The population of Israel at the Exodus was about 600,000 men (say most Bible translations), giving a total population in the several millions, as large as a modern city such as Houston. (See Exodus 12: 37-38.) If true, this makes Israel one of the largest nations at the time, close (say archaeologists) to the total population of Egypt at the time (eg. this article on ancient Egypt) and larger than the entire population of Canaan. Yet in numerous places the wandering nation of Israel is described as "small", much smaller than those around them. (See Deuteronomy 9:1 where YHWH explains that the Israelites will dispossess larger nations and Deuteronomy 7:1 where seven Canaanite nations are described, each larger than Israel.) This argument about the "smallness" of Israel is part of YHWH's explanation that the Israelites will only be victorious only if He goes before them.
There are numerous places in the Old Testament where English translations give us unusually large numbers. At times an extremely large number of people are reported killed in a battle. For example, according to Judges 12: 6, forty two thousand Ephraimites are killed in a dispute between Jepthah of Gilead and the tribe of Benjamin. If the NIV translation of the text is accurate then not only is this fight a massive battle larger than any in the American Civil War, but the Ephraimite dead exceed the total population of that tribe as given a generation or two previously in Numbers 26: 37. Similar examples abound in this book of Judges and also appear in subsequent Old Testament histories such as the book of Samuel or Kings. In the book of Esther there are similar large numbers; in Esther 9: 16, the captive Jews are reported to kill 75,000 Babylonians.
Eleph
There are a variety of proposals on how one interpret these issues. I outline some of these proposals here, restricting myself to suggestions by those who hold a high view of scripture, that is, viewing Scripture as inspired by God. To those who view scripture in this way, the "problem of large numbers" is one of interpretation and translation. One major case revolves around the translation of the Hebrew word eleph. As mentioned previously, this word is usually translated "thousand" but can also be translated "clan" or "military unit". It is translated "head of a family member" in Joshua 22:14, for example and translated "clan" in Gideon's statement in Judges 6: 15. In neither place does the translation "thousand" make sense. (As a mathematician, I certainly react to translating Gideon's statement as "my thousand is smaller than all the other thousands"!)
We are asking questions about ancient writings accumulated across almost one thousand years. The ancient language of Hebrew, like all languages, changed and evolved over time. We should be cautious in our attempts to use seventh or eighth century BC documents to translate a Hebrew word (such as eleph) that appears in a twelfth or thirteenth century BC document. This is always a difficulty for translators, including those who gave us the New International Version.
Hyperbole
There are also significant cultural issues involved in translation. One cultural issue involves the appropriate use of hyperbole. In I Chronicles 12: 8, we have this account of Gadite warriors in David's army:
"They were brave warriors, ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains."
Most of us would recognize the hyperbole in "faces of lions" and "swift as gazelles". Does this hyperbole continue further down the page when, in I Chronicles 12: 14, these same warriors were described as
"...the least was a match for a hundred, and the greatest for a thousand,"
And later in the same chapter, in the statements about the power of David's army, we see in I Chronicles 12: 33, that the portion from the single tribe of Zebulun were
If we recognize hyperbole in the earlier descriptions, is it possible that this same hyperbole occurs with the numbers of soldiers in the second half of that chapter? Some commentators argue that this type of numerical hyperbole was common throughout the ancient Near East and that numbers had a different role in that culture than they might in our culture.
In our culture, with a modern emphasis on science and mathematics, we rarely use numbers in hyperbolic form. We might use "million" to mean "a lot", but if we write out a more specific number, then the specificity of the number removes our acceptance of hyperbole. I am not sure of the ANE culture's view of numbers, but hyperbole in war reports was common.
Fouts
A number of experts have weighed in on this. Scott McKnight, in "War language as hyperbole", in Christianity Today, describes the hyperbolic language common to the ancient Near East. This article at GotQuestions.org describes four possible approaches to the population during the Exodus. David Fouts, first a Th.D. student at Dallas Theological Seminary in 1992 and then an associate professor at Bryan College, wrote a thesis on The Use of Large Numbers in the Old Testament and then published an article on this issue. (The thesis is here and the article is here. Both links take one to pdf files.) Since Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, is a well-known evangelical seminary (and I have good friends who got degrees there), I will summarize some of Fouts's argument.
Among several arguments Fouts emphasizes the common occurrence of hyperbolic language. In regards to the population of Israel in Egypt, Fouts points to numerous places where the text assumes that the nation is relatively small. Besides the statements above where the other nations are described as much larger, it appears that at the beginning of Exodus there are only two midwives for the nation. Later Moses is able to communicate to the people as a whole and, until his father-in-law Jethro intervenes, Moses seems to be the single judge of disputes. Fouts also lists some examples in the book of Numbers and then looks at the passage in I Kings 20: 29-30 where
Rabbit holes
An old article by J. W. Wenham, Large Numbers in the Old Testament, describes places where various Old Testament manuscripts drop or add a digit, or have other glosses, small glosses caused by many centuries of translation.
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