Numbers 1:47

47 But the Levites were not numbered by their ancestral tribe along with them.

Numbers 1:47 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 1:47

But the Levites
The tribe of Levi were excepted from this muster, they being employed in a kind of warfare, and therefore not to be engaged in another:

after the tribe of their fathers, were not numbered among them:
the rest of the tribes; the reason follows.

Numbers 1:47 In-Context

45 So the whole number of the people of Israel, by their fathers' houses, from twenty years old and upward, every man able to go forth to war in Israel--

46 their whole number was six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty.

47 But the Levites were not numbered by their ancestral tribe along with them.

48 For the LORD said to Moses,

49 "Only the tribe of Levi you shall not number, and you shall not take a census of them among the people of Israel;