The Exodus: A Multitude of Issues —

While God’s Word has always been mocked and ridiculed, it seems that in these “last days” there has been a renewed effort to discredit the Bible (see 2 Peter 3). Skeptics scoff at the “stories” recorded in the Bible passing them off as myth, legend, and even total fiction. But is their unbelief justified? Or are they willfully denying and suppressing what they know deep in their hearts to be true (Romans 1:18-32)? Whatever the reason, skeptics challenge the Bible at every turn. The Exodus is no exception. Especially criticized is the main event of the Exodus: Israel’s miraculous escape from Egypt by way of the Red Sea. Thus, in what follows I will be dealing with three important questions surrounding this Biblical episode so that we may see if the critic’s unbelief is justified.

1. Could millions of Israelites really have made the Exodus from Egypt to Canaan?

One of the primary issues people have with the Exodus story is the sheer number of people involved. According to Exodus 12:37 there were “about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children.” But if we include children and women and the infirm then this number would be more like two to three million people. A very large company indeed! While it is true that the Bible makes a point of how fertile the Israelites were in Egypt (Exodus 1:7-9), to have a population explosion from just twelve patriarchs (Exodus 1:1-4) to two to three million in only a few hundred years seems hard to believe. Such a great multitude in the wilderness could also pose certain logistical challenges. For example, would getting millions of people across a narrow channel through the sea even be possible? And what about the food and water requirements? Another issue with such a large population is that the Merneptah Stele dated to the thirteenth-century BC mentions Israel and it seems to suggest that they were small compared to some of the other nations. But if Israel numbered between 2-3 million then they would have been the most populous nation on earth![1]

To overcome these apparent issues some Bible scholars contend that the number 600,000 is actually a mistranslation of the Hebrew text. As one of these scholars explains: “The key Hebrew word here is ‘eleph, which in the standard translations is interpreted as “thousand.” To be exact, there were 600 ‘eleph fighting men.”[2] Okay, so if it doesn’t mean “thousand” here then what does it mean? “One possibility is that ‘eleph should be translated as “family” or “clan.” This is exactly how the same term is used in Judges 6:15, where Gideon says, ‘My clan [‘eleph] is the weakest…’ (see also Joshua 22:14; 1 Samuel 10:19; Isaiah 60:62; Micah 5:2). In this case, Exodus 12:37 actually reports that six hundred families’ worth of fighting men were leaving Egypt. A variation is to suppose that ‘eleph means something like “platoon” or “squadron,” more or less as we have it in Numbers 1:16, “These are the ones selected from the congregation, the leaders of the ancestral tribes, the heads of the squadrons [‘eleph] of Israel.” If each squadron [‘eleph] represented a corresponding clan, and if each squadron was only constituted by ten or so fighting-age men drawn from each clan, then this is quite a game-changer as far as the numbers are concerned.”[3] In fact, this would bring it from 2-3 million down to only about 30,000 at the most.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that reinterpreting Exodus 12:37 in this way is unnecessary and, in the end, creates more problems than it solves. That’s because several Biblical passages seem to confirm this larger population. One of these is Exodus 38:25-26 where God collects half a shekel from every man twenty years old and up. Based on the sum of money collected, there were 603,550 men. Which, again, brings the total population back up to 2-3 million.

But scholars who defend the traditional translation of 600,000 men see no problem with such large numbers. They note that although a population growth from 12 patriarchs to 2-3 million people in only a few hundred years seems impossible, scientific studies in human population growth have demonstrated that it is very possible—especially if the males had more than one wife.[4],[5] They also point out that there are modern examples of massive groups of people fitting into small spaces, so millions of Israelites passing over a dry path through the sea isn’t a problem (especially when God is your rearguard!). Food and water are also not an issue when you consider that God was their sustainer. In fact, He provided them water, quails, and even bread from heaven! Also, based upon the writings of Herodotus, Theocritus, Josephus and others, some have challenged the idea that ancient populations were small and therefore that Israel must also be small.[6]

Unfortunately, there is no consensus among scholars on this issue, and there is a lot more to this discussion,[7] but the good news is that the problem isn’t with the Bible, only our understanding of it. As one author puts it, “the number of elephs recorded in the Bible that departed from Egypt is without error and infallible. The issue is not [with] the Bible…The issue is determining what the original Hebrew text means and translating those figures into English in a way that most accurately reflects the original meaning.”[8]