Comentario sobre Génesis 46:27

כל הנפש לבית יעקב, “all the persons who were part of the house of Yaakov;” when you count them individually you will find that there are only 69 and not 70. Some commentators claim that Dinah had a son by Shechem, and that while he is included in the total 70, he is not included as an individual having a name. Other commentators claim that the lineכל נפש בניו ובנותיו עם יעקב 33, indicate that Yaakov himself is included in the count of 70 seeing that it first says ואלה שמות בני ישראל הבאים מצרימה, “these are the Israelites who arrived in Egypt.” When the Torah enumerated the 66 יוצאי ירך יעקב, the persons that emerged from Yaakov’s loins, he himself is obviously not included as he could not have been his own offspring. (verse 26) Some commentators are not at all perturbed by the round number 70 being used although there were only 69, seeing that there are numerous examples throughout the Bible in which round numbers are used, although when you examine them in detail you will find that they are just that, “rounded off” numbers. Personally, I do not know what all the fuss is about. Why could these commentators not have been satisfied with the solution provided for us by our sages in earlier periods that Yocheved was conceived in the land of Canaan but not born until the family was just at the border of Egypt, בין החומות, between the walled fortifications, as they phrase it. [at this point the author voices sharp rebuke at Ibn Ezra saying that Nachmanides already refuted all that he said on the subject. Ed.]

הבאה, the stress is on the second to last syllable, seeing that the verb is in the past tense. The meaning of the word is the same as if the Torah had written אשר באה, “who had arrived,”

הבאה מצרימה שבעים, “the ones who had arrived in Egypt numbered seventy.” The Torah, in this verse, meant to include Yaakov himself. The beginning of the subject proves that this is so, as in verse 8 we have been told: “the following are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt, ‘Yaakov’ and his sons, his first born son being Reuven. The word “Yaakov” in this verse is superfluous unless it was meant to include him in the count. The reason why Yaakov was included in the count with Leah’s children was that only 32 names were mentioned and he was needed to make up the number 33 at the end of that paragraph. Not only that, it was certainly fitting that the founding father should be included in the first of the four groups of people counted. If you wanted to know the precise number of Yaakov’s family in Egypt i.e. seventy, counting Joseph and his family, [assuming Joseph’s wife was Dinah’s offspring Ed.] this is how it was composed. If you wish to accept my interpretation that G–d made up the missing umber, you do not have to include Yaakov himself in the number.

הבאה מצרימה שבעים, “who had arrived in Egypt, (were) seventy.” This number includes Joseph, his two sons, and Yocheved, (Moses’ mother). The Torah does not worry about minor inaccuracies as it concerns itself with the overwhelming majority. There are many examples of this rule having been applied. [Perhaps the best known examples are when Moses refers to the Jewish people comprising six hundred thousand men of the ages 2060, as well as when during the census, each time with a single exception, the total of the numbers of each tribe always ends with the digit zero, i.e. have been rounded off. Ed.] The only females in the count above are: Dinah, Yocheved, Serach. [In the author’s text which this editor works from, there appear four more names of males at this point, all grandsons of Yaakov. I have not been able to figure out why these names appear there. Ed.] According to a view expressed in the Midrash, that twin sisters were born with all of Yaakov’s sons, we would have to assume that they had all died before the family’s descent to Egypt, with the exception of twin of Dinah.

מצרימה, an inaccuracy, as the family did not arrive in Egypt, but in Goshen, a border province. The word is used as an “umbrella,” i.e. a description of the entire state.