(43) Twenty and two thousand two hundred and threescore and thirteen. —The extremely small number of the firstborn in proportion to a male population of 600,000 of twenty years of age and upwards—i.e., to a population of about 1,000,000 males—has been a fruitful source of difficu...
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(43) Twenty and two thousand two hundred and threescore and thirteen. —The extremely small number of the firstborn in proportion to a male population of 600,000 of twenty years of age and upwards—i.e., to a population of about 1,000,000 males—has been a fruitful source of difficulty, and, in some cases, a ground for the rejection of the historical truth of the narrative, which involves, it has been alleged, the incredible conclusion that there was only one firstborn to forty-four males. It might suffice, in answer to those who urge this difficulty as a ground for rejecting the truth of the narrative, to reply that it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive that a writer who has recorded, or, according to the theory in question, invented so many complicated calculations, should have inserted amongst them one which is fraught with so much apparent improbability. Many solutions of the problem have been proposed which relieve the apparent disproportion of the number of the firstborn not only of its alleged impossibility, but even of improbability. Some have urged that we are constrained by every principle of analogy to restrict the firstborn sons to those who were under twenty years of age, and who had not been included in the census which had been already taken. The destruction of the firstborn of the Egyptians was clearly subject to a somewhat similar limitation.