By the second Hebrew census (Numb. xxvi.) taken just before the death of Moses, the army was 601,730; from which the inference has always been drawn, that at least 2,000,000, in the aggregate, Levites 23,000 _males_ still excepted, entered and possessed the conquered territories.
Take now one of the late maps of Palestine and mark upon it the boundaries of the tribes as given in the book of Joshua. This second census gives the number of each _tribal_ army to be inserted in each tribal territory Reuben, 43,750; Judah, 76,500; Benjamin, 45,600, etc., etc. By Josh. xii. the land was then divided between some 40 petty kings and peoples, 31 of whom are named as having been subjected. If, now, Joshua’s army numbered over 600,000, why was not the conquest made complete? Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut are divided into 27 counties. Suppose, now, that these counties were each a separate and independent little kingdom dependent upon itself, for defence, what resistance could be made to an army of 600,000 men, all of them grown up during forty years of life in a camp, and in the full vigour of manhood? And yet Joshua was unable to complete his conquest! Again, the first subjugation of a part of the newly-conquered territory as noted in the book of Judges, was Judah and Simeon by a king of Edom.[232] If Judah could put an army into the field of 76,500, and Simeon 22,500, their subjugation by a king of Edom is incredible, and the story absurd. Next comes King Eglon of Moab and subjugates the tribes of Reuben and Gad, east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. And yet Reuben has an army of over 43,000, and Gad 45,000. And so on.
Accepting the statement that Moses led over 600,000 men “able to go to war” out of Egypt, and Joshua an equal number to the conquest of Canaan, the story of the Exodus, of that conquest and of the subsequent subjugations of various tribes by the neighbouring kings are all nonsense; the books of Joshua and Judges are incredible. The difficulty is fully met and overcome, if we suppose the number to have been exaggerated, as it would be by adding a cypher to the right of a line of Arabic numerals, by which 60,000 is made 600,000; the 76,500 warriors of Judah are reduced to 7,650, and so on.
