and they said to Moses, "Your servants have taken a census of men of war who are in our charge, and no man of us is missing.If I'm reading this right, they are saying that they did not lose a single man in battle. 11,000 went off to war, and 11,000 came back. It's not clear if there were any people wounded, but their fatality rate was 0.0000%.
This is amazing. To put this into context, the average casualty rate in warfare during American Colonial times was about 20%. After the Civil War, casualty rates were about 10%, decreasing until WW1 to well under 1%, after which it jumped back up to 1%. Since then the numbers have been even lower. Mortality rates among casualties vary widely, but could probably still be averaged as 30-50%.
However, never has there been a battle fought in memory for which the fatality rate has been zero. With the ancient weapons of the time, primarily what gamers today would call "melee weapons", casualty and fatality rates are much higher than today's "ranged weapons" like guns. If two people fight on the battlefield back then, one of them is going to go down, and probably be killed. But for all victories to be one-sided, with no losses, can only be considered a miracle of amazing mercy.
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