Week 6 Numbers 1
Moses takes a census of Israel in chapter one. It’s a head count of all the military-aged men in each tribe. Twelve tribes. He introduces each of the twelve like this: of the sons of ________ their genealogical registration by their families, by their fathers’ households, according to the number of names, every male from twenty years old and upward, whoever was able to go out to war.
I checked another bible version. Its introduction said: this is the number of men twenty years old or older who were able to go to war, each listed according to his own clan and family. The really big difference is that this version only says this sentence once…not twelve times. (It also formatted the data in a list:
Reuben…………………….46,500
Simeon…………………….59,300
Gad…………………………..45,650…like that.)
Which means the second version is a lot quicker to read (~27 words vs. ~444 words). The editors admit in a footnote that the phrase this is the number of men twenty years old or older who were able to go to war, each listed according to his own clan and family is actually repeated twelve times in the original Hebrew bible. But not in theirs.
I looked at the front & back of the bible for an explanation to see why they deleted the sentence eleven times but couldn’t find one. Maybe their rule is: once is enough.
Note: quotes from Numbers 1:20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 (Reuben and Simeon add the phrase ‘head by head’) (NASB) & Numbers 1:20-21 (NLT)