Numbers 1:21 - Exposition

Forty and six thousand and five hundred. All the numbers (save of Gad only) are in unbroken hundreds. It might have been so arranged by miracle; but such an overruling would have no assignable object, and therefore it is far better to fall back on the obvious and natural explanation that the totals were approximate. If they were simply the poll-tax figures unaltered, it would be natural to suppose that the offerings were made up in fifty-shekel lots, and the offerers divided as nearly as possible into hundreds. For military purposes a certain number of supernumeraries would be convenient. In the one excepted case of Gad a half-hundred appears for some unexplained cause,