Number Seventy

Biblical authors employed the number 7 in numerous ways to express the ideas of completion, perfection, and holiness and to highlight keywords or elements within a text.

The Torah’s adaptation of a polytheistic ancient West-Semitic custom of sacrificing to seventy gods.^[1]

The Book of Exodus begins with an accounting of the members of Jacob's family who went with him to Egypt. Our Torah, the Masoretic Text, lists 70 people. Dead Sea Scroll manuscript 4QEx^b, however, records 75 people. How do we account for this and other differences between the texts?

Genealogical lists are often overlooked, and yet they represent a distinct biblical literary genre with ideological content. What messages are these lists meant to convey?