Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1043

 altogether of the question whether there had been daughters born before, - would no doubt be equally applicable to the sanctification of the first-born sons. Or are we really to believe, that inasmuch as the child first born is quite as often a girl as a boy, God exempted every father in Israel whose eldest child was a daughter from the obligation to manifest his own sonship by consecrating his first-born son to God, and so demanded the performance of this duty from half the nation only? We cannot for a moment believe that such an interpretation of the law as this would really be in accordance with the spirit of the Old Testament economy. Chap. 1=

Verse 1
Num 1:1 Muster of the Twelve Tribes, with the Exception of that of Levi. - Num 1:1-3. Before the departure of Israel from Sinai, God commanded Moses, on the first of the second month in the second year after the Exodus from Egypt, to take the number of the whole congregation of the children of Israel, “according to their families, according to their fathers' houses (see Exo 6:14), in (according to) the number of their names,” i.e., each one counted singly and entered, but only “every male according to their heads of twenty years old and upwards” (see Exo 30:14), viz., only צבא כּל־יצא “all who go forth of the army,” i.e., all the men capable of bearing arms, because by means of this numbering the tribes and their subdivisions were to be organized as hosts of Jehovah, that the whole congregation might fight as an army for the cause of their Lord (see at Exo 7:4).

verses 4-16
Moses and Aaron, who were commanded to number, or rather to muster, the people, were to have with them “a man of every tribe, who was head-man of his fathers' houses,” i.e., a tribe-prince, viz., to help them to carry out the mustering. Beth aboth (“fathers' houses”), in Num 1:2, is a technical expression for the subdivisions in which the mishpachoth, or families of the tribes, were arranged, and is applied in Num 1:4 according to its original usage, based upon the natural division of the tribes into mishpachoth and families, to the fathers' houses which every tribe possessed in the family of its first-born. In Num 1:5-15, these heads of tribes were mentioned by name, as in Num 2:3., Num 7:12., Num 10:14. In Num 1:16 they are designated as “called men of the congregation,” because they were called to diets of the congregation, as representatives of the tribes, to regulate the affairs of the nation; also “princes of the tribes of their fathers,” and “heads of the thousands of Israel:” “prince,” from the nobility of their birth; and