The significance of genealogies and Jacob’s family tree (Gen 46:8-27)

Genealogies are possibly the most boring parts of the Bible for us, modern readers, but they have an essential function for ancient people. We tend to think of family trees as purely information about who relates to whom, and while that may be important, genealogies in the Bible often have a broader theological message. Ancient writers communicate this by carefully arranging their list to create a pattern that has symbolic significance. They could have just said outright what the symbolism meant, but this kind of indirect communication is more effective. It is similar to how narratives make more of an impact when they show a character’s bravery in action rather than tell us that so-and-so was brave. Thus, looking out for symbolism in numbers, the type of people mentioned and patterns in the way a list is arranged may help us appreciate its message.

A meaningful but selective arrangement

This effort to create a meaningful arrangement from the information available to the ancient author, however, means that there is a certain amount of selection going on about what is included. Thus, for instance, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus arranges Jewish history into three periods, each involving fourteen generations (Matt 1:17). In order to achieve this symmetry, three kings are omitted between Joram and Uzziah (also called Azariah; Matt 1:8 cf. 1 Chron 3:11-12) and a couple of others (Jehoiakim and Zedekiah) are only mentioned as ‘brothers’, but not counted in the fourteen (Matt 1:11). This is troublesome for modern readers because we have a different approach to genealogies and expect strict accuracy in all the jumbled and messy details that life produces. In principle, however, the ancient author’s selection to communicate a pattern and through it a message is no different than the way we select the details we relate about an incident that happened to us.[1]

Seventy male descendants

To return to Jacob’s family, the descendants are grouped around Jacob’s two wives and their two maids who became Jacob’s concubines. If we add up the number of sons (and grandsons) of these four, we arrive at seventy people (Leah 33, Zilpah 16, Rachel 14, Bilhah 7). Notably, Leah and Rachel had at least twice as many male descendants than their respective maids.[2] This underlines their significance as matriarchs contributing to the clan. I shall come back to the significance of the seventy, but first note that this number only includes the direct (male) descendants. Thus, the list excludes Jacob’s daughters-in-law (Gen 46:26) and his daughters/granddaughters (Dinah and Serah are the only ones named and they are not counted – Gen 46:15, 17). The latter are probably not included because women were expected to marry and join their husband’s family. Given how large the family was, it is hard to imagine that Dinah and Serah were the only female descendants, but since the numbers focus on the men, other women, if any, are omitted. Why these two are mentioned in the first place is hard to know. Dinah is possibly listed because she appears in one of the earlier incidents in Genesis 34, but we know nothing otherwise of Serah.

Some anomalies

Another feature of this arrangement is that it is introduced as the list of Jacob’s descendants who went down to Egypt (Gen 46:8), but it includes Judah’s two sons, Er and Onan, who died in Canaan (Gen 46:12), while Joseph’s two sons were born in Egypt and did not need to migrate (Gen 46:27). Further, it may surprise us that Benjamin, who seems to be a young boy when the brothers bring him along to Egypt the first time, is listed as having ten sons (Gen 46:21). Even if he is not quite as young as we imagine, some of his sons may not have been born at the time of the move and are mentioned only in anticipation (cf. Heb 7:10). Taking into account some of these elements, the writer reduces the number to sixty-six, though it is unclear who are taken off the list (Judah’s and Joseph’s two sons? Gen 46:26). It is also uncertain who in the end comprises the seventy.[3]

Conventions and symbolic resonance

While arriving at the number seventy is not entirely straightforward, there is no attempt to hide the details. The writer is not out to manipulate us into accepting a fictional number as fact. Rather, he operates with a different set of conventions. We moderns look for factual information, a precise figure of who went down to Egypt and we would include men, women, and children in that today. But the writer’s emphasis is on that symbolic number. To give a modern example for something similar, I often heard my grandparents and parents talk about ‘those forty years’, which was roughly the time between the onset of Communism and its end in Hungary. However, the number is not precise because the Communist takeover was somewhat gradual so one can see the beginning somewhere between 1947 or 1948 and the system’s downfall in 1989 with the first free elections in 1990. The point of the ‘forty years’, however, is not how accurate it is in determining the timespan, but its resonance. For those generations that still had a Christian education (even if caught at the tail-end) would hear the biblical association of the forty years as a time in the wilderness like the Israelites endured. I believe when the ancient writers use these symbolic numbers, they are intending something similar.

The meaning of seventy in Jacob’s family tree

What then is the meaning of the seventy here? As mentioned in my previous post, seventy expresses completeness (ten and seven both carry this association). It is a number that appears elsewhere (seventy elders to help Moses judge – Num 11:16-17; Daniel’s seventy ‘weeks’, or literally ‘seventy sevens’; Dan 9:24; seventy nations in the Table of Nations; Gen 10:1-32). Seeing humanity as deriving from seventy nations is particularly significant if one accepts that the number is symbolic ‘indicating that the Jacob group is a representative nation of the world of nations whom the Lord will bless (e.g., 12:3; 18:18; 22:18)’.[4] In other words, God wants to bless humanity and restore them and He has chosen one nation in whose life He shows His will and purposes that are ultimately for the whole world. As God saves this representative family of seventy from famine (and later from slavery), so He means to save the world not only from physical deprivations but from sin and evil. As this chosen people who at present live like aliens and strangers in another land but will be given rest in the land of their inheritance, so God prepares a place of rest and rootedness, a new earth for all (Rev 21:1-4).[5] Thus, the number seventy in the genealogy alerts us to the larger picture. It says, ‘pay attention because what God does for Israel is what He wants to do for the world’.

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[1] No one in their right mind would include every detail of an incident from background noises to what people were wearing or who was passing by or what the weather was doing at the time, unless it has relevance to the event, – or unless they want to be a dead bore.

[2] Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16-50, WBC 2 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 443.

[3] Suggestions for the missing four include the two women, Dinah and Serah, Jacob, and according to the rabbis, God Himself. Others argue that the two sets of sons (Judah’s and Joseph’s) are added back in.

[4] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26, NAC 1B (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2005), 836.

[5] I do not advocate universalism. God’s intention is to save all, but not all respond to Him. The Revelation passage I refer to follows on from God’s judgment (Rev 20:11-15), so the ‘all’ I mention refers to all whom God acknowledges as His.

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