44. It was these who were enrolled, each according to his ancestral house, by Moses and Aaron and the twelve leaders of Israel.
45. The total enrollment of the Israelites of twenty years or more, according to their ancestral houses, everyone fit for military service in Israel—
46. the total enrollment was six hundred and three thousand, five hundred and fifty.
47. Now the Levites were not enrolled by their ancestral tribe with the others.
48. For the Lord had told Moses,
49. The tribe of Levi alone you shall not enroll nor include in the census along with the other Israelites.
50. You are to give the Levites charge of the tabernacle of the covenant with all its equipment and all that belongs to it. It is they who shall carry the tabernacle with all its equipment and who shall be its ministers; and they shall camp all around the tabernacle.
51. When the tabernacle is to move on, the Levites shall take it down; when the tabernacle is to be pitched, it is the Levites who shall set it up. Any unauthorized person who comes near it shall be put to death.
52. The other Israelites shall camp according to their companies, each in their own divisional camps,
53. but the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the covenant to ensure that God’s wrath will not fall upon the Israelite community. The Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the covenant.