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The Hebrew version of Genesis says Jacob’s household in Egypt was seventy, while the Greek Septuagint follows a different tradition that says seventy-five. Jubilees tries to harmonize these traditions, counting seventy and noting five who died.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 46:27
Hebrew Bible
26 All the direct descendants of Jacob who went to Egypt with him were sixty-six in number. (This number does not include the wives of Jacob’s sons.) 27 Counting the two sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt, all the people of the household of Jacob who were in Egypt numbered seventy. 28 Jacob sent Judah before him to Joseph to accompany him to Goshen. So they came to the land of Goshen.
LXX Genesis 46:27
Septuagint
26 And all the persons who came with Iakob into Egypt, who came out from his thighs, not including the wives of Iakob’s sons, all the persons were sixty-six. 27 And the sons of Ioseph who were born to him in the land of Egypt were nine persons. All the persons of Iakob’s house who came into Egypt were seventy-five. 28 And he sent Ioudas ahead of him to Ioseph in order to meet him over against Heroonpolis in the land of Ramesses.
Jubilees 44:33
Pseudepigrapha
30 These are the names of Naphtali’s sons: Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, Shillem, and Ev. 31 Ev, who was born after the years of the famine, died in Egypt. 32 All those of Rachel were 26. 33 All the persons of Jacob who entered Egypt were 70 persons. So all of these sons and grandsons of his were 70, and five who died in Egypt before they married. They had no children. 34 Judah’s two sons, Er and Onan, had died in the land of Canaan. They had no children. The sons of Israel buried those who died, and they were placed among the 70 nations.
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Notes and References
... The text of Jubilees likewise offers some confusing numbers. The writer reaches the total of seventy by adding up the sums he has supplied throughout the list. In their simplest form they are: Leah thirty (including Jacob), Zilpah fourteen (the total for Leah is forty-four), Rachel fourteen, and Bilhah twelve (the total for Rachel is twenty-six); all told, they are seventy. However, the writer then takes up the cases of five individuals who died in Egypt: Dan's four extra sons (Samon, Asudi, Iyaka, Salomon) and Naphtali's fifth son Ev. The names belong in the total of seventy for the entire list, so the author is not excluding them from it. He had already reported that those four sons of Dan died the year they entered Egypt, so they legitimately belong among those who entered with Jacob. ...
VanderKam, James C.
Jubilees 2: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 22-50
(pp. 1100-1102) Fortress Press, 2018
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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