Genesis 46:20 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Unto Joseph in the land of AEgypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, &c.— Here the LXX adds: "Manasseh had sons, whom his concubine, a Syrian, bore: Machir. And Machir begat Gilead. The sons of Ephraim, Manasseh's brother: Sutalaam and Taam, and the sons of Sutalaam, Edom." None of this is in the Hebrew or Samaritan Pentateuch; and the putting it in here must have been an interpolation; for Moses is here reckoning up the names and the number of the persons who went down at this time to AEgypt, or were in being then in AEgypt. Now Joseph himself was then in AEgypt, and his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim; but their children, or grandchildren, here named in the LXX, could not be then born; for Joseph was at this time thirty-nine years old, as was shewn before; and it was after the age of thirty that he married. In nine years time he had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, as in the Hebrew; but no grandsons by them, much less a great-grandson, as in the LXX. Somebody, in very early times, found these grandchildren of Joseph mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:14-20. (where they are mentioned as the chief of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim in their several times, but not as having been in being at the going down into AEgypt,) and inserted that mention of them in the margin of some copies of Genesis in the Septuagint, which afterwards came into the text. This insertion was either the cause or the consequence of another difference at 1 Chronicles 7:27 of the number of the souls of Jacob's family: either somebody, finding the number in the LXX, added these five to make up that number; or else, somebody finding these five, increased the number, which is in Hebrew seventy, to seventy-five. Wall.