(07) - Student Choice #1: Why is this Book Called "Numbers?"

I believe that this book is called Numbers because it explains a lot of amounts.  It describes so many things using exact numbers.  I like this because I can get a more realistic and modern idea about how things were in those times.  The book covers the time period of the children of Israel moving from Mount Sinai to Mount Pisgah.

At the beginning of the children of Israel's sojourn in the wilderness, there were 603, 550 males age 20 and over.  After 40 years, there were 601, 730.  I'm not quite sure why this number would have gone down.  My best guess would be that delivering so many babies while traveling in the wilderness would have cause some to die shortly after birth.  It must have been hard to keep babies away from disease or sickness when so many people are around and the environment was constantly changing.