So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel;
Six hundred thousand ... What an astonishing increase! And yet this enumeration was restricted to men from 20 years old and upward. Including women, children, and old men, together with the Levites, the whole population of Israel, on the ordinary principles of computation, amounted to about 2,400,000. According to a calculation made on the basis of this census, which gave this extraordinary result of 603,550 men capable of bearing arms, each married man among the Israelites must have had a family of forty-two children. But if the Israelites had confined themselves each to single wife, such a high figure is inexplicable. It became possible only by admitting that among the Hebrews polygamy was tolerated and extensively practiced (Michaelis, 'Comment.,' part 2:, sec. 94). This opinion of Michaelis has been objected to, as founded on too high an average; and a better solution of the difficulty is by assuming that during the four generations in Egypt there would be many descents of children, as Joshua was the seventh. Proceeding on this hypothesis, Birks and Benisch calculate, that to make the recorded number of the Israelites at the exodus would require only that each family should, on an average, consist of eight children-boys and girls.