The Biblical Use of Numbers
When we read our Bibles, our tendency is to read it in the same way we read anything else. That is we read it literally, but through the lens of our own culture. Our way of understanding what we read makes the assumption that whoever wrote it was looking at things in the identical way that we do. That is often not the case.
We have been trained to believe that the Bible is 100% correct and have no doubt that what we read is to be completely accepted at face value, without question. What we may have spent many years gradually learning to believe without question, has brought us to a place that we no longer even admit that some issues seem difficult to accept.
If you have reached that point, congratulations are in order. God has been moving us all in that direction for our entire christian lives. Well done! Never-the-less, not every language or culture expresses things in the identical way. If our language does not express something in the identical was as another, confusion can result. It may be fully understood only by those from the original language or culture. It becomes necessary to understand in the way that had been intended by the original speaker.
Our tendency is to understand in the way we would normally grasp something in our own language. However, translating words does not necessarily accurately translate meaning. I am not suggesting that you begin to doubt the Bible. It is true, so long as it is understood in the way that would have been intended by the writer.
If that is not achieved, a radically different understanding can result. Since not every verse can be so easily misunderstood, we have to stay on our toes or we can be badly mistaken. Numbers are often such an issue. While the ancient Hebrews understood that numbers were used to communicate quantity, size, or duration, they often had an additional meaning. They were also used to communicate quality or kind, a function we would never expect. Often when used in such a way, the document does not seem to be expressing something in a literal way.
To us, some things just do not seem possible. There in front of the Tabernacle, Solomon went up to the bronze alter in the Lord’s presence and sacrificed 1,000 burnt offerings on it. (2 Chronicles 1:6 ESV) How long does it take to offer 1,000 burnt offerings? A single burnt offering was a matter requiring considerable effort accompanied with an investment of significant time and ceremony. On the short side, if only a single hour per sacrifice was needed, a total of 1,000 hours would have been take up in completing the task. If 8 hours per day were spent making those sacrifices, over four months would have been needed to complete them all, an unlikely possibility.
Another scripture using that kind of language is found in 2 Chronicles 7:5 NLT. King Solomon offered a sacrifice of 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats. If you thought 1,000 burnt offerings was a lot, think about these numbers. Remember, when we question a number like that we are not questioning the Lord or even the scriptures. We are questioning whether we understand what we are being told. This scripture is not telling us how many. It’s telling us what kind.
The Bible contains many such statements. When challenging something like that, I am not doubting the Bible but am questioning my own understanding of the language used. I believe the writer was telling his story in a way that he could show the unusually high degree of importance he was placing on the telling of a single sacrifice. He was not telling the actual quantity of animals being offered.
God is being treated with the utmost respect and the care in which the offering is being made reflecting that respect. Using such a large number is not telling how many, but rather what kind. The critical nature of the event was at the forefront. It was a literal sacrifice and was offered in the most significant of ways possible. The number was being used in a way that we are not accustomed to using. The Hebrews were using the number 1000 in a way they would have regarded as very literal although one that would be completely overlooked by us.
If your still not convinced, think about King Solomon: … He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3a NLT). In your dreams.
The Exodus had been a literal event and the writer was using the number 600,000 to demonstrate the incredible importance of the event. No other event in their entire history had been as significant to them and they used hyperbole as a way to express it. They were not lying; they were looking for a way to emphasize its importance.
And the people of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about six hundredthousand men on foot, besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. (Exodus 12:37 ESV)
The Bible specifically says there were six hundred thousand men participating in the Exodus. We normally have no difficulty understanding that the Hebrews would give the number of only the men involved. That number would not include women, children, or foreigners who may also have been involved. The total is often thought to be between 1,500,000 and 3,000,000. So was the number given a literal number if women and children were not factored in? To us, it would not be. To the Hebrews it would have been every bit literal. See how things vary from culture to culture?
However, because of our complete confidence in the accuracy of the Bible, we do not question the number 600,000 men, even though it seems unrealistically large. Total estimates vary from one million five hundred thousand to three million. That’s a bunch (more than a typical bunch of bananas). The Bible offers considerable evidence that their numbers were nowhere close to 600,000 men. It has always been there, but we never notice how much information is showing a smaller population.
Think about it. The population of Chicago is 2,700,000. The number of square miles the city covers is quite large. While a band of migrants would not cover nearly as much area as the permanent population of Chicago, it puts things into perspective. The space taken up by three million participating in the Exodus is clearly an unmanageable number.
Most of the distance covered during the Exodus took place while crossing a desert, a place of limited resources. It is difficult to imagine how a desert could supply the needs of over a million people. To make it worse, the logistical issues of coordinating the movement of such a massive group are nearly beyond comprehension. Something does not quite add up.
A partial answer to this problem lies in the way the ancients often used words or numbers. For them, numbers did not always indicate how many were involved. They were often used primarily as words rather than numbers, i.e. six hundred thousand rather than 600,000 and they were often used to convey the importance of the event as opposed to its actual size.
The biblical writers often wanted a number to reveal the importance of something rather than a quantity. It was bigger than life. Since the Bible normally uses things from the physical world to explain things of the spiritual world, it is always looking for examples that rise to the same level of significance as things in the spiritual world.
They rarely exist. The spiritual leg was far more important to biblical writers than the physical or historical could ever be. To overcome this problem, the examples from the physical world are often “supersized”. The term for that exaggeration is hyperbole and only the visible is expressed using it. The invisible is already extremely large (important) without making it seem bigger than it actually was.
Exaggeration of the historical story makes it seem more significant than it actually had been and it then becomes a better physical reflection of the spiritual counterpart in size (read significance). It was the only way their language could adequately convey the importance of the story being told in the heavenly or invisible world.
There is a lot to think about when it comes to the actual size of the Exodus. After we have looked at several issues that might shed some light on this question, you may wonder why you have never thought this through before. Don’t feel badly about that. It took me many years of encountering seemingly unanswerable questions before I began to give serious consideration to options that I was almost afraid to dig into. Eventually I realized that I could no longer ignore them and allow the situation to continue to fester.
Any of the possible crossing sites become evidence of a smaller number of people being involved for both the Hebrews and for the Egyptians. None of the proposed sites are large enough to accommodate such large numbers of people at the same time. Both the time available (a single day) for the crossing and the area constraints would both seem to be better suited for a smaller number of escapees.
The “sweet spot” across the Gulf of Suez, at Lake Timsah, where the first of two Red Sea crossings took place (representing the physical Exodus) is said to be only 230 feet wide between two ramparts. Whether “wide” means across or the distance between the two ramparts, may not matter. For all those in pharaohs entire army to drown, the entire army would have all simultaneously been in the spot that would soon be covered with water. Six hundred chariots, plus infantry, could not all fit into a 230 foot space at the same time. Since Timsah was the location that only represented the physical crossing, pharaoh would not have caught up with them there anyway. The actual resistance was at the spiritual crossing (across Aqaba).
The second Red Sea crossing site, Nuwiba Beach, at the Gulf of Aqaba is about ten miles across and probably five or more miles wide (much wider than usually depicted in movies). The many items, including bones, chariot wheels, and other chariot parts, found on the sea floor are scattered widely all across the entire area, a massive amount of material. Therefore, that location actually does offer evidence of the large size of Pharaoh’s military. Had it been literally six hundred chariots plus infantry? It seems like a possibility.
We are given the number seventy (which included women and children) as an exact number of Hebrews entering Egypt and six hundred thousand men (women and children were not included in this number) as the number to which they had grown during their 430 years in Egypt. The seventy included men, women and children (but not dogs, and especially not cats) and are individually identified in Genesis 46.
An estimate of perhaps twenty-five or thirty may approximate the number of male adults who initially entered Egypt. The verse reads as if it was an actual number (not hyperbole). The Bible gives what appears to be a very specific number for those both entering and leaving Egypt. Their total time in Egypt was over 400 years and they did enjoy rapid growth for the entire time.
Much about their history leaves us with unanswered questions and we look for legitimate answers to them. Couldn’t we come up with at least one number somewhere, somehow, that we can trust?
Yes! There is such a number. We do have a specific number of midwives that evidently were able to handle all of the deliveries of newborns. That number was two! (Exodus 1:15) Could two midwives have delivered the babies born to a population of over two million? They would have been busy little bees. Using an annual growth rate of only 1% (which is on the low side) there would have been twenty thousand births per year (in the later years of captivity). If both midwives worked 24/7 they would each have needed to deliver 27 babies daily, more than one per hour.
I am glad I was not called to be a midwife. Their hectic lifestyle would play havoc with my nap schedule. No baby is going to disrupt that! Life is real. Things must be dealt with in their order of importance! Naps first. Babies later.
Do you think the midwives might have wanted to sleep, eat, potty, wash themselves, or have a day off? How would they have known which house to go to next. How large of an area would they have needed to cover? How scattered were the Hebrews? Not all women have the same length of labor. Where do we go next? These numbers clearly do not work. The small number of midwives is reasonable evidence that the population of Israel at the time of the Exodus was much smaller than we are lead to believe. But, there’s more.
How long would it have taken for 2-3 million people to cross the Red Sea? That could not be done during an eight hour crossing. How much effort would go into organizing such a massive group into a migrating chain? How much time was available to prepare for this? Only one night? How did they pull it all together? This number has been rightfully challenged and needs to be better understood.
What communication problems existed while attempting to coordinate the entire migrating chain? How would the rearmost know when they were to stop for the night? When Moses, from the front of the assemblage, would have stopped for the night would the rearmost, miles behind, have known to stop? Would they pile up against one another?
Would the livestock of the rearmost have found grass after so many people and animals had already trampled over the entire area? How wide of an area would those sent out to gather manna have needed to cover? Would several people scramble to compete for each morsel of manna?
How many quail (Exodus 16:13) would 2-3 million people eat daily? At the high end, eating one quail daily per person for forty years would require nearly 3 billion quail. Think of it! Three billion quail and they could not have flown in during a seasonal migration. They would have been needed daily for many years. A seasonal migration of quail would not fill this need. Do you think it would have put a strain on the sparse natural resources?
In my youth (when writing was being carved on stone tablets) I had hunted doves every September 1st. At mealtime, an adult male would typically eat four doves and they are nearly the size of a Bobwhite Quail. If the Hebrews had each eaten that many quail, twelve billion quail might have been needed. If they had eaten the way I do, three meals daily, even more quail would have been needed. A number like that is much larger than most if us can factor in. No wonder they became angry with Moses!
How much water could flow from the rock that Moses split (Exodus 17:6)? Could millions all drink from a single source? How large of a flow would have been needed to satisfy so many people? Think about it. If two million people each drank 8 ounces twice daily (a very small amount in a desert) 250,000 gallons of water would have been consumed every day. That equals 31,000 cubic feet of water if everything that flowed from it was used each day. An outflow that large from a rock would have been a flood. People would have been bowled over by the flood even without obtaining a drink.
The more important issue here would not have been the amount of water needed. It would have been accessibility. Could people covering as much area as Chicago each get close enough to a single water source to get a drink? How far would some have had to walk to reach the water? Even though we accept that water from the rock was miraculous, there is also a practical side to this issue.
Wouldn’t just the presence of such a large number of people block the way to the water? Would fights break out when thirsty persons farther back attempted to push to the forefront? They would have needed multiple water sources to accommodate a line of Hebrews that might have been hundreds of miles long. Yet we are told there was a single source. A rock!
Two million is such a large number that it might be difficult to grasp the consequences of traveling with such a large group. I would like to use a method of looking at this that is sometimes called “reduction to the ridiculous”. I am not the first to run the numbers on this event, but I find it interesting.
If two million traveled in a long line about eight persons wide there would have been 250,000 groups. If there was eight feet between each group the length of the marching column would have been 378 miles in length. If a new group started every ten seconds, it would have taken 28 days for the rearmost group to have even started out. If they had walked directly to the traditional site of Mt Sinai, the leaders would have arrived long before the rearmost had even begun to walk. Yet they all left in a single day.
Being spread over a such a very long line would have put them in jeopardy; such a long and exposed line could not be easily defended. Egypt could have easily cut the marching line in several places and taken the widely separated defenseless travelers down at their leisure.
We are told that Pharaoh used six hundred or more chariots plus his army (infantry) to pursue the escaping Hebrews. All six hundred would not have been stationed at one location. Are we to think that Pharaoh recalled his entire military from all across Egypt to capture the Hebrews and in the process left the entire country without military protection?
How quickly could the troops have been mustered even if that was what Pharaoh decided to do? To make it even more difficult, he would have assembled his forces in the face of the firstborn of every Egyptian family having died the night before the Exodus! Much reorganization and possibly retraining of the military would have been needed before engaging in combat. Such large numbers clearly do not work.
Let’s calculate this another way. For everyone to have gotten started in a single day with a group of eight starting to walk every ten seconds, forty-eight persons could have started each minute or 2880 leaving per hour. Using those same numbers, in eight hours, 23,040 would have begun walking. Since the entire crossing took place in a single eight hour crossing, that reasoning would seem to produce 23,040 as the maximum population of the Exodus.
How large of a staging area would have been needed? How would each tribe have known when to step up to the starting point? Do you think that such a high level of organization could be achieved in a single night? Even these lower numbers assume that the panic stricken Hebrews could have been organized quickly and well enough to permit such an orderly exit.
Remember this was taking place in a desert. Would the travelers have thrown up a dust cloud? If you were part of that group how would you have liked to eat the dust of those in front of you? Would you have been able to breathe? Did they wear protective face masks? Could the Egyptians forces tell where the Hebrews were from the dust cloud alone?
When the Hebrews discovered that they were trapped with the Red Sea ahead Pharaoh behind and mountains on both sides, they were in a place called Niewba Beach. While a decent size peninsula, it could not accommodate anything remotely close to the millions we think had been involved.
There are several issues to think about here. If two midwives were unable to handle the deliveries, two million were unable to cross the Red Sea in a single day; it would have taken 28 days for the entire migrating band to even have begun walking; it would have been impossible for the entire group to drink from a single source; there were not enough quail to feed such a large number; communication between the lead and rearmost would have been impossible, and the staging process was extremely difficult, then it is easy to see that our understanding of the (physical) Exodus has gone awry.
We should not look at these issues as evidence that the Bible is wrong. The Bible is not wrong. The language used in expressing these immense numbers are examples of hyperbole. Once again, what we are being told is not so much about the size of the physical aspects of the Exodus. The function of hyperbole is to demonstrate the enormous importance of the spiritual Exodus.
It is my belief that it would be inconsistent with the Bible’s teaching for the Hebrews to escape Egypt under their own power and might. To best demonstrate the hand of the Lord in bringing about the Exodus, the Hebrew’s inability to accomplish this on their own would need to be evident. And it is.
We need to see ourselves in a similar way. Whatever we wish to accomplish will not end well if we undertake it on our own. By ourselves, we humans will fail and make a mess of the entire undertaking. With the Lord in control, it’s an entirely different matter.
Then he said to me, This is the word of the lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor bu power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Zachariah 4:6. ESV.
In that era, two million would not have been a small nation. However, within the promised land alone, many nations had their place. Remember the battle of the four kings against five (Genesis 14:1-12)? All nine nations had lived in the area of the promised land, by todays standards an already small country, and there were many other groups living there, as well.
During the portion of the conquest led by Joshua, thirty-one kings (nations) had been defeated, all of which had lived in the (very small) promised land (Joshua 12:24) and the conquest continued well beyond his lifetime. None of those conquered had been large nations. At that moment in history, family or tribal groups were just growing to the level of “city states”.
Surprisingly, scripture offers several indications of a much smaller population than the two million that is routinely taken as a literal number.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord sethis love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. Deuteronomy 7:7 ESV.
When the Lord, your God brings you into the land that you are entering totake possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites….seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, ”…… Deuteronomy 7:1 ESV
Then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. Deuteronomy 11:23 ESV
Saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance,” when you were few in number, indeed very few, and strangers in it. 1 Chronicles 16: 18,19 NKJV
The Lord said, “I will give you the land of Canaan,. and it will belong to you.” Then God's people were few in number. They were strangers in the land. Psalms 105:11,12 ESV
Is it any wonder that some people are unable to believe the Bible? If we continue to insist on a literal understanding of many such issues for which the facts do not sound plausible we will continue to generate unbelievers. To take the attitude that the Lord can accomplish the impossible is really a cop out.
Yes, God can do the impossible; but, He is also a practical God. He would provide water in such a way that people could reach it. He would provide quail only when the natural resources are insufficient to meet the needs of those involved. It behooves us to gain an understanding of how the Bible uses words and even numbers. They were not necessarily telling us the duration or size. The significance was of greater importance than the quantity. When one encounters an unrealistically large number in the Bible, it is not telling us “how many”; it’s telling us “what kind”.
Perhaps you have never stopped to think about some of these apparent conflicts. You might be commended for having faith strong enough that you completely believe the Lord and don’t feel that you must unravel them. That’s fine if your faith is so well established. However, many people have not reached that point. Those who have spotted these problems, without understanding how language had affected the way things were expressed, may easily feel that the Bible is not to be trusted because of them.
If it is wrong on such a significant point, how many more errors might there be? “I’m outta here!” Those who are already reluctant to believe will probably react just like that. Our job is to have already thought through the difficult passages and have a ready explanation as to why they are not errors.
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the words of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV)
It will not help unbelievers who are dealing with specific problem issues to only suggest that they can “trust in the Lord and lean not to their own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5,6). It will probably fall on deaf ears. So will the four spiritual laws. They will be looking for an explanation of the verse that has become a significant problem for them and will probably not move forward until they have found resolution to it. We need to ask just exactly what issue has become a problem and be prepared to explain the truth of that specific verse.
I understand it sounds like really huge challenge. If you are armed with only your own testimony and the four spiritual laws, you may not feel prepared to deal with problem verses that have escaped adequate explanation. You might feel that you can’t deal with these difficult passages when you have never been taught how to understand them yourself! However, you can do it!
Remember Paul was armed with a lifetime of training and knowledge. The Greeks were masters at debate and Paul could argue with the best of them. But, before Agrippa, with his very life hanging in the balance, he chose to give only his testimony and Agrippa was greatly moved. And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time you would persuade me to become a Christian” (Acts 26:28). If Paul felt that his testimony was the most powerful tool at his disposal you might be safe in making a similar choice. That would be a great start. Use your testimony. But, it doesn’t have to be the only arrow in your quiver. You can learn to deal with these difficult passages.
Once we understand that the conflict usually stems from attempting to extract a literal history from a verse that was actually focused on the invisible, I believe it will become much easier to deal with those problem areas. You can prepare for this type of confrontation by thinking through a couple of these apparent conflicts. If you do, you will probably quickly realize that the verse you have encountered is looking into the spiritual leg of the story and is not providing an explanation of something about the physical world.
In order to help the unbeliever, we need to meet him where he is, not where we think he might be. We have to ask. He may have physical needs. If so, you can provide food, water, or warmth without quoting a single scripture! The newest of Christians can help in that way. If we can eliminate the blockade he has set before himself, then we can move to our testimony. Once his most immediate needs have been met he will be ready listen to you. Don’t be afraid. You have the answer. The unbeliever does not.