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The First Census of Israel

The Lord spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt. He said, “Take a census of the entire community of the people of Israel, according to their clans and their fathers’ houses.[a] Count the names of every male, one by one,

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Footnotes

  1. Numbers 1:2 Because Israel’s social structure was based on kinship, the fathers’ house (or sometimes the father’s house) was one of the basic social units of Israel. The fathers’ house seems to have been smaller than the tribe and clan but larger than the immediate family. However, the use of the term fathers’ house does not seem to be consistent. Every level of Israelite social structure was a fathers’ house, though they were also called by other names.