Numbers 26 · a question people ask
Why did Simeon shrink from 59,300 to 22,200?
Numbers gives the two numbers (1:23; 26:14) and no reason. Readers answer in two main ways. Both agree that every man of the first count died in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua (26:64-65), and that the text doesn't say how many of the dead in any one judgment came from any one tribe.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Linked to the plague at Peor
Some connect the drop with the plague that comes just before this count. The chapter begins "After the plague" (26:1); "Those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand" (25:9); and the Israelite man who was slain there was "Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a fathers’ house among the Simeonites" (25:14).
Numbers 26:1 · Numbers 25:9 · Numbers 25:14
The whole forty years
Others read the drop as the outcome of the whole forty years, in which the LORD said, "your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness" (14:32), "until your dead bodies are consumed in the wilderness" (14:33). On this reading Numbers leaves the reason with the forty years and doesn't tie Simeon's number to one event.
Numbers 14:32-33
The verses
“those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Simeon, were fifty-nine thousand three hundred.”
“These are the families of the Simeonites, twenty-two thousand two hundred.”
“But among these there was not a man of them who were counted by Moses and Aaron the priest, who counted the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. For the LORD had said of them, “They shall surely die in the wilderness.” There was not a man left of them, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.”