© Charles Chandler

 

Deuteronomy 1

 

15 So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officers, throughout your tribes.

This implies that the total number of people in Ramose's camp was less than ten thousand, or Ramose would have designated commanders for group of ten thousands, as he did for smaller denominations. Of the total amount, we don't know how many were Egyptians, versus indigenous tribes that fell in with Ramose, but due to the absence of Egyptian influence on Hebrew construction, pottery, tools, and language, the Egyptian component was probably just a few thousand at most.

 

Similarly, the following passage refers to "thousands of those who love me," not the hundreds of thousands counted elsewhere.^1,2

Deuteronomy 5

 

8 "'You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Here it says that only 70 people went down to Egypt.^3,4,5,6 Perhaps that was the troop of Levites who went with Ramose to negotiate the 1312-Exodus. Then again, it's at least possible that only 70 people left Egypt, and that the entourage swelled with Bedouins who fell in with the exiles along the way, though that would make it difficult to explain some of the battles that were fought close to Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10

 

22 Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

And here we get an idea of the size of the tribes in Canaan (tens of thousands around Jerusalem, and thousands between there and Galilee)...

Deuteronomy 33

 

17 they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.

This is consistent with there being less than 50,000 in all of Canaan at the time.