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 2nd Samuel xxiv. and 1st Chronicles, xxi.) aestuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a false transcript; a dangerous suspicion!
Extra note by the Rev. H. H. Milman 1782(Written), 1845(Revised):— 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 the highest census in his estimate of the population, and confined the dominions of David to Jordandic Palestine.