A large number appearing in 1 Chronicles 5:21 as the count of sheep and goats taken as war booty, expressing the extent of God's blessing in victory.
The number 250000 appears in 1 Chronicles 5:21, where the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh defeated the Hagrites and took enormous war plunder: fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep and goats, two thousand donkeys, and one hundred thousand people. The large number emphasizes the extent of the victory and God's intervention on Israel's side, since the text explicitly states that "the battle was from God" (1 Chron 5:22). Although the number 250000 does not have an established symbolic value in biblical numerology like numbers such as 7, 12, or 40, it functions in its context as an expression of God's abundant blessing and the abundance that follows obedient warfare. The Hagarenes were a nomadic people east of the Jordan with whom Israelite tribes repeatedly came into conflict. They are associated with Hagar, Abraham's slave woman, although the historical connection is debated. The large numbers in war booty descriptions in Chronicles have been subject to textual critical debate. Some scholars believe the numbers may reflect literary conventions intended to emphasize divine intervention rather than exact historical figures. In rabbinic tradition, the war accounts in 1 Chronicles 5 are read as examples that victory depends on trust in God, since it is specified that the tribes "cried out to God during the battle" (v. 20).*