Luke 10:1-16

§ 80. COMMISSIONING OF THE SEVENTY, Luke 10:1-16 .

Our Lord having finally withdrawn his rejected ministry from Northern Palestine, and having arrived at the northern boundary of Judea on his last setting his face in that direction, proceeds to perform, in the midst of apparent dejection, a public symbol of future triumph. He selects from the messengers mentioned in the last chapter, from the candidates so well sifted in its closing verses, and probably from some of his friends in Judea, a body of Seventy to perform a mission of heralding his name and preaching through city and country.

Of the commissioning of the SEVENTY, Luke gives the sole account; and his narrative is limited to three paragraphs. Of the brevity of the account, imaginative men, especially among papists, have taken advantage, to fill up the number with names like Mark, Matthias, and Luke himself, and a sufficient catalogue of fictitious names. Rationalists, on the other hand, have used the fact that no reference is ever afterwards made to the Seventy in apostolic history, to discredit the truth of the account. To this cavil it may be perhaps a sufficient reply to say, that Luke is the sole author of later apostolic history; and it can hardly be supposed that he would by such omission slight or throw discredit on his own statement. And a still more conclusive reply is furnished, as will soon appear, from the transient character of the symbol. But why the precise number Seventy?

Grotius tells us that as the Jews, for smaller bodies of select men customarily used the number twelve, so in the larger they used the number seventy. The former number was doubtless founded upon that of the twelve sons of Jacob, and thence the twelve tribes of Israel; the latter had some respect to the seventy souls who came with Jacob into Egypt; or, rather, we may perhaps say that the reckoning of this seventy was so adjusted in reckoning Jacob’s family, as to make a customary significant number. In the same manner Matthew so adjusts the reckoning of Christ’s genealogy as thrice to produce twice the sacred seven; just as seventy is that sacred number decimally multiplied. See supplementary note to chap. 6.

But there was something of a vibrating between the number seventy and seventy-two. The seventy translators of the Septuagint were in full seventy-two, (p. 10;) and seventy was in fact put simply as the round expression of the fuller number. As twelve was the number of the phylarchs or tribe-chiefs, so seventy-two was the number of elders chosen by Moses, being six from each tribe; which makes the sacred number twelve multiplied by its own half. And then seventy (the round for seventy-two) were the palms, and twelve the springs of Elim. Exodus 15:27. Seventy was the number of the Jewish Sanhedrim. So Josephus tells us that Varus sent twelve Jewish legates to the Jews of Ecbatana; and by the Jews of Ecbatana seventy legates were sent to Varus to plead their cause, all of whom he slew. Josephus himself, when sent to regulate the affairs of Galilee, choose seventy colleagues. In the siege of Jerusalem there were seventy citizens chosen as a body of judges. As twelve was the number of the tribes of Israel, so seventy is the ritual number of the nations of the earth, and seventy the ritual number of Gentile dialects. At the Feast of Tabernacles, whither Jesus was now going, the Jews were accustomed to sacrifice seventy bullocks in behalf of the Gentile nations.

We may now see the reason for the selection of the number Seventy, and the probable significance of this body. This college of ministry, next in rank to the twelve, was appointed to herald the way of Jesus. But as the twelve had reference to the tribes of Jews, so the Seventy were the symbol of the preaching of the universal gospel to all the nations of the earth. It is true that the twelve, independently considered, were the ministry for the whole world. But just as Peter, though a universal minister, was the apostle of the circumcision in comparison with Paul the apostle of the Gentiles, so the twelve, though absolutely a universal ministry, were a Jewish ministry in comparison with the Seventy. This general view (adopted by such scholars as Weiseler, Tischendorf, and Ellicott) will perhaps increase in apparent probability as we proceed.

What the Seventy were to Christ, his missionaries, that the demons were to Satan, his emissaries. The downfall of the emissaries is revealed to the missionaries; the downfall of the prince of darkness is revealed to the prince of light. See notes on Luke 10:17.