it is strange that only one tribe is rounded
to 50. If the Torah was rounding to the nearest 50 you would expect a more
even distribution between 50 and 00.
What is more difficult is the end of the parsha where the leviim redeem the
first borns. The Torah gives an exact number of first borns 22273 and
matches it with a rounded number of leviim, 22000. Rashi points out that if
you add up the numbers there were 22300 leviim and therefore quotes Chazal
that 300 were first borns, again a very suspiciously round number. So how
does that work using a rounded number and comparing it to an exact number?
To say that the numbers of leviim was exact both the total number
(22300) and the number of first borns (300) seems to be quite difficult
especially when all the other tribal numbers are rounded.
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