Matthew Poole and continuators on Numbers 3:39

39 All that were numbred of the Levites, which Moses and Aaron numbred at the commandment of the LORD, throughout their families, all the males, from a month old and upward, were twenty and two thousand .

Obj. But if the partial numbers, mentioned ver. 22, 28, 34. be put together, they make exactly 22300. Answ. The odd 300 are omitted here, either according to the use of the Holy Scripture, where in so great numbers small summes are commonly neglected, or, because they were the first-born of the Levites and therefore belonged to God already, and so could not be given to him again instead of the other first-born. See Levit. 27. 29. If this number of first-born seem very small to come from 22000 Levites, it must be considered, That onely such first-born are here named as were males, and such as continued in their parents Families, not such as had erected new families of their own. Adde to this, that God so ordered things by his wi[illegible: 1+ letters]e providence for divers weighty reasons, that this Tribe should be much the least of all the Tribes, as is evident by comparing the numbers of the other Tribes, from twenty years old, Numb. 1. with the number of this from a moneth old; and therefore it is not strange if the number of their first-born be less than in other Tribes. Although if the other Tribes had been computed from a moneth old, as this was, their number of 600000, had probably been double or treble to that, and consequently the number of their first-born being 22273 verse 43. would have been as unproportionable to their whole summe, as this of 300 first-born Levites seems to their whole number. And some adde, that onely those firstborn are numbred both in this and in the other Tribes, which were born since they came out of Egypt, when God challenged all the first-born to be his.

Marginal references: See chap▪ 62.