Goy - Rabbinic Judaism

Rabbinic Judaism

One of the more poetic descriptions of the chosen people in the Old Testament, and popular among Jewish scholarship, as the highest description of themselves: when God proclaims in the holy writ, goy ehad b'aretz, or 'a unique nation upon the earth!' (2 Samuel 7:23 and 1 Chronicles 17:21).

The Rabbinic literature conceives of the nations (goyim) of the world as numbering seventy, each with a distinct language.

On the verse, “He set the borders of peoples according to the number of the Children of Israel,”(Deut., 32:8) Rashi explains: “Because of the number of the Children of Israel who were destined to come forth from the children of Shem, and to the number of the seventy souls of the Children of Israel who went down to Egypt, He set the ‘borders of peoples’ seventy languages.”

Chaim ibn Attar maintains that this is the symbolism behind the Menorah: “The seven candles of the Menorah correspond to the world's nations, which number seventy. Each alludes to ten . This alludes to the fact that they all shine opposite the western, which corresponds to the Jewish people.”