What Does Numbers 3:39 Mean?

(39) **And Aaron . . . —**In the Hebrew text the word Aaron has certain marks over it, known as *puncta extraordinaria, *denoting that it is to be regarded as spurious or doubtful. It is omitted in the Samaritan and Syriac versions and in a few MSS. There appears. however, to be no sufficient reason for its rejection from the text. **Twenty and two thousand.**—The total of the three several items—viz., 7,500, 8,600, and 6,200—amounts to 22,300. It appears, however, from Numbers 3:46 that the total is correctly given as 22,000, inasmuch as the number of the firstborn, 22,273, exceeded that of the Levites by 273. It has been suggested that in Numbers 3:28 we should read שלש (*shalosh*)*, *three, for שׁש (*shesh*)*, *six—*i.e., *8,300 instead of 8,600; or, if the numbers were denoted, as it has been commonly supposed, by the letters of the alphabet, it is quite possible that one letter may have been substituted by the scribe for another. Some suppose that the three hundred were themselves firstborn sons, who had been born since the command to sanctify the firstborn, and that it is on this account that they were not included in the census. (See Bishop Wordsworth’s Notes *in loc., *where the reasons which may be assigned for the extreme paucity of this tribe, as compared with the other tribes, are discussed.) The later census, which also included the children from a month old and upwards, shows but a very small increase in the number of this tribe, the number on that occasion amounting only to 23,000 (Numbers 26:62).