And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to
Succoth,
&c.] Rameses was a place in Goshen, or rather the land of
Goshen, from whence the country was so called; (See Gill on
Genesis
47:11). The Targum of Jonathan takes it to be Pelusium,
or Sin, now called Tinah, formerly the strength of Egypt, and
which lay at the entrance of it, and says it was one hundred and
thirty miles to Succoth; and Jarchi says one hundred and twenty.
But the distance between these two places was not so great; for
Succoth from Rameses it is computed was eight miles F6 only.
The latter place is so called by anticipation; for it was now a
desert, as Josephus F7 says, which he calls Latopolis, but
had its name Succoth from the children of Israel pitching their
tents there; for the word signifies tents or tabernacles. The
number of the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt
were about six hundred thousand on foot, that were men,
besides
children;
and which is confirmed by the account that Chaeremon F8 the
Heathen gives, who makes the number of those drove out of Egypt,
as he calls them, 250,000; and says that when they came to
Pelusium, they found there 380,000 left there by Amenophis; which
makes in all 630,000. And so Philo the Jew says F9, they
were above 600,000, besides old men, children, and women, that
could not easily be numbered; and the word "about" will admit of
it, since it may be used not to diminish, but to increase the
number; and it is certain that in the second year after they were
come out of Egypt, their number was 600,550 without the Levites,
who were not numbered; and they that were numbered were such as
were twenty years old and upward, and able to go forth to war, (
Numbers 1:9 )
( 2:32 )
and such were those here, as Jarchi observes; so that if there
were 600,000 men of twenty years old and upwards, able to bear
arms, besides women, children, and old men, it may well be
thought that in all there were no less than near two millions and
a half; for, according to the ordinary proportion allowed in
other nations of four to one between the number of the whole
people in a nation, and those men fit to bear arms, that the
number of the Israelites alone, of all ages and sexes which went
out of Egypt along with Moses, will amount to 2,400,000 souls
F10; which was a prodigious increase of
seventy persons in little more than two hundred years, and a most
marvellous thing it was, that in so large a number of persons
there was not one feeble among them, ( Psalms
105:37 ) .
F6 See Bunting's Travels, p. 81.
F7 Ut supra, (antiqu. l. 2.) c. 15. sect. 1.
F8 Apud Joseph. contr. Apion, l. 1. sect. 32.
F9 De Vita Mosis, l. 1. p. 625.
F10 Bp. of Clogher's Chronology of the Hebrew Bible, p. 271. See Judah Leon's Relation of Memorable Things p. 2.