Bible Strands
Exodus 1:5
The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all, including Joseph, who was already in Egypt.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The narrator records the count of Jacob’s family entering Egypt immediately after listing his sons in Exodus 1:4 and before noting their deaths in Exodus 1:6.
The words — The text uses יֶרֶךְ (ye.rekh), literally “thigh,” as a metonym for lineage, alongside נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh), meaning “person,” to quantify the family unit.
The thread — This seventy-person count reappears in Deuteronomy 10:22 as a foundational family number and is cross-referenced with the sixty direct descendants listed in Genesis 46:26, while Judges 8:30 uses the same number to denote Gideon’s sons.
Why it lands — The verse establishes a precise demographic baseline for Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, requiring the reader to track how this specific group becomes the subject of subsequent historical and theological developments.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 10:22 Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.
- Genesis 46:26 All those belonging to Jacob who came to Egypt—his direct descendants, besides the wives of Jacob’s sons—numbered sixty-six persons.
- Judges 8:30 Gideon had seventy sons of his own, since he had many wives.
- Exodus 1:20 So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became even more numerous.