According to Exodus 12:37 (NIV) the number of people leaving Egypt at the time of the exodus was ‘about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.’

Now, I have no interest in domesticating the Biblical text in order to make it easier to believe.  However, this number (which would suggest a total of around 2 million people seems improbably high, and is worth investigating in order to see if that is what the text actually means.

Many scholars recognise that this is an unrealistic number, inconsistent with the size of Egyptian cities at that time (about 5,000 inhabitants).  The IVP Bible Background Commentary comments on the implausibility of such a situation: if those leaving Egypt totalled around 2 million, then ‘as it traveled, the line of people would stretch for over two hundred miles. Even without animals, children and the elderly, travelers would not expect to make twenty miles a day (though caravans could make twenty to twenty-three). When families and animals move camp, the average would be only six miles per day. Whatever the case, the back of the line would be at least a couple of weeks behind the front of the line. This would create some difficulties in the crossing of the sea which seems to have been accomplished overnight, though certainly some have calculated how it could be done.’ (My emphasis)

According to Enns (The Evolution of Adam), ‘there is no positive, direct evidence for Israelite presence in Egypt or a massive departure of 600,000 men (see Exod. 12:37–38 and Num. 1:46). If one includes women and children, plus others (see Exod. 12:38), I estimate that number to be around 2,000,000. It stretches the imagination to think that a group that large, which then spent forty years wandering around the wilderness, would leave Egypt without a trace in either Egyptian literature or the archaeological record.’  In his earlier commentary on Exodus, Enns expresses agnosticism on the issue.

Various explanations have been suggested:-

A literal number?  Older commentators tend to be content with the number as it stands.  Barnes, who agrees that the total number of persons leaving Egypt would be over 2 million, thinks that ‘this is not an excessive population for Goshen, nor does it exceed a reasonable estimate of the increase of the Israelites, including their numerous dependants.’  More recently, the Apologetics Study Bible defends a literal reading of the text, noting that Ex 1:7 states that the Israelites reproduced rapidly.  The same source suggests that if (as seems likely) the Israelites spent 215 years in Egypt, then this was sufficient time for Jacob’s 12 sons to produced the necessary number of offspring.

Geisler (When Critics Ask) defends a literal interpretation by saying that it is not necessary to conclude from the biblical data that the crossing took place in the space of 24 hours, and by suggesting that God prepared a pathway ‘several miles wide’ for the Israelites to use.

A symbolic number?  According to this view, the number of 600,000 has been chosen for some (unspecified) symbolic meaning.  Or, perhaps it was used simply as a concrete way of saying ‘many’.  Both of these suggestions are unlikely, however, because the number is given more precisely as 603,550 in Ex 38:26 (cf. Num 1:46).

A number imported into the text from a later period?  Enns cites the work of Sarna, who thinks that the number is accurate, but that it represents the population of Israel at the time of the united monarchy.  According to Durham, Hyatt proposed a similar theory.

A number arrived at by Gematria?  According to Durham, ‘Beer…proposed that the number “about six hundred thousand” was arrived at by Gematria, the equivalence of the letters of the phrase בני ישׂראל “sons of Israel” with their numerical equivalents. Such an equation yields the number 603,551, remarkably close to the 603,550 of Num 1:46, and even the 601,730 of Num 26:51 and the “about” 600,000 here.’  This suggestion, while ingenious, lacks hard evidence.

A number arrived at by mistranslation?  Petrie, Mendenhall, Ellison, Humphreys, Stuart and others suggest that the underlying word (‘eleph‘) has undergone development over the centuries, from ‘tent group’ through ‘tribal division’ to ‘thousand’.  At the battle of Ai, recorded in Joshua 7, the killing of 36 soldiers is regarded as a severe military setback.  But it would hardly be a severe setback if the army were actually 600,000 strong.  In Num. 1:16 and Judg. 6:15 the same word refers to a ‘group’ or ‘clan’.  (Bruckner, responding to this theory, points out that Ex 38:26 makes it clear that individual men were counted, but we do not find this objection conclusive).

Stuart offers a full discussion of the issue, arriving (by a slightly different route) to the same conclusion as that just noted.  This scholar notes the wide variety of meanings of eleph within the pages of Scripture.  If we are to take the NRSV as a guide, then the word can mean:

‘Thousand’ – Exod 18:21; Num 10:36; 31:4; 31:5; Josh 7:3; 1 Sam 23:23.
‘Cattle’ – Deut 7:13; 28:4,18, 51.
‘Clan(s)’ – Josh 22:14; Judg 6:15; 1 Sam 10:19; Isa 60:22; Mic 5:2.
‘Division(s)’ – Num 1:16.
‘Family(ies)’ – Josh 22:21,30.
‘Ox(en)’ – Isa 30:24; Psa 8:7.
‘Tribe(s)’ – Num 10:4.

But the word eleph also occurs in accounts of the way in which the Israelite army was organised in units of size, using words that had often been borrowed from other meanings.  So Deut 1:15 – ‘So I took the leading men of your tribes, wise and respected men, and appointed them to have authority over you—as commanders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials.’

Stuart thinks that the reference is to foot soldiers, who were organised in family groups, or platoons (elephs) of around 12 each, totalling about 7,000 fighting men, and a population (of men, women and children) of about 30,000.

Stuart concludes:

‘Twenty or thirty thousand people is a number that easily can fit into many modern sorts of venues, from small sports stadiums to beaches to public gatherings and rallies, a fact that may help modern readers of the book visualize the entire Israelite contingent, who were often in one place at one time. It is a number that fits the facts of the book of Exodus well. Such a number of Israelites is large enough to require the miraculous provisions of food and water that the book describes; it is small enough for the whole nation to gather encamped around the tabernacle at the various places listed on the Israelite wilderness itinerary. For most occasions of listening to speeches, the men only would have gathered, several thousand or so in number, not too many to hear a speech shouted at them, especially if its words were relayed. Yet several thousand troops were formidable as a fighting force when directed at one place at a time.’