[Footnote 119: An actual muster, not including the tribes of
Levi and Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or
1,574,000 fighting men; which, with the addition of women,
children, and slaves, may imply a population of thirteen
millions, in a country sixty leagues in length, and thirty
broad. The honest and rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d
Samuel xxiv. and 1st Chronicles, xxi.) aestuat angusto in
limite, and mutters his suspicion of a false transcript; a
dangerous suspicion!
Note: David determined to take a census of his vast
dominions, which extended from Lebanon to the frontiers of
Egypt, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. The numbers
(in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi. 5) differ; but the
lowest gives 800,000 men fit to bear arms in Israel, 500,000
in Judah. Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 248. Gibbon has taken
the highest census in his estimate of the population, and
confined the dominions of David to Jordandic Palestine. -
M.]