The Exodus Census: Evading the Evil Eye or Military Stratagem?

Exodus 30:11-16 advises Israel of the danger of counting heads when there is a need to take a census of the population, and offers a solution to avert that danger: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ’When you take a census (ki tissa et rosh) of the Israelite people, according to their enrolment, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for his life (kofer nafsho) on being enrolled, that no plague (negef) may come upon them through their being enrolled. This is what everyone who passes along to be numbered (kol ha’over al ha-p’kudim) shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight…from the age of twenty years up, shall give the Lord’s offering . . . as a ransom for your lives (lekhapper al nafshoteikhem). You shall take the ransom money (kesef ha-kippurim) from the Israelites…as a ransom for your lives (lekhapper al nafshoteikhem).

The Tanakh records many examples of people being counted – and the book of Numbers was named this by the Greek Septuagint translation on account of the censuses referred to in its first four chapters¹ – yet, although attention is drawn to the dangers inherent in such an exercise, significantly, no textual explanation is offered.

A notable example is the story of King David who ordered his military commander, Joab, to count the number of Israelite soldiers available for a military exercise.² But Joab strenuously objects, saying: “May the Lord your God increase the number of the people a hundredfold, while your own eyes see it! But why should my lord king want this?” [“Why should it be a source of guilt for Israel?”: I Chr. 21:3] However, the king’s command to Joab and to the officers of the army remained firm, and Joab and the officers of the army set out, at the instigation of the king, to take a census of the people of Israel (II Samuel ch. 24:3). But afterwards David reproached himself for having numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, “I have sinned grievously in what I have done . . . Please remit the guilt of your servant, for I have acted foolishly” (II Sam. 24:3-10).

Rashi’s explanation of negef as a fearful consequence of conducting a census is that counting people in their numbers serves to activate the ayyin ha-ra, ‘evil eye.’³ This has been described as “an active organ that emits destructive emanations charged by negative dispositions (especially malevolence, envy, miserliness and withheld generosity).”⁴ However, this was a belief that gained currency among Jews much later, and which is referred to frequently in the mishnaic and talmudic literature.⁵

It is difficult, therefore, to substantiate Rashi’s explanation of negef as applicable to the Sinaitic period, though, coincidentally, it approximates closely to a similar Near Eastern superstition that is associated with the military context into which, we shall argue, negef is to be placed: “It is important to note that the Akkadian term for census, tebibtum, is understood to have the meaning of a census along with purification, a parallel with the kofer mandated in Ex. 30:12 to avoid a plague…In the Gilgamesh Epic, Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, is depicted as having a recorder who reads names on a tablet to her (VII 4:49-52). A name recorded on a tablet could be dangerous, particularly in the context of a person being mustered for war (my itals.).”⁶

Now, although our Exodus passage seems to refer to its census as a prerequisite to the appeal for the donation of silver half-shekels, by every Israelite over the age of twenty, for the construction of the Tabernacle (see v. 16), yet it contains several references which point to an objective that goes beyond that of a simple appeal. Indeed, if the silver had been required merely for the work on the Tabernacle, it is far from clear why the appeal was couched in terms of a census rather than as a straightforward call for donations. Furthermore, bearing in mind the earlier appeal for a vast range of materials – gold, silver, copper, dyed skins and other materials, timber, oil, spices, and gems for the High Priest’s Ephod and breastplate (see Ex. 25:1-9) – one may wonder why there was any need for a separate, narrowly focused, appeal for silver shekels so soon afterwards, especially as silver had already been included in the previous appeal! Also problematic is why the details of our appeal were so precise – just one half-shekel piece per person, with donorship restricted to 20-year-olds and upward, and with a vague reference to the necessity of preventing the spread of some serious plague – when compared with the earlier appeal which was entirely optional, and with the size of the donations left to the discretion and goodwill of the donors.⁷

Now, given that censuses in the Bible were generally for military purposes, and that only a short time earlier the Israelites had had to engage the Amalekites in the first of many battles before they succeeded in conquering the land,⁸ we would contend that our Exodus census is to be similarly viewed in a military context rather than as a means of neutralising the evil eye or some similar superstition as popularly understood.⁹ It would also have been inconceivable – and totally at variance with the Torah’s strict Monotheism – for it to have encouraged anything other than prayer, petition, and repentance, as a means of forestalling danger, given that it inveighs so vociferously against such superstitions as ov and yid’oni (‘witchcraft, divination, necromancy’),¹⁰ and its practitioners, notably the chartumim (‘astrologers, magicians’),¹¹ m’khashefot (‘sorcerers’),¹² and Bilaam.¹³

Two further problems are raised by our census: First, as it is not represented as a one-off occurrence, but was being prescribed for whenever the need for such a census arose,¹⁴ the notion of any recurrent sin being perpetrated by the entire nation, and requiring such a high-level expiation, is impossible to envisage. Secondly, if the procedure was indeed for some collective sin, we would hardly have expected the young adults under twenty years of age to have been excluded from the protection afforded by the half-shekel ransom (kofer nafsho).

R. Samuel Edels (1555-1631) does indeed attempt to pursue the ‘recurrent sin’ explanation, suggesting that our three-fold reference to the half-shekel – as a “ransom” (kofer nafsho), as “making atonement for your souls” (lekhaper al nafshoteikhem), and as “atonement money” (kesef ha-kippurim) – implies that it could only have been for the most grievous sin of all, one that would leave its imprint on the nation for generations, namely the worshipping of the Golden Calf.¹⁵

Our objection to Edels’ suggestion is that his pursuit of the applied meaning of the verb lekhapper (al nafshoteikhem) – namely “to atone; serve as a ransom” – led him inexorably to link our episode with that of the Golden Calf but a few chapters later. He did not consider, however, that two identical phrases, nas’u et rosh (Nu. 31:49) and lekhapper al nafshoteinu lifnei Adonai (v. 50) are also found in the military context of the aftermath of the war against the Midianites. There, they refer not to sin, but to spoils of war offered as a thanksgiving for the fact that no casualties were suffered by the Israelites. In this context, the verb kapper is clearly being employed in its basic sense of ‘to cover,’ ‘protect’ (see Gen. 32:21), from which comes the noun kapporet, ‘the Ark cover’ (Ex. 25:17ff). And hence our interpretation of Ex. 30:11-16 as offering an effective stratagem both for keeping up-to-date on the number of soldiers who could be made available at any given time, as well as for retaining the advantage by concealing from the enemy that vital information.

The main difficulty with counting an entire army in the normal way was that this would have necessitated a parade of all its divisions at one time. However, any enemy scout, spying either on high ground or any other vantage-point, would, without difficulty, have been enabled to determine the number of fighting men on parade by merely toting up the number of blocks of soldiers. Hence, some less public method had to be devised to obtain that information.

And this was the point of the instruction to employ the donation of a half-shekel piece per person. As people were habitually bringing voluntary gifts each morning to Moses’ tent for the support of the Sanctuary and the supply of offerings,¹⁶ even in the unlikely situation that the enemy became aware of such a census, they would be unable to determine at a distance how many were attending there to deliver a general gift and how many merely to bring their half-shekel for the military census.

The danger of such information falling into enemy hands is strongly reinforced by the vocabulary employed: (i) kofer nafsho, ‘a protection for one’s life’; (ii) negef: while usually rendered ‘plague,’ negef is also used to denote ‘a fatal blow,’ as in the case of the death of the Egyptian firstborn (Ex. 12:13). It is also used to explain the role of the priesthood in representing the nation within the Sanctuary so that no ‘fatal blow’ befalls the non-consecrated laity if they were ever to attempt to approach that holy place (see Nu. 8:19). Especially significant is the fact that the verbal root, n-g-f, is regularly employed in the sense of ‘being defeated in battle’;¹⁷ (iii) Kol ha’over, lit. ‘all who pass by.’ This verb is also used to describe the act of walking in single file in order to be counted (see Lev. 27:32; Jer. 33:13), and the selection of soldiers for a duel (II Sam. 2:15); (iv) al ha-p’kudim. In addition to being used in the general sense of ‘those appointed to perform a task,’ the verb p-k-d has the military connotation of troops mustered for battle. Thus, ’Joab reported to the king the number of the fighting men that had been recorded (mifkad ha-am: II Sam. 24:9); and lekhapper al nafshoteikhem (as discussed above), ‘as a protection for your lives.’

Given that, according to our interpretation, the objective of our Exodus census instruction was to guarantee the army’s security and strengthen its deterrence capacity – perhaps so that the nation might never again suffer the initial casualties that had been inflicted on it by the Amalekites (see Deut. 25:18) – it would explain why there was no place in this military context for any extra voluntary donations, by way of ‘the rich giving more and the poor giving less than the half-shekel’ (v. 15). We may assume then, that those delivering their half-shekel for the census would have had to specify most clearly its purpose when handing it in, so that it was kept totally separate from any other monies being donated at the same time for general purposes. It also explains why the census was restricted to those of 20 years and above, since that was the age of those eligible for national service. Since the very survival of the nation depended upon its military effectiveness, we may appreciate the emphasis conveyed by the triple reference to lekhapper al nafshoteikhem, ‘for the protection of your lives.’

Toward the end of Exodus, we have a reference to the gifts of silver for the upkeep of the Sanctuary, contributed by the entire nation – a total of 603,550 men, each contributing a half-shekel (see Ex. 38:25-28). The vocabulary of those verses is strikingly similar to that of our passage – including such phrases as lekhol ha-oveir al ha-p’kudim (v. 26 = 30:13, 14); machatzit ha-shekel b’shekel ha-kodesh (loc. cit.); mibben esrim shanah vama’lah (v. 26 = 30:14) – begging the question why the two passages were not juxtaposed, or even merged.

Their separation is logical, however, according to our thesis that, while the later passage deals with a one-off donation – the stated total indicating how absolute was the national response – ours refers to future military censuses (ki tissa, ‘whenever you take a census’), whose totals would inevitably fluctuate. It also explains why, in the later passage, there was no place for any reference to negef – a defeat in battle.