ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף בראשית 46:27

ואלה תולדת בני נח, שם חם ויפת, “And these are the descendants of Noach: Shem, Cham, and Yaphet.” Starting with this verse and including chapter 11 verse 1, you will find the names of seventy individuals. All of them are descendants of Noach and at the end of that paragraph the Torah states: אלה משפחות בני נח לתולדותם בגויהם ומאלה נפרדו הגוים בארץ אחר המבול “These are the families of Noach’s descendants, according to their generations by their nations; and from these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.” We learn from this verse that the world comprises 70 nations each with its own language. Chapter 11 verse 8 tells us that the various people at the time of the Tower of Babel were scattered and that each group would have its own language The reason the Torah makes a point of enumerating seventy different nations is to contrast this fact with the seventy people, all descendants of Yaakov, who descended with him to Egypt (Genesis 46,27). This is also what Moses had in mind at the time when he blessed the Jewish people shortly before his death (Deut. 32,8), and said בהנחל עליון גוים, בהפרידו בני אדם. “When the Supreme One gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of man.” The nations Moses referred to are the ones mentioned in our chapter. Starting with that period in human history, G’d allocated boundaries, גבולות, to the various nations. All of this was to correspond to the founding members of the Jewish nation who went down to Egypt. The reason Moses said in Deut. 32,8 יצב גבולות עמים למספר בני ישראל , “He established the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the children of Israel,” instead of saying למספר בני יעקב , “according to the number of the sons of Yaakov,” was to stress that the children of Israel consisted of twelve separate tribes.

AND THESE ARE THE NAMES OF …. The meaning [of the connective vav — v’eileh, (‘and’ these are) — when it would have sufficed to say, “These are the names of …,”] is that Scripture desires to reckon the subject of the exile from the time they went down to Egypt. It was then that they were the first of the exiles to go into exile,¹⁶Amos 6:7. as I have explained.¹⁷See Note 7 above. It is for this reason that He returns to the beginning of the subject [stated in the Book of Genesis], which is the verse, And all his seed he [Jacob] brought with him into Egypt.¹⁸Genesis 46:7. There it is written afterward, And these are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt, etc.¹⁹Ibid., Verse 8. This is the very same verse that He repeats here. Even though they are two separate books, the narrative is connected with subjects which follow one another successively. Here, once He mentioned the children of Jacob, He adopted a concise approach to his children’s children and all of his seed [and did not mention them by name as He had done in the Book of Genesis]. Rather, He alluded to them only generally, just as He had said there, All the souls of the house of Jacob, that came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.²⁰Ibid., Verse 27. In the same way He said here in Verse 5: And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls.
A similar case is found in the Book of Chronicles and the Book of Ezra. The Book of Chronicles finishes with the verse: Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Eternal by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Eternal stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying: Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, etc.²¹II Chronicles 36:22-23. The author repeated the very language of these two verses at the beginning of the Book of Ezra in order to connect the narrative. However, since they were indeed two books, he completed the first book, [i.e., the Book of Chronicles], with the events that transpired before the building of the Second Sanctuary, and he devoted the second book, [i.e., the Book of Ezra], to the events that happened from the time of the building [of that Sanctuary].²²Ramban’s thesis apparently is that Ezra himself completely authored the two books, Chronicles and Ezra. See, however, Baba Bathra 15a, where it is stated, “Ezra wrote his book and the genealogy of Chronicles up to himself.” This would seem to indicate that only the first chapters of the Book of Chronicles, which deal with the genealogical tables, were written by Ezra, but not the other parts of the book. The key to the understanding of Ramban’s words must lie therefore in grasping his intent, i.e., that Ezra connected the Book of Chronicles with his own book by using the restoration-edict of Cyrus as the linking material, with the object of bringing out the continuity of the events during the two Sanctuaries. The same thing occurs in these two books, Bereshith and V’eileh Shemoth.

In this case the proof text quotes not only the first part of the verse in Deuteronomy 10: “With seventy people” which seems to prove the verse from Deuteronomy 26, but it quotes the last part as well “God has made you as numerous…” Why does the Haggadah include the entire verse when the first part should have been enough?
The answer to this question can be found in the choice of verses used to answer this question. Deuteronomy 10 says that Israel went down with only seventy but they have become a nation as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yet this is also a troubling verse. First, we know that there were far more Israelites in Egypt than there were in the wilderness. A Midrash teaches us that only one fifth of the Israelites left Egypt at the time of the Exodus. So, in a sense, this verse is wrong. The people of Israel were not as numerous as they had been in Egypt. So why does Moses describe the nation this way at the end of the desert sojourn and not earlier?
The answer can be found in a comment by Rashi on the opening verse of the book of Exodus. He wonders why the Torah makes a point of counting the children once again in this verse since the Torah had already done so earlier in the book of Genesis. Rashi compares Israel to the stars, which God “takes out and brings in by number and by their name.” Similarly, God discounted the years of exile in Egypt and only counted the people as they entered Egypt and after they had left and received the Torah. Even though they were more numerous during their years in Egypt they were not worthy of being counted. The verse in Deuteronomy 26, then, says that they dwelled there few in number because God only counts the seventy righteous people who entered Egypt and not those who were born there. And He did not count them again until after they received the Torah. The verse from Deuteronomy 10 with its reference to the stars hints at why our verse says they dwelled there few in number!
Why choose a verse from Deuteronomy as a proof text when a verse from Genesis would have been more direct and appropriate: “Thus the total number of Jacob’s household who came to Egypt was seventy persons.” (Genesis 46:27).
What the verse in Deuteronomy 10 teaches us is that only the worthy truly count. This Midrash is not just about numbers, but about righteousness. The verse in Genesis simply tells us how many people went down to Egypt, while Deuteronomy 10 makes us aware of the connection between the early generation that entered Egypt and those who now prepare to enter the land of Canaan! Maybe another way of putting this is that God looks for quality and not quantity.

מבן חדש ומעלה [NUMBER THE CHILDREN OF LEVI … EVERY MALE] FROM A MONTH OLD AND ONWARDS — As soon as it passed the age of a non-viable child (a full month was regarded as the utmost time such a child can live) it can be counted to come under the term “keeper of the holy charge”. — R. Judah the son of R. Shalom said: It is quite the usual thing with this tribe to be included in a census from their very birth, for it is said, (Numbers XXVI 59) “[And the name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi], whom her mother bore to Levi in Egypt” — which is explained to mean that she bore her just as she entered the gates of the border-city of Egypt and yet she is counted among the seventy souls which came down with Jacob into Egypt (cf. Genesis 46:27 and Rashi thereon), because if you count their number (as set forth in Genesis 46:8—27) you will find that they were one short of seventy, and it was she whose name is not mentioned there who made up the number seventy (cf. Midrash Tanchuma, Bamidbar 16).