Catholic Commentary
Census of Dan
42These are the sons of Dan after their families: of Shuham, the family of the Shuhamites. These are the families of Dan after their families.43All the families of the Shuhamites, according to those who were counted of them, were sixty-four thousand four hundred.
Numbers 26:42–43 records the census of the tribe of Dan, which descended from a single son, Shuham, and totaled 64,400 men—making it the second-largest tribe in Israel's final wilderness count. This enumeration represents both demographic growth and theological affirmation of Dan's place within God's covenantal community and promised land inheritance.
God counts His people not to reduce them to numbers, but to claim them as irreplaceable members of His covenant family.
At the typological level, the census as a whole (Numbers 26) is ordered toward the allocation of the land (26:52–56). Each enumeration of men is simultaneously a reservation of territory. To be counted is to have a portion. The Fathers, particularly Origen, read this spatial allotment as a figure of the soul's inheritance in God — each person, known and numbered by the divine intellect, is destined for a unique participation in the life of God.
The theological heart of this brief passage lies in the meaning of divine enumeration. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God knows each human person by name, with a knowledge that is not abstract but personal and creative: "God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man" (CCC §1). The census of Dan dramatizes this at the corporate level: the Lord does not govern Israel as an undifferentiated mass but as a community of named, counted, irreplaceable persons.
Origen of Alexandria, in his Homilies on Numbers, interprets the tribal censuses as figures of the Church: each tribe represents a spiritual family within the Body of Christ, and to be "counted" is to be incorporated into the people of God through Baptism. Just as Shuham's descendants are enrolled in the Book of Israel's tribes, the baptized are enrolled in the Book of Life (cf. Revelation 21:27). St. Augustine echoes this when he writes that God's providential knowledge reaches even the hairs of our heads (Matt. 10:30), a fortiori the members of His covenant people.
The fact that Dan descends from a single progenitor also resonates with the Catholic teaching on the unity of the human family in Adam (CCC §360) and, by extension, the unity of the Church in Christ. Diversity of persons, one origin. Furthermore, the growth of Dan's numbers through trial mirrors the patristic topos of the Church flourishing under persecution — sanguis martyrum, semen Christianorum (Tertullian). Fidelity through the wilderness bears fruit in the census of grace.
In an age of data, demographics, and digital identity, the census of Dan speaks an unexpected word of dignity. Every modern Catholic can feel like a number — a parish registration, a diocesan statistic, an anonymous face in a large congregation. Numbers 26 insists otherwise. God counts His people not to reduce them but to claim them. Each enumeration in this chapter is simultaneously a promise: you have a place, a portion, an inheritance.
Practically, this passage invites Catholics to examine their sense of belonging within the Church. Are you "enrolled" — not only on a parish roll but in the living community of worship, service, and sacramental life? Dan's 64,400 were counted precisely because they were present, part of the assembly ready to cross into the Promised Land. The Catechism reminds us that the Church is not incidental to salvation: "outside the Church there is no salvation" (CCC §846) not as exclusion but as the affirmation that belonging matters. Show up. Be counted. Your place in the Body of Christ is not accidental — it is covenantal.
Commentary
Numbers 26:42 — "These are the sons of Dan after their families: of Shuham, the family of the Shuhamites."
The tribe of Dan presents a striking anomaly in this second census (contrasting with the first census in Numbers 1): whereas nearly every other tribe lists multiple ancestral clans, Dan is recorded as descending from a single son — Shuham (called "Hushim" in Genesis 46:23, likely a variant spelling or textual transmission variant). This is remarkable. A tribe numbering in the tens of thousands traces its entire genealogical identity back to one man. The Septuagint renders the name as "Samam," and the slight variations across manuscripts have led patristic commentators to note that what matters is not the precision of the name but the fact of belonging — being enrolled in the family of Israel.
The phrase "after their families" (Hebrew: lemishpechotam) is the structural refrain of the entire chapter. In the Mosaic census system, the mishpachah (family/clan) is the intermediate social unit between the individual household and the full tribe. Each clan anchors identity: to know your clan is to know your inheritance, your position in the camp, your allotment in Canaan, and your communal obligations before the Lord. The Shuhamites are thus not merely a demographic category but a covenantal unit, a portion of the living assembly of Israel.
The doubling of the phrase — "These are the families of Dan after their families" — at the end of verse 42 functions as a closing formula. The apparent redundancy is liturgical, echoing the pattern of priestly literature: repetition that seals and solemnizes. The Priestly writer (the dominant voice in Numbers 26) is not simply counting soldiers; he is performing an act of sacred enumeration that mirrors divine knowledge. God knows His people by name and by lineage.
Numbers 26:43 — "All the families of the Shuhamites, according to those who were counted of them, were sixty-four thousand four hundred."
The number 64,400 is notable for two reasons. First, it represents a significant increase from Dan's first census count of 62,700 (Numbers 1:38–39) — a growth of 1,700 men — making Dan one of the few tribes that expanded during the forty years of wilderness wandering. Most tribes shrank dramatically (e.g., Simeon collapsed from 59,300 to 22,200). Dan's growth suggests a providential resilience. The wilderness, for all its mortality and judgment (see the plagues and rebellions of Numbers 11–25), did not diminish every tribe equally. God's sustaining hand was differentially manifest.
Second, Dan's 64,400 makes it the in this final census, surpassed only by Judah (76,500). This positioning is not incidental in a text as deliberately ordered as Numbers. Dan, the son of Bilhah (Rachel's maidservant — Genesis 30:6), begins as the child of a secondary wife, a figure of apparent marginality, yet his descendants swell to near-primacy. The lowly are exalted; the marginalized are counted among the great. This is not merely sociological observation — it is a pattern Scripture returns to repeatedly (cf. the elevation of Joseph, David, and ultimately the incarnation in a stable in Bethlehem).