What does the 600,730 count in Numbers 26 represent?
The 600,730 in Numbers 26 represents the numbered men of Israel from twenty years old and upward who were able to go to war, not the total Israelite population. The passage specifies military-service eligibility, with the age considered fit for service being twenty to thirty.
Les teaches that Numbers 26:51 records the numbered children of Israel as 600,730, but he points back to verse 2 to clarify this was not the total Israelite population. Rather, it was the sum of those twenty years old and upward who were able to go to war. He notes that in Israel the age considered fit for military service was from twenty to thirty, so the figure is a military census, not a whole-population total.
Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, throughout their fathers’ house, all that are able to go to war in Israel.
These were the numbered of the children of Israel, six hundred thousand and a thousand seven hundred and thirty.