Genesis 46:26

Summary

This verse gives the total count of people who accompanied Jacob into Egypt as his direct descendants, excluding the wives of his sons. The Hebrew states the total as sixty-six persons, all reckoned as having "come out of his thigh," a Hebrew idiom for biological descent.

Key words

• nefesh ("person", H5315) — feminine singular noun used collectively to count individuals; it appears twice (in kol-hannefesh, "every person," and kol-nefesh, "every person," at the end), framing the verse as a census statement.
• ba'ah ("went", H0935) — qal participle feminine singular, describing the nefesh as "the one going/coming" to Egypt with Jacob; the participle form presents this as an ongoing or characterizing state rather than a single completed action.
• yotze'ei ("[who] came out of", H3318) — qal participle masculine plural construct, governing yerekho ("his thigh," H3409 + 3rd person suffix); the construct chain yotze'ei yerekho literally means "those coming out of his thigh," an idiom for direct bodily descendants.
• milevad (from mi H9006 + le H9005 + vad H0905) — a compound preposition meaning "besides/apart from," here excluding the neshei venei-Ya'aqov ("wives of the sons of Jacob," H0802 + H1121) from the count.
• shishim vashesh ("sixty and six", H8346 + H8337) — cardinal numbers joined by the conjunction va ("and", H9002), forming the final tally "sixty-six."

What the text says

The verse opens with kol-hannefesh habba'ah le-Ya'aqov Mitzraymah ("every person who went to Jacob, Egypt-ward"), using the definite article on both nefesh and the participle ba'ah to mark this as a specific, previously identified group. The directional suffix -ah on Mitzraymah ("Egypt", H4714) indicates motion toward Egypt, reinforcing the participle's sense of movement.

The phrase yotze'ei yerekho ("those coming out of his thigh") is a construct chain functioning as an idiom for physical descent from Jacob's own body, distinguishing his blood descendants from those who joined the household by marriage. The exclusion clause milevad neshei venei-Ya'aqov ("besides the wives of the sons of Jacob") clarifies that the count of sixty-six covers only Jacob's bloodline, not in-marrying women. The verse closes by repeating kol-nefesh ("every person") before giving the sum shishim vashesh ("sixty-six"), a resumptive structure common in Hebrew enumerations, restating the subject before delivering the final number.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yotze'ei yerekho ("those coming out of his thigh") as οἱ ἐξελθόντες ἐκ τῶν μηρῶν αὐτοῦ ("those who came out from his thighs"), using the plural "thighs" (μηρῶν) where the Hebrew has the singular yerekho ("his thigh," H3409 + suffix). The Vulgate follows the Hebrew singular sense with de femore illius ("from his thigh," singular). Both LXX and Vulgate preserve the idiom of descent through the body rather than substituting a more abstract term like "descendants."