Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, throughout their fathers' house, all that are able to go to war in Israel.
Take the sum of all the congregation. The design of this new census, after a lapse of 38 years, was primarily to establish the fact of the vast multiplication of the posterity of Abraham, in spite of the severe judgments inflicted upon them, and the woeful diminution of several of the tribes. Secondarily, it was to preserve the distinction of families, and to make arrangements, preparatory to an entrance into the promised land, for the distribution of the country according to the relative population of the tribes.