Eldad and Medad

Blumenthal asks why God set the number of elders at seventy, a figure that forced Moses to eliminate two qualified candidates by lot. Drawing on Maimonides, who insists that prophecy never arrives without prior study and moral refinement, he notes that the seventy prophesied only briefly, while the two excluded men continued unaided outside the sanctuary. That contrast yields two prophetic types: the self-developed visionary, like Moses and later Elijah, and the mentored successor, like Joshua and David. Reading their names against Almodad in Genesis 10, Blumenthal suggests both signal those who go uncounted, and argues that communal leadership consistently passes to the mentored figure.