Note 302 — Chapter VII

2 Sam. xxiv. 9. The number of the levy here, as in almost all accounts of the assembling of the people, must be grossly exaggerated: 800,000 are given in Israel, 500,000 in Judah only. Chronicles raises the first number to 1,100,000, and reduces the second to 30,000, 1 xxii. 5. The statement given in Chronicles about the division of the levy into 12 troops, and the strength of these troops (1 xxviii. 1-15), contradicts these numbers. As this arrangement of the army is mentioned in Chronicles only, which books show a great tendency to systematise, the division into 12 remains uncertain. That there was a numbering of the people is not to be doubted. It is counted as one of David's errors, and Jehovah strikes the people with pestilence. This narrative is connected with the command to redeem the firstborn, the boys (vol. i. 499), the ordinance given in Exod. xxx. 12, which is connected with the same conception: "When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul to Jehovah that there be no plague among them."