And the LORD said unto Moses, Number all the firstborn of the males of the children of Israel from a month old and upward, and take the number of their names.
Number all the firstborn ... The principle on which the enumeration of the Levites had been made was now to be applied to the other tribes. The number of their male children, from a month old and upwards, was to be reckoned, in order that a comparison might be instituted with that of the Levites, for the formal adoption of the latter as substitutes for the firstborn. The Levites, amounting to 22,000, were given in exchange for an equal number of the firstborn from the other tribes, leaving an excess of 273; and as there were no substitutes for these, they were redeemed at the rate of five shekels for each (Numbers 18:15-16). Every Israelite would naturally wish that his son might be redeemed by a Levite without the payment of this tax, and yet some would have to incur the expense, because there were not Levites enough to make an equal exchange.
Jewish writers say the matter was determined by lot, is this manner: Moses put into an urn 22,600 pieces of parchment, on each of which he wrote 'a son of Levi,' and 273 more, containing the words, 'five shekels.' These being shaken, he ordered each of the firstborn to put in his hand and take out a slip. If it contained the first inscription, the boy was redeemed by a Levite; if the latter, the parent had to pay. The ransom money, which, reckoning the shekel at half crown, would amount to 12s. 6d. each, was appropriated to the use of the sanctuary.
The excess of the general over the Levitical firstborn is so small, as to form a copious subject of sneering ridicule to Dr. Colenso, who treats it thus: He places 22,273 firstborn males on the one hand, and 600,000 fighting men of 20 years old and upward on the other. He then adds what he considers a proportionate number of old men and boys, doubles the number, in order to preserve the just equality between the sexes, makes a fair allowance for a probable number of deaths, and then distributing the whole population into families according to an assumed standard, which he takes as the average, endeavours to prove 'the Bible numbers to be impossible, and the Pentateuch to be no record of real facts; to be not historically true.'
It must be acknowledged that there is a difficulty arising out of the small relative number of the firstborn; but it is not insurmountable. There are various ways of accounting for it-by supposing, first, those firstborn only were counted as were males remaining in their parents' household: second, that many firstborn had been killed by Pharaoh during the continuance of the infanticidal edict; third, that the firstborn in families frequently die, and yet in polygamous families, as among the Israelites, there was only one firstborn recognized; fourth, that those firstborn only were numbered which had been born since the departure from Egypt and the enactment of the law by which God claimed all the firstborn as his special property; or, fifth, that as the special purpose for which this census was taken was to separate the firstborn males for the service of God, none would be reckoned in this number but those who were of the pure stock, the direct lineage of Israel, the real descendants of Jacob; servants and retainers of every grade, though numbered among the fighting men, being perhaps strictly excluded from admission to this sacred office. Any of these hypotheses, particularly the last, suggest a very rational and simple way of meeting this difficulty, which originates, it will be observed, not from absurdity manifest on the face, or inconsistencies interwoven in the web, of the narrative (a groundless charge), but from the want of some connecting links or accompanying circumstances to give a character of completeness to the record.
In this succinct narrative Moses states facts just as they occurred, and as the Holy Spirit prompted him to register them, without explaining minutiae, or being solicitous to remove apparent discrepancies. It is only our ignorance of little attendant circumstances that occasions any difficulty, and surely it is much more sensible to admit a reasonable and probable hypothesis for supplying these, as is done in all historical and judicial inquiries, than to reject as unreliable a narrative which bears so strongly stamped upon it the impress of inspired truth ('Vindiciae Mosaicae,' by C. Pritchard, late Fellow of John's College, Cambridge, dud Secretary of the Astronomical Society).
Verse 41. The cattle of the Levites. These, which they kept to graze on the glebes and meadows in the suburbs of their cities, and supply their families with dairy produce and animal food, were also taken as an equivalent for all the firstlings of the cattle which the Israelites at that time possessed. In consequence of this exchange the firstlings were not brought then, as afterward, to the altar and the priests.