"Frum Math"

Earlier today, I was reading a hagadah that a nephew of mine had made in yeshivah. Among other things, it included a list of fifty miracles that supposedly took place during Kriyas Yam Suf. The fourth miracle was something along these lines:

"Hashem surrounded the Yidden with clouds that protected them from the Mitzrim as they chased them. Not a single Mitzri arrow penetrated the clouds, even though the Mitzrim outnumbered the Yidden by 300 to 1."

I stopped reading at that point to do some arithmetic. According to most Chareidim, there were approximately 2.5 million people at Matan Torah. This hagadah, then, was making the claim that 750 million Egyptians pursued their former slaves. That is more than twice the 2024 population of the United States.

The more I thought about this "frum math", the more I smiled and chuckled. I was so amused that I had to put the hagadah down lest I laugh out loud at my brother's Yuntiff table. I'll never understand why midrashim work so hard to make the Torah's stories even less plausible.