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Moses gives “all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt” as “threescore and ten” (Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5; Deuteronomy 10:22). Stephen says that Joseph “called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls” (Acts 7:14).

Within Genesis, too, Leah’s line is summed as “thirty and three” (Genesis 46:15), though the names before it come to thirty-two, Er and Onan being left out because they “died in the land of Canaan” (46:12).

Preferred: Moses and Stephen count two different companies. Moses counts Jacob’s house by blood: “All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were threescore and six” (Genesis 46:26). To these he adds Jacob himself, at the head of the list (46:8), and Joseph and his two sons, who were in Egypt already (46:27), and has seventy. Stephen counts those whom Joseph sent for: “his father Jacob … and all his kindred” (Acts 7:14). Pharaoh’s command, sent by Joseph to his brethren, was, “take you wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father, and come” (Genesis 45:19). So Stephen’s company leaves out Joseph and his sons, whom no one called, and takes in the sons’ wives, whom Moses expressly left out.

Scripture doesn’t number the wives, so the reckonings of them differ. Haley counts nine still living (Judah’s wife had died, Genesis 38:12, and he takes Simeon’s to have died too), which with the sixty-six makes seventy-five. Gill counts eleven wives, setting aside Hezron and Hamul, Pharez’s sons, as not yet born. Either way the two totals count different people, and each is exact for those it counts.

The thirty and three of Leah’s line (Genesis 46:15) take in Jacob himself, who heads the list: “Jacob and his sons” (46:8). Several Jewish writers reckon it so, and Gill follows them. With him the names come to thirty-three, and the sixty-six of 46:26 come out exactly: Leah’s thirty-two, Zilpah’s sixteen, Rachel’s fourteen, and Bilhah’s seven, without Joseph and his two sons.

Some answer that Stephen followed the Septuagint, which reads seventy-five in Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5. That sets one text against another and isn’t needed: the Hebrew, which the KJV follows, reads seventy in all three places, and the Septuagint itself reads seventy in Deuteronomy 10:22. Stephen counts a different company.