If we honestly wish to avoid serious mistakes and rightly understand Scripture, it is important to read the genealogies according to their aim, and not modern ideas. And it is plain on their face that they present difficulties, which no forger nor compiler would have left but have avoided with all care. The writer, on the other hand, knowing details which we might not, expresses simply what he knows to be true without stopping to clear them up. Special motives govern each case; and if this be under the direction of the Holy Spirit, as a Christian is bound to believe, the mistake must be in judging according to his own mind and method, not after the divine design.
“And these [are] the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Jacob's first-born, Reuben; and the sons of Reuben, Enoch and Phallu and Hezron and Carmi; and the sons of Simeon, Jemuel and Jamin and Ohad and Jachin and Zohar and Saul son of a Canaanitish woman. And the sons of Levi, Gershon, Kohath and Merari; and the sons of Judah, Er and Onan and Shelab, and Pherez and Zarah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan; and the sons of Pherez were Hezron and Hamul. And the sons of Issachar, Tola and Puah, and Job and Shimron; and the sons of Zebulun, Sered and Elon and Jahleel. These [are] the sons of Leah whom she bore to Jacob in Padan-Aram, and his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and daughters [were] thirty-three.
“And the sons of Gad, Ziphion and Haggi, Shuni and Ezbon, Eri and Arodi and Areli; and the sons of Asher, Jimnah and Ishvah and Ishvi and Beriah, and Serah their sister, and the sons of Beriah, Heber and Malchiel. These [are] the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter; and she bore these to Jacob: sixteen souls.
“The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife, Joseph and Benjamin. And to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath bore to him, daughter of Potiphera, priest in On; and the sons of Benjamin, Belah and Becher and Ashbel, Gera and Naaman, Ehi and Rosh, Muppim and Huppim and And. These [are] the sons of Rachel who were born to Jacob: all the souls [were] fourteen.
“And the sons of Dan, Hushim; and the sons of Naphtali, Jahzeel and Guni and Jezer and Shillem. These [are] the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, and she bore these to Jacob: all the souls [were] seven.
“All the souls belonging to Jacob that came into Egypt, that came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives: all the souls [were] sixty-six. And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt [were] two souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt, [were] seventy” (vers. 8-27).
It is God's register of Jacob and his house, “seventy” souls including Jacob, and Joseph with his two sons, “sixty-six” without these. The Sept. cited by Stephen speaks of seventy-five, because it adds Manasseh's son Machir and grandson Gilead, and Ephraim's two sons, Shuthelah and Tahan with Shuthelah's son, Eran or Edom. The time approached when they should exchange the life of a family, already in Genesis enlarged into twelve families, for that of a people; and their growth is one of the initiatory facts of Exodus, the second book of the Pentateuch. Scripture reveals the interest God took in recording things little in man's eyes. Nature revels in what it counts great in its own eyes and before the world.
The fact is that the sons of Jacob were even less than would be reckoned in a modern census. For the principle stated in Heb. 7:9, 10 seems to have been here applied to Judah's offspring, and to Benjamin's also, as we may gather from the previous history, but inserted here as the heads of future families, as we see confirmed by the list in Num. 26 of independent families of the tribes of Israel in the day when Moses and Eleazar were directed to take the sum of the whole assembly of Israel's sons from twenty years old and upward. This is a solution suggested by these versed in such genealogies; and it is but one of several. It was no mistake, but intentional, however outside ordinary thought. Thus the immense increase during the sojourn in Egypt became all the more marked, notwithstanding the cruel and murderous oppression which characterized its latter part, and gave the occasion for Jehovah their God to show Himself greater than all gods; for in the thing in which they acted haughtily He was above them.