Saturday - Numbers 26 - A New Census

It had been almost 4 decades since the last census (Numbers 1:2). Then, after all of the men who were counted in the earlier census had passed off of the scene (Numbers 26:64 & 65), God called for a new enumeration of the warriors in Israel (all of them age 20 to 40). So, Moses and his nephew Eleazar (high priest and father of the then famous Phinehas) ordered a new census. By that point the 12 tribes had evidently subdivided into distinct family groups within the larger tribal sections. 

So, as the nation camped on the eastern shore of the Jordan across from Jericho, it became apparent that they had roughly the same number of warriors that had been in Israel the last time conquest had been an option.