Take ye the sum of all the congregation. The census here ordered had clearly been anticipated, as far as the numbers were concerned, by the results of the half-shekel poll-tax for the service of the sanctuary levied some time before on all adult males on pain of Divine displeasure (Exodus 30:11, sq.
). Since all who were liable had paid that tax (Exodus 38:25, Exodus 38:26), it would only have been requisite to make slight; corrections for death or coming of age during the interval. The totals, however, in the two eases being exactly the same, it is evident that no such corrections were made, and that the round numbers already obtained were accepted as sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes.
After their families. This was to be a registration as well as a census. No doubt the lists and pedigrees collected at this time laid the foundation of that exact and careful genealogical lore which played so important a part both in the religious and in the secular history of the Jews down to the final dispersion.
Every Jew had not only his national, but also (and often even more) his tribal and family, associations, traditions, and sympathies. Unity, but not uniformity,—unity in all deepest interests and highest purposes, combined with great variety of character, of tradition, and even of tendency,—was the ideal of the life of Israel.
The number of their names. It is impossible to help thinking of the parallel expression in Acts 1:15, of the similarity in position of the two peoples, of the contrast between their numbers and apparent chances of success, of the more striking contrast between their actual achievements.