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What other disciples besides the Twelve did Jesus send out?
Luke: “After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come” ([x, 1]).
In not one of the other twenty-six books of the New Testament is this important feature of Christ’s ministry mentioned. The seventy elders of Moses doubtless suggested it. “And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spoke unto him [Moses], and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders” ([Num. xi, 25]).
Seventy was a sacred number with the Jews and is of frequent occurrence in their writings. “And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls” ([Ex. i, 5]). Abimelech had “seventy brethren” ([Jud. ix, 56]). “Ahab had seventy sons” ([2 K. x. 1]). Isaiah prophesied that “Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years” ([xxiii, 15]). Jeremiah prophesied that the Jews were to “serve the king of Babylon seventy years” ([xxv, 11]). In Ezekiel’s vision there stood before the idols of Israel “seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel” ([viii, 11]). In Daniel’s vision “seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon the holy city [Jerusalem]” ([ix, 24]).