Bible Chapter Summary
Numbers 26 Summary
Second Census of Israel's Tribes
After the plague, the LORD commands Moses and Eleazar to take a new census of all Israelite men twenty years old and upward who are able to go to war, conducted in the plains of Moab by the Jordan near Jericho. The chapter records the tribal families and their totals, yielding a grand total of 601,730 men, with the Levites counted separately at 23,000 males from a month old and upward since they received no land inheritance. The LORD instructs that Canaan is to be divided among the tribes proportionally by their numbered size, with the specific allotments determined by lot. The chapter closes by noting that not one man counted in this census had been among those numbered at Sinai, fulfilling the LORD's word that the wilderness generation would die out, with only Caleb and Joshua remaining as exceptions.
Key themes
Key verses
Numbers 26:2
“Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, throughout their fathers' house, all that are able to go to war in Israel.”
Numbers 26:51
“These were the numbered of the children of Israel, six hundred thousand and a thousand seven hundred and thirty.”
Numbers 26:55
“Notwithstanding the land shall be divided by lot: according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit.”
Numbers 26:65
“For the LORD had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.”
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