1. These are the names It is the intention of Moses to describe the miraculous deliverance of the people, (from whence the Greeks gave the name to the book;) but, before he comes to that, he briefly reminds us that the promise given to Abraham was not ineffectual, that his seed should be multiplied
“as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore.” (Genesis 22:17.)
This, then, is the commencement of the book, — that although their going down from the land of Canaan into Egypt might have seemed at the time as it were the end and abolition of God’s covenant, yet in his own time he abundantly accomplished what he had promised to his servant as to the increase of his descendants. However, he only mentions by name the twelve patriarchs who went down with their father Jacob, and then sums up the whole number of persons, as in two other passages. (Genesis 46:27, and Deuteronomy 10:22.) The calculation is perfectly accurate, if Jacob is counted among the thirty and six souls in the first catalogue. For it is a far-fetched addition of the Rabbins (6) to count in Jochebed the mother of Moses, to complete the number; and it is not probable that a woman, who was afterwards born in Egypt, should be reckoned among the men whom Jacob brought with him. If any object that the seventy are said to have “come out of the loins of Jacob,” the discrepancy is easily explained by the common scriptural use of the figure synecdoche (7) That he from whom the others sprung is not excluded, we gather from the words of Moses, (Deuteronomy 10:22,)
“Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.”
But there is no reason to add five more, as we read in the address of Stephen recorded by Luke, (Acts 7:14;) for we cannot be surprised that in this mode of expressing numbers this error should have occurred by the introduction of a single letter. Should any objector make this an handle for controversy, we should remember that the Spirit, by the mouth of Paul, does not warn us without purpose
“not to give heed to genealogies.” (1 Timothy 1:4.)
(6) It may he noticed, once for all, that Calvin’s references to Rabbinical expositions of supposed difficulties are generally references to what Sebastian Munster had inserted at the close of each chapter of his version of the Old Testament, which is described as follows in the title-page to its second edition, Basle, 1546: — “En tibi Lector Hebraica Biblia, Latina planeque nova Sebast. Munsteri tralatione, post omnes omnium hactenus ubivis gentium editiones evulgata, et quoad fieri potuit Hebraicae veritati conformata: adjectis insuper e Rabbinorum commentariis annotationibus.” The notion that Jochebed was included in the enumeration, is mentioned by S.M. in the annotations on Genesis 46:27. In that verse, as given in our authorized version, which came must be understood to agree with house, the Hebrew being הכאה. The persons of that house properly of Jacob’s own blood were seventy in number, as appears from the enumeration in that chapter, including a daughter (v. 15) and a granddaughter, (v. 17.) The number in Stephen’s speech is supposed by many to be taken from the Septuagint, which says that nine souls were born to Joseph in Egypt, and so makes the whole amount seventy-five, both in Genesis 46 and in Exodus 1. But Stephen spoke of the number of his kindred whom Joseph sent for, and may reasonably be supposed to have meant thereby Jacob and his eleven sons, with their wives and fifty-three male children, which would amount to seventy-five souls. — W
(7) The French translation thus explains this figure: “de prendre le tout pour une partie, ou une partie pour le tout,” — to take the whole for a part, or a part for the whole.