44. These are the ones counted whom Moses and Aaron mustered, with the twelve leaders of Israel, each one from his family.
45. So all those who were counted from the Israelites according to their families, from those twenty years old and above, everyone in Israel who is able to go to war.
46. All of the ones counted were six hundred and three thousand, five hundred and fifty.
47. The Levites from their ancestors’ tribe were not mustered in their midst.
48. And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
49. “You will not muster the tribe of Levi, and you will not take a census of them in the midst of the Israelites.
50. You will appoint them over the tabernacle of the testimony, over all its vessels, and over all that belongs to it. They will carry the tabernacle and all its vessels, and they will care for it; and they will camp around the tabernacle.
51. And when the tabernacle is set out, the Levites will take it down, and when encamping the tabernacle the Levites will set it up; the stranger that approaches it will be put to death.
52. The Israelites will encamp, each in their own camp, and each by their own banner according to their divisions.
53. But the Levites will encamp around the tabernacle of the testimony, and there will not be wrath on the community of the Israelites; and the Levites will keep the requirements of the tabernacle of the testimony.”
54. And the Israelites did thus; they did everything that Yahweh commanded Moses.