Torah Reading for Terumah

From this you learn that he was commanded to count them at the beginning of the contribution for the Tabernacle, after the incident of the Golden Calf, because they had then been affected by a plague, as it says: “God struck the people with a plague.” 10 This may be compared to a flock dear to its owner that was stricken by an epidemic. When the plague ceased, the owner said to the shepherd, “I beg of you, count my flock and see how many of them are left,” thereby showing that the flock was dear to him.

It is impossible, however, to say that this census is the same as that stated in the Book of Numbers, for about that census it says: “on the first day of the second month,” and the Tabernacle was erected already in the first month, as it says: “On the first day of the first month you must erect the Tabernacle…,” 11 and from the shekels of this census here were made the silver bases of the Tabernacle, as it says: “The 100 talents of silver were used for casting the bases….” You thus learn that there were two censuses: one at the beginning of their donation for the Tabernacle, after Yom Kippur of the first year after leaving Egypt, and another in Iyar of the second year, after the Tabernacle was erected.

And if you ask: How is it possible that in both censuses the numbers of Israel were equal – 603,550, for regarding the silver from those of the community counted here it says that this was their number, 12 and in the census of the Book of Numbers it also says the same number – “The sum of all the tallies was 603,550”? 13 Were not these two censuses in two separate years, and it is impossible that there were not some who at the time of the first counting were 19 years old and were not counted then, yet at the second census had become 20 years old? The answer is: In respect to calculating people’s ages, they were counted twice in the same year, but according to the count of years from when they left Egypt it was two years; for regarding the years from when they left Egypt one counts from Nisan, as we have learned in Tractate Rosh Hashanah, 14 and thus the Tabernacle was constructed in the first year and erected in the second, for a new year began on the first of Nisan, but people’s ages are calculated according to the number of years since the creation of the world, which begin in Tishrei, and thus the two censuses were in the same year: the first census was in Tishrei, after Yom Kippur when the Omnipresent had become reconciled with Israel to forgive them and they were then commanded regarding the Tabernacle, and the second was on the first of Iyar.