Genesis 46:27

We are now told the names of all the household of Jacob, who came with him. This shows that our great God is interested in people, not only in nations or great companies. The total was 66 persons (v. 26), plus Joseph and his two sons. Jacob himself is the seventieth.

This is God's register of Jacob and his house. Counting Jacob, and Joseph with his two sons, it gives "seventy" souls; without them, "sixty-six"... The time was approaching when they would exchange the life of a family for the life of a people. In Genesis that family had already grown into twelve families. Their growth is one of the opening facts of Exodus, the second book of the Bible. Scripture shows the interest God took in recording things that are little in man's eyes. Nature delights in what it counts great in its own eyes and before the world.

Scripture speaks of man as having a soul and as being a soul. The context shows which meaning the word carries. For instance, we read, "All the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were three score and ten" (Gen. 46:27), meaning seventy persons. We use the word the same way in ordinary speech when we say that a certain ship sank at sea and every soul perished.

The next verse tells us that "all the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy." This is the second list. How is it worked out? Because Joseph and his two sons, who were born to him in Egypt, were there already. So these, with Jacob as stated, made up the number of seventy souls. Now where is the contradiction? Look further. At the beginning of Exodus 1 the list is given as seventy again. It names Jacob's eleven sons who went into Egypt with him, and then, in exact agreement with Genesis 46:27, it adds, "Joseph was already in Egypt." Where is there any contradiction? Read this chapter carefully and you cannot miss the care taken to avoid even the appearance of a discrepancy.

Notice that Stephen speaks of seventy-five souls, where the Hebrew has seventy. Here, as elsewhere, he quotes the Greek version of the Old Testament. Calvin thinks the difference did not come from the Greek translators themselves. He says it crept in through the fault of copyists, and that Stephen did not say seventy-five... But this seems an unreasonable way of explaining something simple enough... In fact both the Hebrew original and the Greek version may be true. The Greek counts in five sons of Manasseh and Ephraim born in Egypt (1 Chr. 7:14-27).

Verses 37-39 show us how greatly God had multiplied the people under the afflictions of Egypt. They went out about 600,000 men, whereas when Jacob went down there the number given in Genesis 46:27 is 70.

The first five verses of Exodus follow straight on from the book of Genesis. They confirm what Genesis 46:8-27 records in more detail. You would expect this small number of 70 to blend into the Egyptian nation. Instead they kept an identity totally distinct from them. Since that time Israel has been scattered for centuries among other nations. Even so, God has kept a clear distinction between them and all Gentile nations. He even gave them their land back in 1948.