Textual Criticism of the Torah: Ten Short Case Studies

Series

Textual Criticism of the Torah: Ten Short Case Studies

How Many Descendants of Jacob Came to Egypt? – Genesis 46:27/Exodus 1:5

APA Style

Click to copy

"How Many Descendants of Jacob Came to Egypt? – Genesis 46:27/Exodus 1:5" (n.d.). TheTorah.com. Retrieved October 30, 2026, from https://www.thetorah.com/article/how-many-descendants-of-jacob-came-to-egypt-genesis-46-27-exodus-1-5

SBL Style

Click to copy

"How Many Descendants of Jacob Came to Egypt? – Genesis 46:27/Exodus 1:5." TheTorah.com. Accessed October 30, 2026. https://www.thetorah.com/article/how-many-descendants-of-jacob-came-to-egypt-genesis-46-27-exodus-1-5.

Emanuel Tov

After Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, and Jacob’s family heads to Egypt, the text lists Jacob’s family members, ending with a total:

Masoretic Text (+ SP, Pesh)

LXX

בראשית מו:כז ...כָּל הַנֶּפֶשׁ לְבֵית יַעֲקֹב הַבָּאָה מִצְרַיְמָה שִׁבְעִים.

Gen 46:27 …πᾶσαι ψυχαὶ οἴκου Ιακωβ αἱ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε

Gen 46:27 …Thus the total of Jacob’s household who came to Egypt was seventy persons.

Gen 46:27 …Thus the total of Jacob’s household who came to Egypt was seventy-five persons.

When the number is repeated in the opening to Exodus, we see the same difference between the sources:

Masoretic Text (+ SP, Pesh)

LXX

שמות א:ה וַיְהִי [נ"ש: ויהיו] כָּל נֶפֶשׁ יֹצְאֵי יֶרֶךְ יַעֲקֹב שִׁבְעִים נָפֶשׁ...

Exod 1:5 …[1]ἦσαν δὲ πᾶσαι ψυχαὶ ἐξ[2] Ιακωβ πέντε καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα. [3]

Exod 1:5 The total number of persons that was [SP: “were”] of Jacob’s issue came to seventy souls…

Exod 1:5 …The total number, then, of souls from Jacob: seventy-five.

In this case, two Qumran fragments agree with the numbers of the LXX. 4QExodb (4Q13, frag. 2) reads חמש ושבעים נפש “seventy-five souls.” Slightly less clear is 4QGen-Exoda, for which we are missing some of the words, but we have וחמש נפש ויוסף “…and five souls, and Joseph…” This implies that this source also had the number 75 but written in the order שבעים וחמש (seventy five rather than five and seventy).[4]

The variation in numbers in the two traditions is connected with the different conception of the listing of Joseph’s descendants in the Genesis chapter. MT has only the two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, while LXX includes five additional descendants in the lines of these two sons,[5] which matches information in the data of the much more extensive list of Joseph’s descendants in Numbers 26:29–37. The inclusion of these five descendants is not the work of a translator; LXX is undoubtedly based on a Hebrew source.[6]

Itamar Kislev of Haifa University has argued convincingly that the list of the LXX was original, and that the MT was shortened.[7] He suggests that the MT scribe wished to harmonize the presentation in Genesis and Exodus with Deuteronomy 10:22, which refers to seventy descendants accompanying Jacob to Egypt: בְּשִׁבְעִים נֶפֶשׁ יָרְדוּ אֲבֹתֶיךָ מִצְרָיְמָה “Seventy persons in all, your ancestors went down to Egypt.”

Harmonization

To make Genesis and Exodus match this verse, Kislev argues, the MT cut five of Joseph’s descendants from the list, bringing the total to 70. In contrast, manuscripts A, F, and V of LXX read 75 in the Deuteronomy verse, likely reflecting a conscious harmonization of Deuteronomy with Genesis and Exodus (these manuscripts are often harmonizing), while manuscripts B and S read ἑβδομήκοντα “70.”

In sum, the early scribes were faced with a contradiction: Genesis and Exodus had Jacob’s descendants in Egypt numbering 75 (Qumran fragments), while in Deuteronomy they numbered 70 (MT). While some LXX scribes decided to correct Deuteronomy to 75, the MT scribes corrected Genesis and Exodus to 70.[8] We can’t know for sure why they chose this route instead of correcting Deuteronomy; perhaps, MT chose “seventy” for its symbolic importance, paralleling the number of the nations of the world (Genesis 10, Deuteronomy 32:8 [see case study 9]).[9] Or possibly the revisor just wished to create a round number.

Categories:

Biblical Criticism

View Footnotes

Published 2023-08-24

  1. Another difference, that will not be discussed here, is that the clause “Joseph was in Egypt” comes at the beginning of v. 5 in LXX but at the end of the verse in MT, SP, Peshitta, and 4QGen-Exoda.

  2. The Greek represents the flowery “from Jacob’s loins” with a simple “from Jacob.”

  3. The Greek may be working with a Hebrew source identical to MT, but there are too many small differences to safely offer a Hebrew reconstruction. The Old Latin is the same as the Greek, including the mentioning of 75 descendants instead of 70: Erant autem omnes animae de Jacob, quinque et septuaginta qui erant cum Jacob.  However, the final phrase “who were with Jacob” is unattested in LXX or MT and may reflect an independent Hebrew source.

  4. Both orders are acceptable in biblical Hebrew. For further discussion, Marc Zvi Brettler, “‘All of Jacob’s Descendants Numbered Seventy-Five’ – The Opening of Exodus in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” TheTorah (2015). This reading is also supported by references in the New Testament (Acts 7:14) and Philo (De Migratione Abrahami, 199–201), both of which are based on the LXX.

  5. Machir, son of Manasseh, and father of Gilead as well as two sons of Ephraim, Sutalaam (and his son Edem) and Taam (all in the spelling of the LXX).

  6. Since the LXX included five additional names of Joseph’s descendants in Gen 46:20, the summary of Joseph’s offspring is also greater than that of MT: two in MT in v. 27, and nine (mistake for seven) in the LXX of that verse. 

  7. See Itamar Kislev, “Jacob’s Descendants Who Go to Egypt: MT Versus LXX,” TheTorah (2015);  idem, “The Number of the Israelites That Came to Egypt: Tradition and Text,” Collected Papers in Judaica, Vol. 1, The Bible and Its World, ed. Baruch J. Schwartz et al. (Jerusalem: International Association for Jewish Studies, 2008): 143–159 [p. 146].

  8. It is theoretically possible that 70 was the original in all, and LXX and Qumran changed Genesis and Exodus to 75, but the reasons for such a change are not apparent. This direction was chosen by James R. Davila in the publication of the Qumran fragment: “1. 4Gen-Exoda,” in Eugene Ulrich and Frank M. Cross, Qumran Cave 4.VII: Genesis to Numbers, DJD XII (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 19 and Frank M. Cross, “13.4QExodb,” ibid., 85.

  9. Thus Dominique Barthélemy, “Les Tiqquné Sopherim et la critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament,” in idem, Études d’histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament, OBO 21 (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen, 1978), 91–110 [p. 108]. Editor’s note: For more on the symbolism of 70 nations, see John Day, “The Table of Nations: The Geography of the World in Genesis 10,” TheTorah (2022); Noga Ayali-Darshan, “Sukkot’s Seventy Bulls,” TheTorah (2016).

Related Topics:Masoretic Text (MT)Textual CriticismSeptuagint (LXX)Dead Sea Scrolls