Now we start the book of Numbers which covers nearly 40 years of Israelite history, as opposed to the previous book of Leviticus which covered just one month. And chapter 1 starts on the first day of the second month of the second year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, when God told Moses to conduct a census counting all the men 20 years old or over who were apt to serve in the army.
Moses and Aaron conducted the census with the help of 12 tribal leaders and came up with the following results for each respective tribe: The tribe of Reuben (46,500), the tribe of Simeon (59,300), the tribe of Gad (45,650), the tribe of Judah (74,600), the tribe of Issachar (54,400), the tribe of Zebulun (57,400), the tribe of Joseph (40,500), the tribe of Manasseh (32,200), the tribe of Benjamin (35,400), the tribe of Dan (62,700), the tribe of Asher (41,500) and the tribe of Naphtali (53,400). This made a total of 603,550 fighting men and does not include women, girls, boys under 20, old people and sick people.
People from the tribe of Levi were not counted in the census as they had an exclusive job to take care of and transport the Tabernacle and nobody else was allowed to get near it under the penalty of death. The Levites had to camp around the Tabernacle to protect it.
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