Exodus 1:1-7 CRF - Counting to Seventy

This week in the Cutting Room Floor, I’m going to deal with two issues that come up in the text of Exodus 1:1-7, one that I had in the sermon from the beginning and was forced to cut it out due to the time it would take to give it a good explanation, and another issue that I knew from the beginning would never make the sermon. Let’s deal with that issue first.

Counting to 70

How do you count to 70? Exodus 1:7 tells us that “All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt” (all Scripture references are from the ESV). As I mentioned in my sermon (find it here), the opening verses of Exodus are a direct reference to Genesis 46, where the 70 sojourners into Egypt are named. There, too, the text says “All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy” (Gen 46:26), but it’s not easy to see how the author came to this number.

Let’s do some Bible math. Genesis 46 breaks the 12 sons of Jacob into four categories, each by their birth mother (remember, Jacob had four wives – or two wives and two concubines, however you’d like to look at it). 46:15 gives Leah 33 descendants, 46:18 gives Zilpah 16 descendants, 46:22 gives Rachel 14 descendants, and 46:25 gives Bilhah 7. 33 + 16 + 14 + 7 = 70. Easy, right?

Not really. Zilpah’s numbers work out easily (46:16-18). She has 3 sons, 11 grandsons, and 2 great-grandsons for a total of 16. (We should note that we are not counting Zilpah herself here).

Bilhah’s numbers also work out (46:23-25). She has 2 sons and 5 grandsons for a total of 7. Piece of cake.Rachel is a little more complicated (46:19-22). She has 2 sons: Joseph and Benjamin. Benjamin has 10 sons. Joseph has 2 sons and his Egyptian wife is also mentioned. If we only count the guys, that is 2 sons plus 12 grandsons for a total of 14 descendants. But keep in mind: Joseph had both his kids in Egypt. This list is supposed to represent those that came to Egypt, not those that were born in Egypt.Now comes the problem of Leah and her kids (46:8-15). Leah has 6 sons, 25 grandsons, and 2 great-grandsons listed, making a total of 33 descendants. That’s the same number the text gives us. Where’s the problem? The problem is, Er and Onan both died before they moved out of Canaan (46:12; cf. 38:6-10). So that brings 33 to 31 that actually went to Egypt from Canaan, which is what this list is supposed to represent. But then Dinah is mentioned, Leah’s daughter (46:15). That helps us get the number up to 32 if we count her, but where’s the missing person?

There are a number of ways scholars have tried to get to 33 here. Some have pointed out that the name “Ohad” is missing from parallel lists in Numbers 26 and 1 Chronicles 4. Perhaps this is a scribal error of some sort here in Genesis? Subtract Ohad, add Dinah and keep the dead Er and Onan, and you do get 33.

Or, perhaps an easier solution is to include the unnamed Jacob in this list, minus Er and Onan, plus Dinah, then you get to 33. This seems to me the most reasonable solution, but it still has its problems.

Getting dizzy yet? (Now do you see why this one never made it to the sermon?!) We can get dizzier if you’d like. Because at the end of the Genesis passage, in verses 26-27, the text reads, “All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob’s sons’ wives, were sixty-six persons in all. And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.”

Do you see the problem? The narrator is telling us that if you subtract Joseph and his two kids from the equation, we get 66. But add the three of them in, and you get 70! Do we assume that Jacob is added to the equation too? If so, that would mess up Leah’s count (unless we go the way of dropping Ohad and adding two dead guys, which also doesn’t jive with the statement that these were the people who “came into Egypt”).I don’t know that we’ll solve this complicated Bible math problem today. But here’s what I do know: Moses was no dummy. The issue here isn’t an unsolvable problem – there are several plausible solutions, a couple of which I just mentioned. Somehow, however we work it out, Moses wanted the reader to get to the number 70. Clearly there were more people that went than just 70. He tells us so – the wives aren’t in the count, and neither are the daughters (assuming these men didn’t have just boys. This isn’t out of God’s miraculous reach, but it’s not necessarily what the text is trying to tell us. Notice that vs 15 reads “daughters” in the plural, even though only Dinah is mentioned).So why was Moses so keen on telling us there were 70? What’s so special about that number?

Back in chapter 10 of Genesis, there’s a list of nations that developed after the Flood. If you count them up, you want to guess how many you get? That’s right – 70 nations! There, 70 nations represent “all” the nations descending from Noah and his family. Here in Genesis 46 (and Exodus 1), 70 people represent “all” the people of the new nation of Israel. Just as after the Flood God ensured that the earth will be filled with nations, so now He ensures the nation Israel will fulfill her creational/covenantal mandate to fill the earth.

The number 70 doesn’t make its last appearance here, either. There are 70 elders mentioned in Numbers 11:16 that represent the people of Israel. The Land is in captivity for 70 years (2 Chr 36:21). Daniel talks about 70 “weeks” of years (Dan 9:24). Even in the New Testament, Jesus sends out 70 witnesses to Israel (Lk 10).By the way – if we wanted to get even more complicated on this issue, we could point out that the Greek version of the Hebrew text (called the Septuagint, or LXX for short) and one of the Qumran (Dead Sea Scroll) texts (4QExodb) read 75, not 70. Acts 7:14 also has 75. A number of other ancient witnesses do read 70, though, including Jubilees 44:33, Ezekiel the Tragedian 1.2, and Josephus, Antiquities, 2.214 (Propp: Exodus 1-18, 121). Some think that the LXX and NT are adding the 5 kids of Ephraim and Manasseh into the count (Cole: Exodus, 53), but all of this is another discussion for another day!

The takeaway from all this is #1) Bible math is hard, #2) God took a small number of people and miraculously made them into a nation, fulfilling His promises to them, and #3) just as nations arose and filled the earth after the days of Noah’s Flood, so Israel began to fill the earth in the first chapter of Exodus.

Genesis 46 or 35?

Now to the issue that was almost in this week’s sermon. Remember that the first six Hebrew words of Exodus (first 13 in ESV) are an exact quote of Genesis 46:8, referring us back to that passage. Exodus 1:1-5 is a condensing of the material of Genesis 46:8-27. However, the order of the names of Israel’s 12 sons is different in Exodus 1 and Genesis 46.Moses was a crafty guy. The order of names lines up more closely with the order we are given in Genesis 35, with the only exception of Joseph, who is pulled out and placed at the end in Exodus.So Moses is pointing us back to Genesis 46, with a little bit of 35 thrown in. Why Genesis 35? Perhaps because Genesis 35 also includes this little bonus: And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body” (35:11). This, of course, is a reiteration of the command to be fruitful and multiply, along with the promise that nations and kings will come from the line of Israel. Was Moses giving us the order of names in chapter 35 to perhaps also allude to the promise given there? (For further discussion on this, see Garrett: Exodus, 149, Sarna: Exodus, 3, Childs: Exodus, 2).

It’s hard to say, but what is certain is that Moses is connecting the first few verses of Exodus with the creational theology and covenantal promises of Genesis. Israel was to be a fruitful and multiplying nation. God would ensure it.

A Bonus from the Rabbis

If you’ve suffered through this first entry, you deserve a humorous bonus. Dutch commentator Cornelius Houtman points out in the first volume of his commentary on Exodus that the ancient rabbis explained Israel’s population explosion by attributing incredible fertility to the Israelite women: according to some, mothers bore 6, 12, 60 or even 70 children at a time! (Houtman: Exodus I, 232)

Ouch!