Strengthen your faith in God's word

Gideon “had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for he had many wives” (Judges 8:30), and a concubine in Shechem bare him Abimelech (8:31). Abimelech “slew his brethren the sons of Jerubbaal, being threescore and ten persons, upon one stone: notwithstanding yet Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left; for he hid himself” (9:5). If seventy were slain and one escaped, were there seventy-one?

Preferred: “Being threescore and ten persons” tells who the brethren were, the seventy sons of Judges 8:30, and doesn’t count the dead: the same verse goes on, “notwithstanding yet Jotham … was left.” The writer who gives the seventy says in the same breath that one escaped, and Jotham himself, the one who escaped, says that Abimelech had “slain his sons, threescore and ten persons, upon one stone” (9:18). Abimelech, the concubine’s son, is not one of the seventy.

Scripture names a company by its number in this way when one of it is missing: Thomas was “one of the twelve” (John 20:24) after Judas was gone. Gill calls it the round number, “as in many other instances.”