“And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.”
With the two sons who had been born to Joseph in Egypt, the members of Jacob's family, which went to Egypt, were seventy in all. The seventy — the full covenant family including Joseph's Egyptian-born sons — is the number associated in ancient Near Eastern thought with completeness. Seventy nations in the table of nations in Genesis 10; seventy elders of Israel in Exodus 24:1. The application: the seventy who go down to Egypt are the covenant community in its complete form at this stage — complete enough to become a nation.
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