Numbers 3:22
month old <02320 01121> [from a month old.]
The males of all the other tribes were numbered from twenty years old and upwards; but, had the Levites been numbered in this way, they would not have been nearly equal in number to the first-born of the twelve tribes. Add to this, that as there must have been first-born of all ages in the other tribes, it was necessary that the Levites, who were to be their substitutes, should also be of all ages; and it appears to have been partly on this ground, that the Levites were numbered from a month old and upwards.
Numbers 3:28
8,600 <0505 08083> [eight thousand.]
responsible <08104> [keeping.]
Numbers 3:34
Numbers 3:39-40
Aaron <0175> [and Aaron.]
The word [w'hrn,] {we„haron,} and "Aaron," has a point over each of its letters, probably designed as a mark of spuriousness. The word is wanting in the Samaritan, Syriac, and Coptic, and also in eight of Dr. Kennicott's and in four of De Rossi's MSS. Moses alone, as Houbigant observes, was commanded to number the Levites, (ver. 5, 11, 40, 44, 51:) for as the money with which the first-born were redeemed was to be paid to Aaron and his sons, (ver. 48,) it was decent that he, whose advantage it was that the number of the first-born should exceed, should not be authorized to take that number himself. twenty and two thousand. This total does not agree with the particulars; for the Gershonites were 7,500, the Kohathites 8,600, and the Merarites 6,200, which make a total of 22,300. Several methods of solving this difficulty have been proposed by learned men. Houbigant supposes there is an error in the enumeration of the Kohathites in ver. 28; the numeral {shesh,} "six," being written instead of {shalosh,} "three," before "hundred." Dr. Kennicott's mode of reconciling the discrepancy, however, is the most simple. He supposes that an error has crept into the number of the Gershonites in ver. 22, where instead of 7,500 we should read 7,200, as [k,] {caph} final, which stands for 500, might have been easily mistaken for [r,] resh, 200. (Dr. Kennicott on the Hebrew Text, vol. II. p. 212.) Either of these modes will equally reconcile the difference.
