🔢WEB · Numbers 1:33
What does Numbers 1:33 mean?
"those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Ephraim, were forty thousand five hundred."
— Numbers 1:33 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Of the children of Zebulun, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;
those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Zebulun, were fifty-seven thousand four hundred.
Of the children of Joseph, of the children of Ephraim, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;
those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Ephraim, were forty thousand five hundred.
Of the children of Manasseh, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;
those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Manasseh, were thirty-two thousand two hundred.
Of the children of Benjamin, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war;
Explanation
Numbers 1:33 records a single line from a census: the tribe of Ephraim contained 40,500 men eligible for military service. On the surface this is simply administrative data, one entry in a long list of tribal head counts that Moses recorded at God's command in the wilderness of Sinai.
The context is essential to understanding why this verse exists at all. Shortly after the Israelites left Egypt and received the Law at Sinai, God instructed Moses to number the people, tribe by tribe, counting every man twenty years old and upward who was able to go to war (Numbers 1:1-3). This was not a modern population survey but a military muster, preparing Israel to move as an organized camp and, eventually, to enter and conquer the land of Canaan. Each tribe's leader assisted in the counting, and the results were recorded methodically. Ephraim was one of the two tribes descended from Joseph (the other being Manasseh), since Jacob had adopted Joseph's sons as his own and given them tribal status (Genesis 48:5). The number given here, 40,500, represents Ephraim's contribution to the total fighting force of Israel, which by the end of the chapter reached 603,550 men.
Theologically, this verse and the census as a whole testify to God's faithfulness in fulfilling his promise to Abraham that his descendants would multiply like the stars of heaven and the sand of the seashore (Genesis 22:17). What began as a single family of seventy people who went down into Egypt (Exodus 1:5) had grown, within a few generations, into a n
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