The tribe of Levi, led by Moses and Aaron, had the
responsibility to keep all of the instruments of the Tabernacle. And, just like all of the other tribes, they
had a prince to lead them; Aaron was their leader.
Now, when God had Moses count the armies of all of the other
tribes of Israel, they were numbered from the age of 20, and up. But when God
had the Levites counted, He included all of the males from one month old and
up. Of course, they weren't warriors ...
they were worship leaders.
Now, the tribe of Levi was significantly smaller than all of
the other tribes. And, Levi was segmented into 3 groups according to the names
of Levi's 3 sons (Genesis 46:11); Gershon, Kohath and Merari. And, the Levites camped (by families)
immediately around the Tabernacle. The
whole tribe of Levi was only 22,000, or 22,300 if you add the families as they
were listed previously (Numbers 3:39).
Matthew Henry attributes the discrepancy of 300 to the fact that some of
the Levites were firstborn themselves, and so, though they were counted in
their families they were not counted in the total comparison of Levites to
firstborn Israelites since they certainly could not be counted twice (for
themselves and for others). This fits well because the very theme of this
section relates to that fact. God did
indeed claim the tribe of Levi for Himself in place of all of the
firstborn males in the whole nation...
which, at that time amounted to 22,273 (Numbers 3:43). In fact, since there
were 273 more firstborn sons in Israel than there were Levites to substitute
for them, God required a payment from the 22,273 eldest Israelites to make up
the difference.
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