Numbers 26:37, commentary and pictures

Numbers 26:37 belongs to Israel's second numbering in Numbers 26, taken at the end of the forty years in the wilderness, forty years after the first census recorded in Numbers 1. It was made after the generation numbered at the opening of the book had died, nearly forty years after leaving Egypt just before entering Canaan, in the plains of Moab thirty-eight years after the census at Sinai. It records the numbered families of Ephraim, one of Joseph's sons and part of Joseph's family, as totaling 32,500 adult males. Compared with the first numbering in Numbers 1, it shows how the tribes' numbers changed during the forty years in the wilderness, with some tribes increasing greatly and others decreasing, gaining or losing members, and the difference in the tribes is to be noted.

Ephraim decreased by 8,000 from its first-census total of 40,500, while the whole nation's adult males changed little, from 603,550 to 601,730. The second numbering proves beyond dispute that God fulfills His threatened judgments, since not one man counted the first time except Caleb and Joshua lived to witness the second counting, and every other person had fallen in the wilderness with no rebel remaining alive. That terrible failure happened because the people were wicked, with sin in their midst breaking out in open, wanton rebellion against God, so that by solemn oath He excluded them from the land and doomed them to die in the wilderness.

The history gives instruction and warning to the people upon whom the ends of the world are come, whose hopes of entering the kingdom of God cannot be stronger and whose tokens of favor, presence, and willingness to save cannot be greater than Israel's at the first numbering, yet Israel came short of the land of promise, teaching that sin cannot be carried in the heart without bringing inevitable ruin.