Counting: a traditional Jewish perspective

As Australians prepare to be counted in the pending census, we reflect on biblical and halachic considerations in regard to counting persons.
The first biblical reference to a national count is in Shemot (30:12). Moses was told: “When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their counting, then each man will give atonement for his soul when you count them; then there will be no plague as you count them. This each man shall give, half a shekel…”

At this point however no count actually occurred. Although even earlier the Torah enumerated the 70 souls who came down to Egypt (Bereshit 46), Israel’s first real census was that at the beginning of “Bamidbar”, which took place literally “bamidbar – in the desert” in the second year after the Exodus. Because of that census and another that took place before entrance into the land, that fourth book of the Torah is also called “Chumash Hapekudim – the Book of Counting” – which literally translates into its English name “Numbers”.

Interestingly, in light of the prohibition on direct counting implied above, Ramban suggests that the counting in the desert was not done directly but by counting half-shekels donated as per the aforementioned command in Shemot, reread each year prior to Pesach, the festival celebrating our very existence as a nation whose numbers are to be compared to the dust of the earth and the sand of the sea.

Whilst the primary biblical source for halachic derivation is the Chumash which includes that warning that counting persons directly could bring on a plague, the Talmudic sages derived the prohibition of direct counting of individuals from King Saul, who counted the people “b’telaim”. (I Samuel 15:4.) Although that phrase could simply mean “in Telaim”, a particular place, a “t’leh” is a lamb, and the sages understood the phrase literally to mean “by lambs”. Saul counted one lamb for each man instead of counting the men directly.

And just a generation later it was clarified that even counting indirectly is permitted only for the purpose of a mitzvah. For no purpose at all, counting is forbidden. Thus King David was punished for arranging a census merely “so that I may know the number of the people” (Samuel II 24:2) – although he had not been punished for numbering his soldiers, which was necessary for making war. (II Samuel 18:1.)