SEVENTY DISCIPLES. Luke 10:1-16 records the sending out of seventy disciples by Jesus as a part of His extended journey to Jerusalem. The number seventy was symbolic to the Jews. It suggested the number of elders that Moses had chosen to help with the task of leading Israel in the wilderness (Num 11:16, 17, 24, 25). It was also (perhaps because of Moses’ selection of seventy elders in the wilderness) the number of the members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews (though that number has been fixed at seventy-one or seventy-two by some). It was also the “number” of the nations in the world (see Gen 10, the LXX has seventy-two), coming from the reference to the seventy members of Jacob’s family in Egypt. Some have supposed that Jesus foreshadowed the preaching of the Gospel to all nations. As far as can be known, the event may have come close to the Feast of Tabernacles at which seventy bullocks were sacrificed, corresponding to the nations of the world. Interpreters who consider Luke to have written his gospel on the pattern of the Pentateuch find this passage to be represented by the Book of Numbers in that body of writings.