Take the sum of the people, from twenty years old and upward; as the LORD commanded Moses and the children of Israel, which went forth out of the land of Egypt.
From twenty years old and upward; as the Lord commanded Moses - (see the note at Numbers 1:1-54.) Considering the time and circumstances in which this census was taken, a high interest and importance attached to it; because, as it was conducted under the direct superintendence of the legislator, the contemporary chronicler of the transaction, his narrative of it must be regarded as a reliable record of the names of those whom, at the commencement of their national existence, the Israelites acknowledged as their ancestors.
The enumeration of names is, with a few exceptions, and relating chiefly to orthography, the same as that of the list contained in Genesis 46:8-27; and, what is remarkable, no additional grandsons are mentioned, although the sons of Jacob, being at the immigration into Egypt men in the early prime and vigour of life, might naturally be supposed to have had other children born to them after their settlement in Goshen. But no statement to this effect is made, except in a solitary instance (Numbers 26:59); and the conclusion to be drawn from the silence is, either that all those grandchildren had no descendants, or else that they were incorporated with one or another of the existing families. Some who are mentioned as grandsons in Genesis 46:1-34, appear in this register as heads of families (Numbers 26:41; Numbers 26:45); and this circumstance corroborates the view formerly given, that the early record contained a catalogue, not of those descendants of Jacob only who were born in Canaan, but of such as, at the period of the removal to Egypt, or while the patriarchs lived, were acknowledged as heads of families in Israel (see the notes at Genesis 46:8; Genesis 46:12; and at 1 Chronicles 23:3-24).
'Not every one of the grandsons of Jacob was privileged to found a new family. This privilege, for reasons unknown to us, seems to have been reserved for those of his progeny born in Canaan, or, more likely, within the lifetime of himself and his sons. The children of those not so privileged had to join one of the established families, in accordance with some regulation not recorded, and therefore only a matter of conjecture; and these children, having been merged in the families which they had to join, the record of their names would have served no purpose, while yet their number contributed to swell the sum total of the parent family, and consequently of the tribe which those families composed' (Benisch). It appears from this catalogue that the heads of the established families in Israel amounted to 59; which, added to the twelve princes of the tribes, formed the great council of seventy-one (see Jahn, 'Archaeology,' 2: 1, p. 59).