Genesis 46:26

Gen 46:26 All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls [were] threescore and six;

Ver. 26. Which came out of his loins.] Heb., e femore eius. A modest description of generation, by the instrumental and material cause thereof. And because it is said, that so many souls came out of Jacob’s body, Augustine {a} moves the question here, whether souls also are not begotten, as well as bodies? And when the learned father demurred, and would not presently determine the point, a rash young man, one Vincentius Victor, as Chemnitius relates it, boldly censured the father’s unresolvedness, and vaunted that he would undertake to prove by demonstration that souls are created, de novo, by God; for which peremptory rashness the father returned the young man a sober reprehension. But souls are doubtless here put for persons, which the Latins call capita.

{a} Annon igitur animae propagentur ex traduce; argumenta post triduum demum solvo. - Melancthon.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

46:26 The total number . . . was sixty-six: This is the number of those who traveled with Jacob to Egypt, excluding his sons’ wives, the servants, and others attached to the household. It also omits Joseph, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Jacob.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Hebrew, thighs.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

(26) All the souls were threescore and six.—This total is obtained by omitting Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph’s two sons. If we include these, the whole number becomes threescore and ten, as in Gen_46:27. In the LXX. the names of five grandsons are added to Gen_46:20, and thus the total is made seventy-five, as quoted by St. Stephen in Act_7:14.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26. souls that came with Jacob] The rendering of the margin, souls belonging to Jacob that came, is preferable. “With Jacob” (as LXX and Lat.) follows Gen_46:7, but does not translate the Heb.

threescore and six] These and the words in the following verse before “threescore and ten” have the appearance of a gloss. In the preceding list the sons and daughters of Leah were thirty-three (Gen_46:15), the sons of Zilpah sixteen (Gen_46:18), the sons of Rachel fourteen (Gen_46:22), and the sons of Bilhah seven (Gen_46:25); the total of these is seventy. The number, therefore, of sixty-six must be regarded as the result of deducting four persons, presumably Er and Onan, and the “two souls born to Joseph in Egypt” (Gen_46:20).

Note that “sixty-six” is just double that of Leah’s children, thirty-three. Another computation, excluding Er and Onan, and including Dinah, would make Leah’s children “thirty-two,” just double Zilpah’s.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And Israel said unto Joseph,.... He broke silence first:

now let me die, since I have seen thy face; not that he was impatient to die, and not desirous to live any longer; for it could not but yield pleasure to him, and make the remainder of his life more comfortable to live with such a son, his darling, and now in so much honour and grandeur; but this he said to express his great satisfaction at the sight of him, that he could now be content to die, having all his heart could wish for, an interview with his beloved son:

because thou art yet alive; whom he had looked upon as dead, and the receiving him now was as life from the dead, and could not but fill him with the greatest joy, see Luk 15:23; Jacob lived after this seventeen years, Gen 47:28.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Sixty-six; not including Jacob, Joseph, and his two children, who make up 70, ver. 27. (Deuteronomy x. 22.) The Septuagint taking in Joseph’s grandchildren, read 75; in which they are followed by St. Stephen, Acts. vii. 14. See St. Jerome q. Heb. (Calmet) --- St. Augustine cannot account for these grand-children and great grand-children of Joseph being mentioned as coming with Jacob into Egypt, since some of them were not born during his life-time. He suspects some hidden mystery. (Worthington) See ver. 7. --- Some think St. Stephen excludes Jacob, Joseph, and his sons; and included the 64 men, with 11 wives. (Du Hamel)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Loins, Heb. thigh, which is here put for the secret parts between the thighs, which are called sometimes the feet, as Gen 49:10; Deu 28:57; Eze 16:25, for the like reason, because they are between the feet. From this eastern manner of speech came that passage in the Greek fables, concerning Bacchus being born out of Jupiter’s thigh.

Threescore and six; so many they are, excluding Jacob, as the common parent, and Joseph and his two sons, as being in Egypt before Jacob’s coming thither; which four being included they make up seventy, as it is Gen 46:27.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 26, 27. All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob"s sons" wives, all the souls were threescore and six; and the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten. According to the LXX the number of Joseph"s sons was nine; and the number of those who came with Jacob into Egypt seventy five, a number adopted by Stephen. (Act_7:14) The apparent confusion in these different numbers, sixty-six, seventy, seventy-five, will disappear if it be observed that the first takes no account of Jacob, Joseph, Manasseh, and Ephraim, while they are as palpably included in the second computation, and that Stephen simply adds to the seventy of ver. 27 the five grandsons of Joseph who are mentioned in the Septuagint version, from which he quoted, or to the sixty-six of ver. 26 the nine mentioned above, consisting of Jacob, Joseph, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Joseph"s five grandsons, thus making seventy five in all. There is thus no irreconcilable contradiction between the Hebrew historian and the Christian orator.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

All the souls

(Cf) Gen 46:27. A discrepancy has been imagined. The "souls" that came with Jacob" were 66. The "souls of the house of Jacob" Gen 46:27 i.e. the entire Jacobean family) were 70, viz. the 66 which came with Jacob, Joseph and his two sons, already in Egypt=69; Jacob himself=70. (See Scofield "Act 7:14").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

sixty-six

"66" (See: Numbers)

seventy

"70" (See: Numbers)

translationWords

Jacob

Egypt

descend

Joseph (OT)

house

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

כל הנפש הבאה ליעקב EVERY SOUL THAT WAS COMING WITH JACOB — every soul that left Canaan to go to Egypt The word הבאה, here, is not a perfect tense, but a participle with a relative present sense — just as (Ester 2:4) “In the evening she (באה) was coming” and (Genesis 29:7) “and, behold, Rachel his daughter is coming (באה)” and therefore the accent is on the last syllable, on the א, because when they left, coming from the land of Canaan, they were only sixty-six. But at the second mention of this word (Genesis 46:27) — “every soul of the house of Jacob, which came (הבאה) into Egypt were seventy” — it is a perfect tense and therefore it is accented on the last but one syllable, on the ב. The reason is, that when they came there, they were seventy, for they found Joseph and his two sons there, and Jochebed was added to their number “between the walls”. According to the view of the Rabbi (i. e. R. Jehudah, cf. Genesis Rabbah 84) who stated that with each of Jacob’s sons a twin-sister was born, we must say that these died before they (Jacob and his family) went down to Egypt, because they are not enumerated here. In Vayikra Rabbah 4:6 I found the following: When he left Canaan (cf. Genesis 36:6) Esau’s family consisted of only six (himself and his five sons), and Scripture calls them “the souls of his house” (in the plural) and this is because they worshipped many gods (each serving a different god and having as it were, a different soul or religious feeling). But the family of Jacob when he came to Egypt consisted of seventy and Scripture calls them “soul”, in the singular, because they all served One God.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

כל הנפש הבאה, we are told about number of the members of Yaakov’s household appearing with the masculine ending twice, such as the number fourteen in verse 22, and the number seven in verse 25. On the other hand, in verse 15 the Torah uses the feminine ending for the number 33 (שלושים ושלוש) and in verse 18 it uses the feminine ending for the number 16 (שש עשרה). The reason for this apparent anomaly is that the noun נפש mentioned in verse 26, for instance is feminine, hence the number associated with that noun has to be in the feminine mode also. The word בני being in the masculine mode, however, determines that the adjective or attribute accompanying it be in the same mode, i.e. masculine.

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.