Numbers 3:39

39. Twenty and two thousand Here is bad arithmetic. The sum is three hundred less than the items call for, yet is correct, for it tallies with the total of the firstborn after subtracting the excess, two hundred and seventy-three, (Numbers 3:46,) who were to be redeemed by money. The rabbies explain the discrepancy by saying that there were three hundred firstborn among the Levites, and that they could not be offset for the same number of firstborn of the other tribes, and so were left out of the total. We adopt this explanation in preference to that of a clerical error of six hundred for three hundred by dropping the letter lamedth in the Hebrew word for three. Michaelis objects to this solution by the rabbies as inadmissible, because “the rule would apply to the particular amounts, as well as to the sum total.” This does not necessarily follow. Baumgarten makes a valuable suggestion when he says that “the silent omission of three hundred firstborn was intended, in this particular instance, to conceal the fact that there were limits to the assumed holiness of Levi, which were manifested in the inability to redeem Israel, in order that the relation between Levi and Israel might not be disturbed.” It speaks well for the scrupulous fidelity of the Jews in guarding their manuscripts that there has been no attempt to interpolate an explanation of this difficulty, or to alter the items to make them conform to the footing. Thus we have a high probability, amounting to a moral certainty, that the Jews, as “librarians for the Christians,” have faithfully transmitted to our hands the uncorrupted word of God.