Israel traveled with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac. God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night, and said, “Jacob, Jacob!” He said, “Here I am.”
He said, “I am God, the God of your father. Don’t be afraid to go down into Egypt, for there I will make of you a great nation. I will go down with you into Egypt. I will also surely bring you up again. Joseph’s hand will close your eyes.”
Jacob rose up from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. They took their livestock, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt—Jacob, and all his offspring with him, his sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters, and he brought all his offspring with him into Egypt.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–5 1. And Israel took his journey. Because the holy…
1. And Israel took his journey. Because the holy man is compelled to leave the land of Canaan and to go elsewhere, he offers, on his departure, a sacrifice to the Lord, for the purpose of testifying that the covenant which God had made with his fathers was confirmed and ratified to himself. For, though he was accustomed to exercise himself in the external worship of God, there was yet a special reason for this sacrifice. And, doubtless, he had then peculiar need of support, lest his faith should fail: for he was about to be deprived of the inheritance promised to him, and of the sight of that land which was the type and the pledge of the heavenly country. Might it not come into his mind that he had hitherto been deluded with a vain hope? Therefore, by renewing the memory of the divine covenant, he applies a suitable remedy against falling from the faith. For this reason, he offers a sacrifice on the very boundaries of that land, as I have just said; that we might know it to be something more than usual. And he presents this worship to the God of his fathers, to testify that, although he is departing from that land, into which Abraham had been called; yet he does not thereby cut himself off from the God in whose worship he had been educated. It was truly a remarkable proof of constancy, that when cast out by famine into another region, so that he might not even be permitted to sojourn in the land of which he was the lawful lord; he yet retains, deeply impressed on his mind, the hope of his hidden right. It was not without subjecting himself to odium that he differed openly from other nations, by worshipping the God of his fathers. But what profit was there in having a religion different from all others? Seeing, then, that he does not repent of having worshipped the God of his fathers, and that he now also perseveres in fear and reverence towards him; we hence infer how deeply he was rooted in true piety. By offering a sacrifice, he both increases his own strength, and makes profession of his faith; because, although piety is not bound to external symbols, yet he will not neglect those helps, the use of which he has found to be, by no means, superfluous.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 Whereby he both signifieth, that he worshipped the true…
Whereby he both signifieth, that he worshipped the true God, and also that he kept in his heart the possession of that land from whence present necessity drove him.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–7 Gen 46:1 And Israel took his journey with all…
Gen 46:1 And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.
Ver. 1. And came to Beersheba.] A place, (1.) Consecrated to God’s worship; (2.) Where he and his fathers had met God, and received many mercies; (3.) That lay in his way from Hebron to Egypt. But say it had been out of his way; yet it had been nothing out of his way to go thither and seek God. A whet is no let; a bait by the way no hindrance; the oiling of the wheel furthers the journey. As it is, Tithe, and be rich; so, Pray, and be prosperous. But say it should be some prejudice; Is it not wisdom to make God’s service costly to us? Cannot he make us amends? "give us much more than the hundred talents?" {2Ch 25:9} Is anything lost by his service? Prayer furthers thrift. The night of Popery will shame many of us; who in their superstitious zeal had this proverb, Mass and meat hindereth no man’s thrift. The very heathen offered sacrifices when they took journeys, as Festus witnesseth. {a}
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{a} Fest., lib. xiv.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 Both in thankfulness to God for former favours, and…
Both in thankfulness to God for former favours, and especially for Joseph's preservation and happiness; and by way of supplication to God for his direction in this great case, whether he might leave the promised land of Canaan, and go into the idolatrous and impious land of Egypt; and for his protection and blessing, as well in his journey as in Egypt.
The God of his father Isaac; whom Isaac honoured and served, and who had constantly protected and provided for Isaac, and confirmed his covenant with him. He mentions Isaac rather than Abraham, partly for Isaac's honour, to show that though Isaac was much inferior to Abraham in gifts and graces, yet God was no less Isaac's than Abraham's God, and therefore would be his God also, notwithstanding his unworthiness; and partly for his own comfort, because Isaac was Jacob's immediate parent, and had transferred the blessing of the covenant from Esau to Jacob, and the validity of that translation depended upon Isaac's interest in God.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 5 The divine precept is, In all thy ways acknowledge…
The divine precept is, In all thy ways acknowledge God; and the promise annexed to it is, He shall direct thy paths. Jacob has here a very great concern before him, not only a journey, but a removal, to settle in another country, a change which was very surprising to him (for he never had any other thoughts than to live and die in Canaan), and which would be of great consequence to his family for a long time to come. Now here we are told,
I. How he acknowledged God in this way. He came to Beersheba, from Hebron, where he now dwelt; and there he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac, Gen 46:1. He chose that place, in remembrance of the communion which his father and grandfather had with God in that place. Abraham called on God there (Gen 21:33), so did Isaac (Gen 26:25), and therefore Jacob made it the place of his devotion, the rather because it lay in his way. In his devotion, 1. He had an eye to God as the God of his father Isaac, that is, a God in covenant with him; for by Isaac the covenant was entailed upon him. God had forbidden Isaac to go down to Egypt when there was a famine in Canaan (Gen 26:2), which perhaps Jacob calls to mind when he consults God as the God of his father Isaac, with this thought, "Lord, though I am very desirous to see Joseph, yet if thou forbid me to go down to Egypt, as thou didst my father Isaac, I will submit, and very contentedly stay where I am." 2. He offered sacrifices, extraordinary sacrifices, besides those at his stated times; these sacrifices were offered, (1.) By way of thanksgiving for the late blessed change of the face of his family, for the good news he had received concerning Joseph, and for the hopes he had of seeing him. Note, We should give God thanks for the beginnings of mercy, though they are not yet perfected; and this is a decent way of begging further mercy. (2.) By way of petition for the presence of God with him in his intended journey; he desired by these sacrifices to make his peace with God, to obtain the forgiveness of sin, that he might take no guilt along with him in this journey, for that is a bad companion. By Christ, the great sacrifice, we must reconcile ourselves to God, and offer up our requests to him. (3.) By way of consultation. The heathen consulted their oracles by sacrifice. Jacob would not go till he had asked God's leave: "Shall I go down to Egypt, or back to Hebron?" Such must be our enquiries in doubtful cases; and, though we cannot expect immediate answers from heaven, yet, if we diligently attend to the directions of the word, conscience, and providence, we shall find it is not in vain to ask counsel of God.
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II. How God directed his paths: In the visions of the night (probably the very next night after he had offered his sacrifices, as Ch2 1:7) God spoke unto him, Gen 46:2. Note, Those who desire to keep up communion with God shall find that it never fails on his side. If we speak to him as we ought, he will not fail to speak to us. God called him by name, by his old name, Jacob, Jacob, to remind him of his low estate; his present fears did scarcely become an Israel. Jacob, like one well acquainted with the visions of the Almighty, and ready to obey them, answers, "Here I am, ready to receive orders:" and what has God to say to him?
1. He renews the covenant with him: I am God, the God of thy father (Gen 46:3); that is, "I am what thou ownest me to be: thou shalt find me a God, a divine wisdom and power engaged for thee; and thou shalt find me the God of thy father, true to the covenant made with him."
2. He encourages him to make this removal of his family: Fear not to go down into Egypt. It seems, though Jacob, upon the first intelligence of Joseph's life and glory in Egypt, resolved, without any hesitation, I will go and see him; yet, upon second thoughts, he saw some difficulties in it, which he knew not well how to get over. Note, Even those changes that seem to have in them the greatest joys and hopes, yet have an alloy of cares and fears, Nulla est sincera voluptas - There is no unmingled pleasure. We must always rejoice with trembling. Jacob had many careful thoughts about this journey, which God took notice of. (1.) He was old, 130 years old; and it is mentioned as one of the infirmities of old people that they are afraid of that which is high, and fears are in the way, Ecc 12:5. It was a long journey, and Jacob was unfit for travel, and perhaps remembered that his beloved Rachel died in a journey. (2.) He feared lest his sons should be tainted with the idolatry of Egypt, and forget the God of their fathers, or enamoured with the pleasures of Egypt, and forget the land of promise. (3.) Probably he thought of what God had said to Abraham concerning the bondage and affliction of his seed (Gen 15:13), and was apprehensive that his removal to Egypt would issue in that. Present satisfactions should not take us off from the consideration and prospect of future inconveniences, which possibly may arise from what now appears most promising. (4.) He could not think of laying his bones in Egypt. But, whatever his discouragements were, this was enough to answer them all, Fear not to go down into Egypt.
3. He promises him comfort in the removal. (1.) That he should multiply in Egypt: "I will there, where thou fearest that thy family will sink and be lost, make it a great nation. That is the place Infinite Wisdom has chosen for the accomplishment of that promise." (2.) That he should have God's presence with him: I will go down with thee into Egypt. Note, Those that go whither God sends them shall certainly have God with them, and that is enough to secure them wherever they are and to silence their fears; we may safely venture even into Egypt if God go down with us. (3.) That neither he nor his should be lost in Egypt: I will surely bring thee up again. Though Jacob died in Egypt, yet this promise was fulfilled, [1.] In the bringing up of his body, to be buried in Canaan, about which, it appears, he was very solicitous, Gen 49:29, Gen 49:32. [2.] In the bringing up of his seed to be settled in Canaan. Whatever low or darksome valley we are called into at any time, we may be confident, if God go down with us into it, that he will surely bring us up again. If he go with us down to death, he will surely bring us up again to glory. (4.) That living and dying, his beloved Joseph should be a comfort to him: Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. This is a promise that Joseph should live as long as he lived, that he should be with him at his death, and close his eyes with all possible tenderness and respect, as the dearest relations used to do. Probably Jacob, in the multitude of this thought within him, had been wishing that Joseph might do this last office of love for him: Ille meos oculos comprimat - Let him close my eyes; and God thus answered him in the letter of his desire. Thus God sometimes gratifies the innocent wishes of his people, and makes not only their death happy, but the very circumstances of it agreeable.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–7 And Israel took his journey with all that he…
And Israel took his journey with all that he had,.... Set forward in it immediately, as soon as possible after he had resolved to take it, and with him he took all his children and grandchildren, and all his cattle and goods; which shows that he took his journey not only to see his son Joseph, but to continue in Egypt, at least during the years of famine, as his son desired he would, otherwise there would have been no occasion of taking all along with him:
and came to Beersheba: where he and his ancestors Abraham and Isaac had formerly lived; a place where sacrifices had often been offered up, and the worship of God performed, and much communion enjoyed with him. This is said to be sixteen miles from Hebron (n), where Jacob dwelt, and according to Musculus was six German miles from it:
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and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac; which were attended with prayer and praise; with praise for hearing that his son Joseph was alive, and with prayer that he might have a good, safe, and prosperous journey.
(n) Bunting's Travels, p. 72.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 7 Jacob is here removing to Egypt in his old…
Jacob is here removing to Egypt in his old age.
I. God sends him thither, ver. 1-4.
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II. All his family goes with him, ver. 5-27.
III. Joseph bids him welcome, ver. 28-34.
And Israel came to Beer-sheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac - He chose that place in remembrance of the communion which his father and grandfather had with God in that place. In his devotion he had an eye to God as the God of his father Isaac, that is, a God in covenant with him, for by Isaac the covenant was entailed upon him. He offered sacrifices, extraordinary sacrifices, besides those at his stated times. These sacrifices were offered,
1. By way of thanksgiving for the late blessed change of the face of his family, for the good news he had received concerning Joseph, and the hopes he had of seeing him.
2. By way of petition for the presence of God with him in his intended journey.
3. By way of consultation. Jacob would not go on 'till he had asked God's leave.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 7 Jacob begins his journey to Egypt, comes to Beer-sheba,…
CHAPTER XLVI
Jacob begins his journey to Egypt, comes to Beer-sheba, and
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offers sacrifices to God, 1.
God appears to him in a vision, gives him gracious promises,
and assures him of his protection, 2-4.
He proceeds, with his family and their cattle, on his journey
towards Egypt, 5-7.
A genealogical enumeration of the seventy persons who
went down to Egypt, 8, c.
The posterity of Jacob by LEAH. Reuben and his sons, 9.
Simeon and his sons, 10.
Levi and his sons, 11.
Judah and his sons, 12.
Issachar and his sons, 13.
And Zebulun and his sons, 14.
All the posterity of Jacob by LEAH, thirty and three, 15.
The posterity of Jacob by ZILPAH. Gad and his sons, 16.
Asher and his sons, 17.
All the posterity of Jacob by ZILPAH, sixteen, 18.
The posterity of Jacob by RACHEL. Joseph and his sons,
19, 20.
Benjamin and his sons, 21.
All the posterity of Jacob by RACHEL, fourteen, 22.
The posterity of Jacob by BILHAH. Dan and his sons, 23.
Naphtali and his sons, 24.
All the posterity of Jacob by BILHAH, seven, 25.
All the immediate descendants of Jacob by his four wives,
threescore and six, 26
and all the descendants of the house of Jacob, seventy souls, 27.
Judah is sent before to inform Joseph of his father's coming, 28.
Joseph goes to Goshen to meet Jacob, 29.
Their affecting interview, 30.
Joseph proposes to return to Pharaoh, and inform him of the
arrival of his family, 31,
and of their occupation, as keepers of cattle, 32.
Instructs them what to say when called before Pharaoh, and
questioned by him, that they might be permitted to dwell
unmolested in the land of Goshen, 33, 34.
NOTES ON CHAP. XLVI
Verse 1. And came to Beer-sheba] This place appears to be mentioned, not only because it was the way from Hebron, where Jacob resided, to Egypt, whither he was going, but because it was a consecrated place, a place where God had appeared to Abraham, Ge 21:33, and to Isaac, Ge 26:23, and where Jacob is encouraged to expect a manifestation of the same goodness: he chooses therefore to begin his journey with a visit to God's house; and as he was going into a strange land, he feels it right to renew his covenant with God by sacrifice. There is an old proverb which applies strongly to this case: "Prayers and provender never hinder any man's journey. He who would travel safely must take God with him.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 7 Gen 46:1. Israel came to Beer-sheba — Which place…
Gen 46:1. Israel came to Beer-sheba — Which place he chose in remembrance of the communion which his father and grandfather had had with God in that place. And offered sacrifices — That is, extraordinary sacrifices, besides those he was wont to offer at stated times; and this he did, as well to express his gratitude for the preservation of Joseph’s life, and the many other blessings which he had received, as by way of supplication to God for his direction in this important affair, whether he might leave the promised land of Canaan, and remove into the idolatrous country of Egypt; and if so, for the divine protection and blessing to be vouchsafed toward himself and family, both in his journey and in Egypt.
Unto the God of his father Isaac — Whom Isaac had honoured and served, and who had constantly provided for and confirmed his covenant with him. He mentions Isaac rather than Abraham, to show that though Isaac was much inferior to Abraham in gifts and grace, yet God was no less Isaac’s than Abraham’s God, and therefore would be his God also, notwithstanding his unworthiness.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v1 - Jacob Goes Down to Egypt
- Jacob Goes Down to Egypt
9. פלוּא pallû', Pallu, “distinguished.” חצרן chetsrôn, Chetsron, of the “court,” or “village.” כרמי karmı̂y, Karmi, “vine-dresser.”
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10. ימוּאל yemû'êl, Jemuel, “day of El.” ימין yâmı̂yn, Jamin, “right hand.” אהד 'ôhad, Ohad, “joining together.” יכין yâkı̂yn, Jakin, “he shall establish.” צחר tsôchar, Tsochar, “whiteness.”
11. גרשׁון gêreshôn, Gereshon, “expelling.” קהת qehâth, Qehath, “assembly.” מררי merârı̂y, Merari, “flowing, bitter.”
12. חמוּל châmûl, Chamul, “pitied, treated with mercy.”
13. תולע tôlâ‛, Tola‘, “worm, scarlet.” פוּה pû'âh, Puvvah, “mouth?” יוב yôb, Job, “enemy?” שׂמרן śı̂mrôn, Shimron, “watch.”
14. סרד sered, Sered, “fear.” אלון 'êlôn, Elon, “oak.” יחלאל yachle'êl, Jachleel, “El shall sicken or inspire with hope.”
16. צפיון tsı̂phyôn, Tsiphjon, “watcher.” חגי chaggı̂y, Chaggi, “festive.” שׁוּני shûnı̂y, Shuni, “quiet.” אצבון 'etsbôn, Etsbon, “toiling?” ערי ‛êrı̂y, ‘Eri, “watcher.” ארודי 'ǎrôdı̂y, Arodi, rover? אראלי 'ar'êlı̂y, Areli, “lion of El?”
17. ימנה yı̂mnâh, Jimnah, “prosperity.” ישׁוה yı̂shvâh, Jishvah, ישׁוי yı̂shvı̂y, Jishvi, “even, level.” בריעה berı̂y‛âh, Beri‘ah, “in evil.” שׂרח śerach, Serach, “overflow.” חבר cheber, Cheber, “fellowship.” מלכיאל malkı̂y'êl Malkiel, “king of EL”
21. בלע bela‛, Bela‘, “devouring.” בכר beker, Beker, “a young camel.” אשׁבל 'ashbêl Ashbel, “short?” גרא gêrâ', Gerah, “a grain.” נעמן na‛ămân, Na‘aman, “pleasant.” אחי 'êchı̂y Echi, “brotherly?” ראשׁ rô'sh, Rosh, “head.” מפים mûppı̂ym, Muppim, חפים chûppı̂ym, Chuppim, “covering.” ארד 'ard, Ard, “fugitive, rover.”
23. צשׁים chûshı̂ym, Chushim, “haste.”
24. יחצאל yachtse'êl, Jachtseel, “El will divide.” גוּני gûnı̂y, Guni, “dyed.” יצר yêtser, Jetser, “form.” שׂלם śı̂llêm, Shillem, “retribution.”
The second dream of Joseph is now to receive its fulfillment. His father is to bow down before him. His mother is dead. It is probable that also Leah is deceased. The figure, by which the dream shadows forth the reality, is fulfilled, when the spirit of it receives its accomplishment.
Gen 46:1-4
Jacob arriving at Beer-sheba is encouraged by a revelation from God. Beer-sheba may be regarded as the fourth scene of Abraham’s abode in the land of promise. “Offered sacrifices.” He had gathered from the words of the Lord to Abraham Gen 15:13, and the way in which the dreams of Joseph were realized in the events of Providence, that his family were to descend into Egypt. He felt therefore, that in taking this step he was obeying the will of Heaven. Hence, he approaches God in sacrifices at an old abode of Abraham and Isaac, before he crosses the border to pass into Egypt. On this solemn occasion God appears to him in the visions of the night. He designates himself EL the Mighty, and the God of his father. The former name cheers him with the thought of an all-sufficient Protector. The latter identifies the speaker with the God of his father, and therefore, with the God of eternity, of creation, and of covenant. “Fear not to go down into Mizraim.” This implies both that it was the will of God that he should go down to Egypt, and that he would be protected there. “A great nation.”
Jacob had now a numerous family, of whom no longer one was selected, but all were included in the chosen seed. He had received the special blessing and injunction to be fruitful and multiply Gen 28:3; Gen 35:11. The chosen family is to be the beginning of the chosen nation. “I will go down with thee.” The “I” is here emphatic, as it is also in the assurance that he will bring him up in the fullness of time from Egypt. If Israel in the process of growth from a family to a nation had remained among the Kenaanites, he would have been amalgamated with the nation by intermarriage, and conformed to its vices. By his removal to Egypt he is kept apart from the demoralizing influence of a nation, whose iniquity became so great as to demand a judicial extirpation Gen 15:16. He is also kept from sinking into an Egyptian by the fact that a shepherd, as he was, is an abomination to Egypt; by his location in the comparatively high land of Goshen, which is a border land, not naturally, but only politically, belonging to Egypt; and by the reduction of his race to a body of serfs, with whom that nation would not condescend to intermingle. “Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.” His long-lost son shall be present to perform the last offices to him when deceased.
Gen 46:5-7
The descent into Egypt is now described. “His daughters, and his sons’ daughters.” In the following list only one daughter of Jacob is mentioned, Dinah, and only one son’s daughter, Serah. It is possible, but not probable, that there were more daughters than these at the time in his family. But even if there were no others, the plural is adopted in order to correspond with the general form of classification, from which the one daughter and the one granddaughter are merely accidental deviations. The same principle applies to the sons of Dan Gen 46:23, and to other instances in Scripture 1Ch 2:8, 1Ch 2:42.
Verse 8-27
The list given here of the family of Jacob as it came down into Egypt is not to be identified with a list of their descendants two hundred and fifty years after, contained in Num. 26, or with another list constructed after the captivity, and referring to certain of their descendants in and after the times of the monarchy. Nor is this the place to mark out or investigate the grounds of the diversities from the present which these later lists exhibit. Our proper business here is to examine into the nature and import of this ancient and original list of the family of Jacob. It purports to be a list of the names of the sons of Israel, “who went into Mizraim.” This phrase implies that the sons of Israel actually went down into Egypt; and this is accordingly historically true of all his immediate sons, Joseph having gone thither about twenty-two years before the others. And the word “sons” is to be understood here in its strict sense, as we find it in the immediate context Gen 46:7 distinguished from sons’ sons and other descendants.
“Jacob and his sons.” From this expression we perceive the progenitor is to be included with the sons among those who descended to Egypt. This also is historically exact. For the sake of clearness it is proper here to state the approximate ages of these heads of Israel at the time of the descent. Jacob himself was 130 years of age Gen 47:9. Joseph was in his thirtieth year when he stood before Pharaoh to interpret his dreams and receive his commission as governor-general of Egypt, Gen 41:46. At the end of the second year of the famine nine full years were added to his life. He was therefore, we may suppose, 39 years old when Jacob arrived in Egypt, and born when his father was 91. As we conceive that he was born in the fifteenth year of Jacob’s sojourn in Padan-aram, and Reuben in the eighth, we infer that Reuben was at the time of the descent into Egypt seven years older than Joseph, or 46, Simon 45, Levi 44, Judah 43, Dan about 43, Naphtali about 42, Gad about 42, Asher about 41, Issakar about 41, Zebulun about 40, Dinah about 39, Benjamin about 26. “Jacob’s first-born Reuben.” This refers to the order of nature, without implying that the rights of first-birth were to be secured to Reuben 1Ch 5:1-2.
Gen 46:9-15
The sons of Leah and their descendants are here enumerated. Reuben has four sons, who appear without variation in the other two lists Num 26:5-6; 1Ch 5:3. Of the six sons of Simon, Ohad appears in the other lists, and Nemuel and Zerah appear as colloquial variations of Jemuel and Zohar. Such diversities in oral language are usual to this day in the East and elsewhere. “Son of a Kenaanitess.” This implies that intermarriage with the Kenaanites was the exception to the rule in the family of Jacob. Wives might have been obtained from Hebrew, Aramaic, or at all events Shemite tribes who were living in their vicinity. The three sons of Levi are common to all the lists, with the slight variation of Gershom for Gershon. The sons of Judah are also unvaried. We are here reminded that Er and Onon died in the land of Kenaan Gen 46:12, and of course did not come down into Egypt. The extraordinary circumstances of Judah’s family are recorded in Gen. 38: In order that Hezron and Hamul may have been born at the arrival of Jacob’s household in Egypt, Judah’s and Perez’s first sons must have been born in the fourteenth year of their respective fathers. For the discussion of this matter see the remarks on that chapter. The four sons of Issakar occur in the other lists, with the variation of Jashub for Job. The three sons of Zebulun recur in the book of Numbers; but in the list of Chronicles no mention is made of his posterity. Dinah does not appear in the other lists. The descendants of Leah are in all thirty-two; six sons, one daughter, twenty-three grandsons, and two great grandsons. “All the souls, his sons and his daughters, were thirty and three.” Here “all the souls” include Jacob himself, and “his sons and his daughters” are to be understood as a specification of what is included besides himself.
Gen 46:16-18
Next are enumerated the sons of Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid. The seven sons of Gad recur in Num. 26, with the variants Zephon, Ozni, and Arod, for Ziphion, Ezbon, and Arodi; but they do not occur in Chronicles. Of Asher’s five children, Jishuah is omitted in Numbers, but appears in Chronicles. This seems to arise from circumstances that the list in Numbers was drawn up at the time of the facts recorded, and that in Chronicles is extracted partly from Genesis. The other names are really the same in all the lists. The descendants of Zilpah are sixteen - two sons, eleven grandsons, one granddaughter, and two great-grandsons.
Gen 46:19-22
The sons of Rachel. It is remarkable that she alone is called the wife of Jacob, because she was the wife of his choice. Yet the children of the beloved, we perceive, are not placed before those of the less loved Deu 21:15-16. Joseph’s two sons are the same in all lists. Of the ten sons of Benjamin only five appear in Numbers Num 26:38-41, Bela and Ashbel being the same, and Ahiram, Shupham, and Hupham, being variants of Ehi, Muppim, and Huppim. In two hundred and fifty years the other five have become extinct. Naaman and Ard seem to have died early, as two sons of Bela, named after them, take their places as heads of families or clans. In Chronicles 1Ch 7:6-12 we have two lists of his descendants which do not seem to be primary, as they do not agree with either of the former lists, or with one another, though some of the names recur. The descendants of Rachel are fourteen - two sons and twelve grandsons.
Gen 46:23-25
The sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, come last. Hushim, the son of Dan, appears in Numbers Num 26:42 as Shuham, and perhaps in Chronicles 1Ch 7:12 in an obscure connection. The four sons of Naphtali occur in all the lists, Shallum being the variant in Chronicles 1Ch 7:13 for Shillem. The descendants of Bilhah are seven - two sons and five grandsons.
Gen 46:26-27
All the souls that went with Jacob into Egypt, “that came out of his loins,” were eleven sons, one daughter, fifty grandchildren, and four great-grandsons; in all, sixty-six. Jacob, Joseph and his two sons, are four; and thus, all the souls belonging to the family of Jacob which went into Egypt were seventy. This account, with its somewhat intricate details, is expressed with remarkable brevity and simplicity.
The Septuagint gives seventy-five as the sum-total, which is made out by inserting Makir the son, and Gilead the grandson of Menasseh, Shuthelah and Tahan, sons, and Edom or Eran, a grandson of Ephraim Num. 26. This version has also the incorrect statement that the sons of Joseph born to him in Egypt were nine; whereas by its own showing they were seven, and Jacob and Joseph are to be added to make up the nine. Some suppose that Stephen’s statement - ἀποστείλας δὲ Ιωσὴφ μετεκαλέσατο τὸν πατέρα αὑτοῦ Ιακὼβ καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν συγγένειαν ἐν ψυχαῖς ἐβδομήκοντα πέντε aposteilas de Iōsēph ton patera autou Iakōb kai tēn sungeneian en psuchais hebdomēkonta pente - is founded on this version. If Stephen here quoted the Septuagint as a well-known version, he was accountable only for the correctness of his quotation, and not for the error which had crept into his authority. This was immaterial to his present purpose, and it was not the manner of the sacred speakers to turn aside from their grand task to the pedantry of criticism. But it is much more likely that the text of the Septuagint has here been conformed in a bungling way to the number given by Stephen. For it is to be observed that his number refers, according to the text, to Jacob and all his kindred, “exclusive of Joseph and his sons.” They could not therefore, amount to seventy-five, but only to sixty-seven, if we count merely Jacob and his proper descendants. It is probable, therefore, that in the idea of Stephen the “kindred” of Jacob included the eight or nine surviving wives that accompanied the children of Israel. Judah’s wife was dead, and it is probable that Reuben’s was also deceased before he committed incest with Bilhah. If there were two or three more widowers the number of surviving wives would be eight or nine.
The number of the children of Israel is very particularly noted. But the Scripture lays no stress upon the number itself, and makes no particular application of it. It stands forth, therefore, on the record merely as a historical fact. It is remarkable that it is the product of seven, the number of holiness; and ten, the number of completeness. It is still more remarkable that it is the number of the names of those who are the heads of the primitive nations. This is in accordance with the fact that the church is the counterpart of the world, not only in diversity of character and destiny, but also in the adaptation of the former to work out the restitution of all things to God in the latter. The covenant with Abraham is a special means by which the seed may come, who is to give legal and vital effect to the old and general covenant with Noah the representative of the nations. The church of God in the world is to be the instrument by which the kingdom of the world is to become the kingdom of Christ. “When the Most High bestowed the inheritance on the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel” Deu 32:8. This curious sentence may have an immediate reference to the providential distribution of the human family over the habitable parts of the earth, according to the number of his church, and of his dispensation of grace; but at all events it conveys the great and obvious principle that all things whatsoever in the affairs of men are antecedently adapted with the most perfect exactitude to the benign reign of grace already realized in the children of God, and yet to be extended to all the sons and daughters of Adam.
Gen 46:28-34
The settlement in Goshen is now narrated. “Judah he sent before him.” We have already seen why the three older sons of Jacob were disqualified for taking the lead in important matters relating to the family. “To lead the way before him into Goshen” - to get the requisite directions from Joseph, and then conduct the immigrants to their destined resting-place. “And went up.” Egypt was the valley of the Nile, and therefore, a low country. Goshen was comparatively high, and therefore, at some distance from the Nile and the sea. “And he appeared unto him.” A phrase usually applied to the appearance of God to men, and intended to intimate the unexpectedness of the sight, which now came before the eyes of Jacob. “I will go up.” In a courtly sense, to approach the residence of the sovereign is to go up. Joseph intends to make the “occupation” of his kindred a prominent part of his communication to Pharaoh, in order to secure their settlement in Goshen. This he considers desirable, on two grounds: first, because Goshen was best suited for pasture; and secondly, because the chosen family would thus be comparatively isolated from Egyptian society.
The two nations were in some important respects mutually repulsive. The idolatrous and superstitious customs of the Egyptians were abhorrent to a worshipper of the true God; and “every shepherd was the abomination of Egypt.” The expression here employed is very strong, and rises even to a religious aversion. Herodotus makes the cowherds the third of the seven classes into which the Egyptians were divided (Herodotus ii. 164). Others include them in the lowest class of the community. This, however, is not sufficient to account for the national antipathy. About seventeen or eighteen centuries before the Christian era it is probable that the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, were masters of the southern part of the country, while a native dynasty still prevailed in lower Egypt. The religion of these shepherd intruders was different from that of the Egyptians which they treated with disrespect. They were addicted to the barbarities which are usually incident to a foreign rule. It is not surprising, therefore, that the shepherd became the abomination of Egypt.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 7 The well of the oath. Bersabee.
The well of the oath. Bersabee.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Israel’s emigration with his family to Egypt. The settlement…
EIGHTH SECTION
Israel’s emigration with his family to Egypt. The settlement in the land of Goshen. Jacob and Pharaoh. Joseph’s political Economy. Jacob’s charge concerning his burial at Canaan.
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Genesis 46, 47
1And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-sheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. 2And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said Jacob, Jacob. 3And he said, Here I am. And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: 4I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. 5And Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba; and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the Wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. 6And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him: 7His sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt. 8And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacob’s first-born. 9And the sons of Reuben; Hanoch [initiated or initiating, teacher], and Phallu [distinguished], and Hezron [Fürst: blooming one, beautiful one], and Carmi [Fürst: noble one, Gesen.: vine-dresser]. 10And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel [day or light of God], and Jamin [the right hand, luck], and Ohad [Gesen.: gentleness; Fürst: strong], and Jachin [founder], and Zohar [lightening one, bright-shining one], and Shaul [the one asked for] the son of a Canaanitish woman. 11And the sons of Levi; Gershon [expulsion of the profane?], Kohath [congregation of the consecrated?], and Merari [harsh one, severe one, practiser of discipline?]. 12And the sons of Judah; Er [see Gen_38:3], and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron [see Gen_5:9], and Hamul [sparer? gentle one, delicate one]. 13And the sons of Issachar; Tola [worm, cocus-worm, one dressed in crimson cloth, war-dress], and Phuvah [=Phuah, utterance, speech, mouth], and Job [= יָשׁוּב, see Num_26:29; 1Ch_7:1, returner], and Shimron [keeping, guarding]. 14And the Sons of Zebulun; Sered [escaped, salvation], and Elon [oak, strong one], and Jahleel [waiting upon God]. 15These be the sons of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob in Padan-aram, with his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three. 16And the sons of Gad; Ziphion [beholder, watchman, the seeing one], and Haggi [Chaygai, the festive one], Shuni [the resting one], and Ezbon [Gesen.: devoted; Fürst: listener], Eri [watchman], and Arodi [descendants], and Areli [heroic]. 17And the sons of Asher; Jimnah [fortune], and Ishuah [like], and Isui [alike, one to another? twins?], and Beriah [gift], and Serah [abundance], their sister; and the sons of Beriah; Heber [company, associate], and Malchiel [my king is God]. 18These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter, and these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls. 19The sons of Rachel Jacob’s wife; Joseph and Benjamin. 20And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim1 [see chap. 1, etc.], which Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah priest of On, bare unto him. 21And the sons of Benjamin were Belah [see Gen_14:2, devourer], and Becher [young camel? youth], and Ashbel [sprout], Gera [=גרה, fighter?], and Naaman [loveliness, graceful], Ehi [brotherly], and Rosh [head], Muppim [adorned one, from יפה], 22and Huppim [protected], and Ard [ruler? from ירד]. These are the sons of Rachel, which were born to Jacob: all the souls were fourteen. 23And the sons [the son] of Dan; Hushim [the hastener]. 24And the sons of Naphtali; Jahzeel [alloted by God], and Guni 25[hedged around, protected גנן], and Jezer [image, my image], and Shillem [avenger]. These are the sons of Bilhah, which Laban gave unto Rachel his daughter, and she bare these unto Jacob; 26all the souls were seven. All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were threescore and six: 27And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls; all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten. 28And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face2 unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. 29And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. 30And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive. 31And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his father’s house, I will go up, and show Pharaoh, and say unto him, My brethren, and my father’s house, which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me: 32And the men are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have. 33And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? 34That ye shall say, Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle from our youth, even until now, both we and also our fathers: that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.
Gen_47:1 Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said, My father and my brethren, and their flocks and their herds, and all that they have, are come out of the land of Canaan; and, behold, they are in the land of Goshen. 2And he took some of his brethren, even five men, and presented them unto Pharaoh. 3And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your occupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Thy 4servants are shepherds, both we, and also our fathers. They said, moreover, unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land are we come; for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen. 5And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee: 6The land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell: and if thou knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle. 7And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? 9And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. 10And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh. 11And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses [Ramses, son of the sun. The name of several Egyptian kings], as Pharaoh had commanded. 12And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father’s household with bread, according to their 13families3 [Bunsen: “To each one according to the number of his children”]. And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt, and all the land of Canaan, fainted4 by reason of the famine. 14And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house. 15And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth. 16And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail. 17And they brought their cattle unto Joseph; and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for their flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses; and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year. 18When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent; my lord also hath our herds of cattle; there is not aught left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands: 19Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh; and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate. 20And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh’s. 21And as for the people, he removed them to cities5 from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof. 22Only the land of the priests bought he not; for the priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them: where fore they sold not their lands. 23Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day, and your land, for Pharaoh; lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. 24And it shall come to pass, in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones. 25And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh’s servants. 26And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s. 27And Israel dwelled in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions6 therein, and grew, and multiplied exceedingly. 28And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; so the whole age of Jacob was an hundred forty and seven years. 29And the time drew nigh that Israel must die; and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt: 30But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place. 31And he said, I will do as thou hast said. And he said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed’s head.
PRELIMINARY REMARKES
1. The transplantation of the house of Israel to Egypt under the divine sanction in the genesis of the people of Israel, and under the protection afforded by the opposition to each other of Egyptian prejudice and Jewish custom; this being with the definite reservation, confirmed by an oath, of the return to Canaan. Such is the fundamental idea of both chapters.
2. Knobel finds a manifold difference in the history contained in chapters 46–48, “between the ground scripture as it is accepted by him, and the amplification of the later editor.” According to the Elohist (he says), Manasseh and Ephraim are said to have been youths already, whilst here, that is, in the “amplification,” etc., they appear as boys (Gen_48:8-12). In the narrative of the Elohist, Jacob’s request respecting his burial is directed to all his children, whilst here it is made to Joseph only (Gen_47:31). And this is held up as a discrepancy! See another specimen of this critical dust-raising, p. 336. Here again Knobel knows not how to take the significancy of his ἅπαξ λεγόμενα. Even הֵן, Gen_47:23, must answer as proof of a second Jehovistic document.
3. Ch. 47 and 48 are taken by Delitzsch as belonging to the superscription, as containing Jacob’s testamentary arrangements.
4. The contents: 1) Jacob’s departure, Gen_46:1-7; Genesis 2) Jacob’s family, Gen_46:8-27; Genesis 3) the reunion and mutual salutation in the land of Goshen, Gen_46:28-34; Genesis 4) introduction of Joseph’s brethren and his father Jacob to Pharaoh; grant of the Goshen territory; the induction and settlement of the house of Israel, Gen_47:1-12; Genesis 5) Joseph’s administration in Egypt, Gen_48:13-22; Genesis 6) Israel in Egypt and the proviso he makes for his return to Canaan, even in death, Gen_48:27–31.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Jacob’s departure (Gen_46:1-7).—And Israel took his journey.—Even as Israel he had a human confidence that he might follow Joseph’s call to Egypt. But as a patriarch he must have the divine sanction. Until this time he might have doubts. When he halted at Beer-sheba (“the place of Abraham’s tamarisk tree, and of Isaac’s altar”) he offered sacrifice to the God of his fathers—a peace offering, which, in this case, may also be regarded as a thankoffering, an offering of inquiry, or in fulfilment of a vow. It must be remembered that Isaac once had it in view to journey to Egypt, had not God forbidden him. And so, in the last revelation that Jacob received, in the night-vision, there comes to him a voice, saying, Jacob, Jacob; just as Abraham had to be prepared by a decisive prohibition in the repeated call, Abraham, Abraham, Gen_22:11, so, in a similar way, must Jacob here be prepared for going onward to Egypt. The revelation which Abraham had, Genesis 15, might seem dark to him. Its import neither held him back nor urged him forward on the journey. The transplantation of his house to Egypt was a bold undertaking. On this account the God of his fathers, the Providence of his fathers, reveals himself to him as God El, the powerful one,7 with whom he may safely undertake the journey, notwithstanding the apparent inconsistency that he is leaving the land of promise. The main thing in the divine promise now is, that he is not only to become a mighty people in Egypt, but that he shall return to Canaan. The latter part might be fulfilled in the return of his dead body, but this would be as symbolic pre-representation of the fact that Israel’s return to Canaan should be the return of his people. The firmness of the departure appears in the fact that Israel, with wives and children, allows himself to be placed on Egyptian wagons, and that they took with them all the movable property that they possessed in Canaan. The picture of such a migration scene upon the monument of Beni Hassan is described by Hengstenberg, “Moses and Egypt,” p. 37, etc. “Jacob is now to die in Egypt; this death, however, in a foreign land, is to have the alleviation that Joseph shall put his hand upon his eyes. This last service of love was also customary among other ancient nations (comp. Hom. II. xi. 453, etc.8).” Knobel. Concerning the wagons, see Delitzsch, p. 562.
2. Jacob’s house (Gen_46:8-27). Three things are here to be considered: 1) The number 70; 2) the enumeration of the children and grandchildren who may have been born in Egypt; 3) the relation of the present list to the one given Numbers 26, and 1 Chronicles 2. The numbering of the souls in Jacob’s household evidently points to the important symbolic number 70. This appears in its significance throughout the history of the kingdom of God. It is reflected in the ethnological table, in the 70 elders of Moses, in the Jewish Sanhedrin, in the Alexandrian version of the LXX, in the 70 disciples of our Lord, in the Jewish reduction of the heathen world to 70 nations. Ten is the number of the completed human development, seven the number of perfection in God’s work; seventy, therefore, is the development of perfection and holiness in God’s people. But between the complete development and the germ there must be a correspondence; and this is the family of the patriarch, consisting of seventy souls. “The number seventy is the mark by which the small band of emigrants is sealed and stamped as the holy seed of the people of God.” Delitzsch. On the mariner in which the number 70 is formed out of the four columns, Leah, Zilpah, Rachel, Bilhah, see Delitzsch, p. 563; Keil, p. 270. It is to be observed that Dinah, as an unmarried heiress, constitutes an independent member of the house, just as Serah, daughter of Asher (Gen_46:17); whilst it may be supposed, in respect to the other daughters and granddaughters, that by marriage they became incorporated with the families and tribes that are mentioned. The fact that a son of Simeon is specially mentioned as the son of a Canaanitish woman, shows that it was the rule in Jacob’s house to avoid Canaanitish marriages, though the “Ishmaelitish, Keturian, and Edomitic relationship still stood open to them.” Keil. The ancient connection, however, with Mesopotamia, Laban had impaired, if not entirely interrupted. A similar enumeration, Exo_1:5; Deu_10:22; whilst the LXX, and, after it, Act_7:14, presents the number 75, by counting in the five sons of Ephraim and Manasseh according to 1Ch_8:14 (see note by Keil, p. 271), an enumeration by which the persons named are still more distinctly set up as heads of families.
As to what farther relates to the sons of Pharez, the sons of Benjamin, etc., it is clear that when it is said of Jacob, that he brought all these souls to Egypt, it must have the same meaning as when it is said of his twelve sons, that he brought them out of Mesopotamia, though Benjamin was born afterwards in his home. The foundation of the Palestinian family state was laid on the return of Jacob to Canaan, whilst the formation of the Egyptian family state, and of its full patriarchal development, was laid when he came to Egypt. The idea goes ahead of the date. Baumgarten urges the literal conception; but the right view of the matter is given by Hengstenberg. For a closer discussion of the question see Keil, p. 271, and Delitzsch, p. 564; especially in relation to the difficulties of Knobel, p. 340. Keil: “It is clear that our list contains not only Jacob’s sons and grandsons already born at the time of the emigration, but besides this, all the sons that formed the ground of the twelve-tribed nation,—or, in general, all the grand-and great-grandchildren that became founders of mischpa-hoth, or independent, self-governing families. Thus only can the fact be explained, the fact otherwise inexplicable, that, in the days of Moses, with the exception of the double tribe of Joseph, there were, in none of the tribes, descendants from any grandson, or great-grandsons, of Jacob that are not mentioned in this list. The deviations in the names, as given in Numbers 26, and in Chronicles, are to be considered in their respective places.” We refer here to Keil, p. 272; Delitzsch, p. 565.
3. Their re-union and greetings in the land of Goshen. Gen_46:28-34.—And he sent Judah.—Judah has so nobly approved himself true and faithful, wise and eloquent, in Joseph’s history, that Jacob may, with all confidence, send him before to prepare the way. Judah’s mission is to receive Joseph’s directions, in order that he himself may be a guide to Israel, and lead him unto the land of Goshen. Joseph, however, hastens forward to meet his father in Goshen, and to greet him and his brethren.—And he presented himself to him.—Keil: “נִרְאָה otherwise generally thus used in speaking of an appearance of God, is here chosen to express the glory in which Joseph went to meet his father.”9 But surely it was less the external splendor, in itself considered, than the appearance of one beloved, long supposed to be dead, but now living in glorious prosperity.—Now let me die.—This joyful view of death is not to be overlooked; it is opposed to the common notion respecting the Jewish view of the life beyond the grave. Such language shows that Jacob recognizes, in Joseph’s reappearance, the last miraculous token of the divine favor as shown to him in this world.—I will go up to Pharaoh.—Knobel explains the expression from the fact, that the city of Memphis, being the royal residence, was situated higher than the district of Goshen. Keil explains it ideally as a going up to court. This view becomes necessary if we regard Tanais as the capital, which is, however, rendered somewhat doubtful by the expression itself, if it is to be taken literally.—That ye shall say, thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle.—This instruction shows Joseph’s ingenuousness, combined with prudent calculation. His brethren are frankly to confess their occupation; Joseph even sets them the example before Pharaoh, although, according to his own explanation, shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, that is, an impure caste. By this frankness, however, they are to gain the worldly advantage of having given to them this pastoral district of Goshen, and at the same time, the theocratic spiritual benefit of dwelling in Egypt, secured, by this distinction of castes, from all impure mingling with the Egyptians themselves. Knobel lays stress upon the word צאן, in distinction from בקר, because sheep and goats were not generally used for sacrifice by the Egyptians, because their meat did not belong to the priestly royal dish, and because wool was considered by the priests to be unclean, and was, therefore, never used for the wrapping of the dead. But the conclusion drawn from this, that keepers of sheep and goats had been especially תּועֵבָה (a thing tabooed), cannot be established. This, in a very high degree, was the case only with herdsmen of swine (Herod. ii. 47), who, nevertheless, together with the herdsmen of cattle, were numbered in the seven castes (Herod. ii. 164), and both together called the caste of shepherds, (Diod. i. 74). The name βουκόλοι is only a naming a potiori (from the better part).” Delitzsch. According to Grant (“Travels,” ii. 17), the herdsmen are represented on the monuments, as long, lean, distorted, sickly forms—a proof of the contempt that rested upon them. Joseph’s theocratic faithfulness preferred for his people contempt to splendor, provided that under the cover of this contempt, they might remain secluded and unmixed (see Heb_11:26). For the cause of this dis-esteem, see Keil, p. 274; Knobel, p. 341.
4. The presentation of Joseph’s brothers, and of his father, to Pharaoh. The grant of the land of Goshen. The induction and settlement. Gen_47:1-12.—Some of his brethren.—(מִקְצֶה) This has been interpreted as meaning some of the oldest, and some of the youngest, or, in some such manner; but there is no certainty about it; since the expression may mean any part as taken (cut off) from a whole. As Joseph could not present all his brethren to Pharaoh, he chooses five, a number of much significance to the Egyptians (see Gen_43:34). Pharaoh again shows himself, in this case, a man of tact and delicacy. Of the young men he asks the nature of their occupation; of old Jacob he inquires his age. Especially well does he manage in not immediately granting to Joseph’s brethren their petition to be allowed to settle in Goshen, but leaves it to Joseph, so that he appears before his brethren in all his powers, and their thanks are to be rendered unto him instead of Pharaoh. Joseph, at the same time, receives full power to appoint proper men from among them as superintending herdsmen (magistros pecoris).—See Knobel, who thinks “that this petition was more suitable for the chief of the horde (sic).” Yet he quiets himself by the fact that in other places the narrator brings forward the sons of the aged father; as though this were not an obviously proper proceeding. Still he will have it that the ground Scripture, as he calls it, reports but one introduction of Jacob.—And Jacob blessed Pharaoh.—When he came into his presence and when he left him. There is something more here than a mere conventional greeting. Jacob had every inducement to add his blessing to his thanks for Joseph’s treatment, for the stately invitation, and for the kind reception. Besides, an honorable old age is a sort of priesthood in the world.—Of my pilgrimage.—Jacob’s consciousness of the patriarchal life, as a pilgrimage in a foreign land, must have developed itself especially in his personal experience (see Heb_11:13, etc.).—Few and evil.—That is, full of sorrow. Jacob speaks of his life as of something already past. This is explained from his elevated state of soul. He is ready to die. In such presentiment of death, however, he is mistaken by almost seventeen years; for he died at the age of one hundred and forty-seven. His father, Isaac, also had thought to make his testament much earlier (see Gen_27:1, etc.). In fact, the age of Jacob fell much short of that of Abraham (one hundred and seventy-five), and that of Isaac (one hundred and eighty).—In the land of Rameses.—(Heroon-polis.) Gen_45:10, it is called Goshen. It is here named after a like-named place in Goshen (Exo_1:11); and thus we are already prepared for the departure afterwards, which started from Rameses (Exo_12:37; Num_33:35). Concerning the country of Goshen, see Keil, p. 276; Delitzsch, p. 572.
5. Joseph’s administration of the affairs of Egypt (Gen_47:13-26). This proceeding of Joseph, reducing the Egyptians, in their great necessity, to a state of entire dependence on Pharaoh, has been made the ground of severe reproach; and, indeed, it does look strange at first. The promotion of earthly welfare, and of a comfortable existence, cannot excuse a theocratic personage in bringing a free people into the condition of servants. But the question here is whether Joseph really acted in an arbitrary manner. He was not a sovereign lord of the storehouses, but only Pharaoh’s servant. As such, ho could not demand of Pharaoh views that in their aspect of liberality lay beyond his horizon; besides it is to be considered that the people themselves desired to save their lives at the price of their freedom. The point we are mainly to look at is that Joseph was not at liberty to give the corn away, and, to say nothing of Pharaoh’s right, he might thereby have opened so wide the door of a wasteful squandering, as to have produced a universal famine. We are also to suppose that Joseph was urged, step by step, to these measures, by the pressing consequences of the situation; but that he tried to mitigate, as much as posible, the dependence that necessarily followed, by an assessment of the fifth part, leaving four-fifths to them. The principal aim of the narrative is to show, in the first place, the advantages of the Israelites in comparison with the Egyptians; how splendidly the former were provided for. Again, Joseph might have yielded to the urgency of the circumstances, all the more freely from the consideration, that the future of Israel would be more secure by thus having a favorable position among a depressed, rather than a haughty and oppressive people. But, at all events, even in this relation, divine retribution surpasses, in its severity, the measure of human understanding. When afterwards the Israelites were held in bondage by the Egyptians, it may remind us of the fact, that, through Joseph, the Egyptians themselves had been made servants to Pharaoh, however pure may have been his motive.—Herds of cattle.—The expression מקנה הבהמה shows that the fair value of the cattle is here kept prominently in view; since מקנה denotes property acquired.—And as for the people they demanded.—Concerning the different readings, Gen_47:21, where the LXX and the Samaritan, and others, with Knobel, read הֶעֱבִיד instead of הֶעֱבִיר, see note, Keil, p. 277. We must not, however, suppose, with Delitzsch, a translocation of the people from one place in Egypt to another in its remotest part, but the distributing of the present crown peasants into the different towns of their respective districts throughout the whole land. The ground of this was that, for the present, they must get their sustenance from their granaries in the cities, and that, afterwards, these became the places in which they were to deliver the fifth part.—Had a portion assigned them.—We understand this of the land of the priests, not of their portion of the provision which is mentioned afterwards.—Ye shall give the fifth part.—This was no heavy tax; and there was a benefit in it, that it tended to produce an habitual carefulness in respect to the unfruitful years. That a provision, in such cases, had heretofore been wanting in Egypt, is evident from the destitution of the people. Joseph may, therefore, be looked upon, in all this, as a wise man striving with the necessities of famine, so sore an evil in ancient times.10
The accounts which Herodotus (ii. 109), and Diodorus (i. 73), have given concerning the national economy of ancient Egypt, seem to refer to dispositions of a later date, at whose basis, nevertheless, may have lain these measures of Joseph, even as the latter may have been grounded on still older relations and peculiarities. The main view to be taken in respect to this economy is, that the king, in connection with the priest and warrior castes, possessed the land (Diod. Sic.), whilst the peasants and tradesmen had land subject to rent. Now if Joseph changed the feudal system, formerly existing, into one of servitude, it is to be remembered that the former was not so favorable, nor the latter so unfavorable, as that which existed in still later times. The feudal peasant was already under an absolute authority, and was obliged, e.g., at the beginning of the seven years of plenty, to give the fifth part; whilst the servants, as they are afterwards called, were only persons put under a more definite direction in the management of their economic relations. For more on this, see Keil, p. 278, on the tax relations of the East, and also Knobel, p. 346. Gerlach maintains that the Egyptians did not become bondsmen in this transaction, but were only brought into a feudal relation to Pharaoh. It is said, however, expressly, that Joseph bought not only their land, but themselves, their bodies. It is true, a distinction may be made between this, and an entire bodily subjection; and, therefore, may it be called servitude or dependence.
6. Israel in Egypt. His proviso. His return in death to Canaan. Gen_47:27-31.—And they had possession therein.—Personal appropriation and outward extension.—And Jacob lived.—The narrative prepares us very circumstantially for Jacob’s death, as an event of great moment to his people.—Put thy hand under my thigh.—See Genesis 23 Joseph is to confirm by an oath his promise to bring his remains home to Canaan. Because Jacob exacts this of all his sons collectively (see Genesis 49), Knobel, as usual, discovers a discrepancy. It is, however, the same determination, only more fully developed in the latter passage. After Joseph’s promise, Jacob prays upon his bed. The fulfilment of his last wish has been secured.—And Israel bowed himself.—We must think of him as sitting up in his couch; it is, therefore, incorrect when Keil says, he turned towards the head of the bed, in order to worship, while lying with the face turned towards the bed. The Vulgate which Keil quotes, says the reverse: adoravit Deum conversus ad lectuli caput. The idea is, that, kneeling, he bows himself in the bed, with his face turned towards the head. The LXX seems to have read הַמַּטֶה for הַמִּטָּה (ham-mat-teh for ham-mit-tah) caused by a mistake of the vowels to the unpointed consonants, and the consideration that Jacob is not represented as sick and confined to his bed until the next chapter. By this LXX interpretation: προσεκύνησεν ’Ισραὴλ ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου αὐτοῦ (which we also find in the Syriac, the Italian, and Heb_11:21), there is suggested the rich and beautiful thought, that Jacob celebrates the completion of his pilgrimage (Gen_47:9) in prayer and thanksgiving. If we take it in the other sense, having no greater evidence, and less significance, the turning to the bed’s head in a kneeling posture is the one natural to the body, if we imagine the bed’s head to be the higher part. At the same time, it seems here expressed that Jacob, in praying, turns away from the world, and from men to God, as the facing and turning of the priest at the altar expresses the same idea symbolically. Von Bohlen maintains that the question has nothing to do with praying. It means, he says, that Jacob was sinking back upon his pillow, as David, 1Ki_1:47, whilst Joseph put his hand under his thigh. For such an occasion, however, the word וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ (generally denoting adoration) would seem unhappily chosen, and is easily misunderstood. Delitzsch takes the two representations together (as denoting in one the act of prayer and the oath ceremonial).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Jacob’s halt at Beer-sheba furnishes a proof again of the distinction between human certainty, and that derived from the divine assurance. Thus John the Baptist knew already of the Messianic mission, before his baptism, but it was not until the revelation made at the baptism that he received the divine assurance which he needed as the forerunner of Christ. In our day, too, this distinction is of special importance for the minister of the gospel. Words of divine assurance are the proper messages from the pulpit.
2. The God of Israel is also the mighty God of Jacob—the same God who commanded the one to stay, the other to go.
3. Not until Jacob had again made sure and sealed his patriarchal covenant-relation with God, is he able to set forth, with joy and confidence, on a journey, with his whole family, into a strange and dangerous world.
4. Exegesis, as in other places, hastens too rapidly over the significance of these Biblical names. Though some are quite doubtful, others have an unmistakable importance, opening, by their connections, a view revealing the spirit of the respective families, and of their fathers. Thus the names of Reuben’s sons express a sanguine hope (initiated, distinguished, etc.). In the names of Levi’s sons, we may recognize the three leading traits of hierarchical rule. And so in many other cases.
5. Dinah had to atone for her former freedom, and the fanatical severity of her brothers, by a joyless single life. But she has the honor, along with Serah, of being reckoned among the founders of the house of Israel in Egypt. Together with the development of the theocracy, there is unfolded the gradual elevation of woman. The idea of female inheritance here presents itself.
6. Judah, the father’s minister to Joseph. By his faithfulness, strength, and wisdom, he has risen in the opinion of his father, and thus it is that Jacob’s divine illumination shows itself especially in respect to the tribe of Judah,—becoming a revelation full and clear in the blessing pronounced Genesis 49.
7. Jacob’s and Joseph’s reunion, full of unspeakable emotion expressed in tears and in embraces. To Jacob, Joseph appears as one who had come from the realm of the dead.
8. Jacob’s declaration: now let me die, presents another aspect in the contemplation of death and Hades, different from that which is usually raised through the more common speech respecting it in Old-Testament times. The men of the Old Testament describe Sheol as a gloomy region; but this comes from their fear of descending into it before they hare seen the full tokens of grace, or have received that peace of the Lord which giveth rest. When they have had a sight of these, they die willingly; it is then a lying down to sleep,—a going home to the fathers. In general, however, it is true that this terrified legal consciousness of death predominates over the Old-Testament evangelical consciousness of unconditional resignation in hope.
9. The instructions that Joseph gives his brethren show us that this ancient statesman clearly comprehended the truth, that the highest ingenuousness, and the purest frankness, is, at the same time, the highest wisdom (see the instructions of Christ to the apostles, Matthew 10). This wisdom of Joseph, it is true, was not the wisdom of this world. It was a divine wisdom, that he thus placed the house of Israel in Egypt under the protection of Egyptian contempt. By thus giving them a lowly position, he secured their worldly welfare, whilst promoting their theocratic prosperity.
10. Pilgrim in youth, pilgrim in age, always a wrestler,—Jacob just touches upon his sufferings, as far as it is meet for Pharaoh to hear. The feeling of his wonderful deliverances shows itself movingly in his blessing upon Joseph’s sons. The idea of the spiritual pilgrimage of believers upon earth appears very distinctly in this picture of Jacob’s life, which he sketches before Pharaoh.
11. The last thought of Jacob, erstwhile in Mesopotamia, and now in Egypt, is that of going home. There he wishes to return, even in death itself. And yet Canaan was not his true and proper home; though it was for him the type and pledge of the everlasting rest (see Hebrews 11).
12. The transplantation of Israel had for its aim the negative and positive advancement of the people of God. Negatively: It must be transplanted from Canaan if it would escape being ruined spiritually by mingling with the people of the land, or bodily, through premature wars with them. Positively: In Egypt they were parted from heathenism by a double barrier, namely, their foreign race, and their reputation as a caste impure; but here they found sustenance and room for their enlargement as a people upon its fertile soil; at the same time, they were drawn out, through the Egyptian culture, to development of their mental powers. In Egypt were they prepared for their transition from the nomadic to the agricultural state.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See Doctrinal and Ethical. Jacob’s last pilgrimage.—Jacob’s house.—Jacob and Joseph’s reunion.—Jacob’s joy in death.—Jacob before Pharaoh.—Israel in Goshen.—Taube (Gen_47:7-10): Jacob’s life: 1. As a mirror of the miseries of human life in general; 2. as a mirror especially of a true and blessed pilgrimage.
First Section. (Gen_46:1-7.) Starke: This departure to Egypt is often spoken of; Num_20:14-15 : Jos_24:4; Psa_105:23; Isa_52:4; Jer_31:2; Act_7:15.—This is the last appearance with which God favored Jacob.
Gen_46:3. Jacob might be afraid: 1. On account of his personal safety (advanced years); 2. on account of the prohibition to Isaac (Gen_26:2); 3. on account of his descendants (Egypt a heathen country); 4. on account of servitude threatening them (as predicted Gen_15:13); 5. on accouut of leaving Canaan, the promised land; 6. Abraham’s experiences, Gen_12:12 (see Jacob’s declaration Gen_45:28).—A Christian should enter upon his journeys with God accompanying.—Bibl. Tub.: God guides his people on their ways.—Cramer: Jacob an example of the fortune and pilgrimage of believers.—Schröder: The answer of God is in reply to his distressing anxiety,—to his flesh and blood, as we may regard it; therefore does he call him by his more human name: “Jacob! Jacob! Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes;” the last service of love that the nearest kindred could perform to the dying (Tob_14:15). See Robinson on the halting of the wagons at Beersheba.
Second Section. (Gen_46:8-27.) Starke: The use of this accurate catalogue of the children of Israel; it shows the separation of the tribes, and marks the tribe of the Messiah. It gives a clearer view of the people’s increase, and thus shows the fulfilling of the divine promise.—Ohad, Numbers 26 and 1Ch_4:21, not counted here; probably died without issue.—(Gen_46:15. The numbers do not sum up to more than thirty-two. The Rabbins remove the difficulty by saying, God must be counted in, since he said that he would go down with them. But this is not necessary. It would be better to say, Jacob and his children, etc.)
Gen_46:21. On the difference between this and 1Ch_8:6, and Num_26:38-39, in respect to Benjamin’s children, see the explanation in the respective places. The genealogies are important.—Bibl. Wirt.: The true church of God is a small number, but let no one stumble thereat. God takes good care of his elect, and knows all their names.—Schröder: The fact that Egypt is the hiding-place for Israel, shows that the relation was not one-sided only; if Israel was something for the heathen, it is also clear that the heathen, on the other hand, had their mission for Israel (Baumgarten).—The full people of Israel consisted of twelve sons, and seventy souls, and the Christian church consisted of twelve apostles, and seventy disciples (Roos).
Third Section. (Gen_46:28-34.) Starke: (In the land of Goshen; after several weeks spent on a journey of forty or fifty miles).—Joh_16:20.—Was Joseph’s joy great when he saw again his father, how great will be the joy of God’s children when they meet each other again in glory!—Schröder: Now the patriarch is ready to die, for in Joseph he beholds the fulfilment of all the promises.
Gen_46:33. To be sure, is to win. Right ahead, is the motto of the good rider (Valer. Herb.). The pride of the world makes small estimate of what God regards as highest (Baumgarten). Thus began already in the house of Jacob, at its entrance into Egypt, that reproach of Christ which Moses afterwards esteemed greater riches than the treasures of Egypt (Roos). This antipathy of the Egyptians towards the shepherd-people was a fence to them, such as was afterwards the law of Moses (Roos).
Fourth Section. (Gen_47:1-12.) Starke: Gen_47:1. Joseph does not ask particularly for Goshen, yet he knows in what manner to arrange it, that Pharaoh may readily perceive how much he would be obliged to him for the grant of that district.—(Gen_47:2. מקצה; some translate it from the extremes, that is from the oldest and the youngest; others understand it as referring to those who were of least account. Their idea is that Joseph meant to prevent Pharaoh’s employing them as soldiers.)—Calvin: Se quis aliter pure Deo servire non potest quam si mundo se fœtidum reddat, hic omnis facessat ambitio. A Christian must not be ashamed of the humble condition in which God may have placed him.—Muscul.: Pharaoh does not inquire after Jacob’s piety, religion, and godly walk, but only after his age.—Seventeen years. As long as he had sorrowfully cared for Joseph, so long Joseph, in return, cared for him. Earthly benefits God repays by spiritual blessings; 1Co_9:11.—Cramer: God bestows much on the man who has many children.—Schröder: Very proper that they remain in the border district until everything is settled. In the midst of the Egyptians, the Israelites are ever as strangers in the land.—Heim: The patriarch standing before Pharaoh. The patriarch and the priest of God’s church before the king of the mightiest and most civilized state at that time in the word.
Fifth Section. (Gen_47:13-26.) Starke: Gen_47:13. A divine punishment of the Egyptians. (They would not otherwise have regarded Joseph’s example in the sparing use of the corn; some, perhaps, would have scouted his predictions).
Gen_47:16. Joseph said: Fidelity to Pharaoh requires that I should not let you have the corn for nothing.—Freiburger Bibel: Slavery is against the law of nature.—Our daily bread, a great proof of the divine beneficence.—(Gen_47:22. Circumstances sometimes excuse. If Joseph favored the heathen priests it was in obedience to the express commands of Pharaoh.)—Schröder: Concerning Goshen. It was for the most part a prairie country, adapted to the grazing of cattle, and yet there were fertile agricultural portions (Hengstenberg).—See Robinson’s account of Goshen, or the province Surkijeh, p. 620.—In the enumeration of Egyptian herds, horses come first, Exo_9:3; for their raising was especially proper for the country.—Sheep, “held sacred by the Thebans.”—Asses, were sacrificed to Typhon.—The fifth, a religious political revenue, whose relation to tithes (double fifths) is obvious. The tax of a fifth is small in a fertile land like Egypt, where harvests are from thirty to a hundred fold.)—(Robinson compares Joseph’s conduct with that of Mohammed Ali (p. 623), who made himself sole owner of all the property in Egypt; but the great difference between them is obvious.)—The double tithe in Israel was probably a Mosaic imitation. “As Pharaoh provides by a fifth for the sustenance of the priests, so also Jehovah” (Hengstenberg).
Sixth Section. (Gen_47:26-31.) Starke: Bibl. Tub.: It is right that a certain part of what the land produces should be given to the lord.11
Gen_47:30. Thus Jacob testifies to the resurrection of the dead, as one who awakes from sleep.—Schröder: Jacob dies as the last of the patriarchs, and his death is the conclusion of this historical introduction, or history of the beginning. He dies, moreover, in a foreign land. That makes it the more important and conclusive event. (In the expression: have found grace, there comes into consideration: 1. That it has not the same weight, nor the same subordinate sense, as it would have in occidental speech; 2. that Jacob here asks a favor of Joseph which might seem to him as coming in collision with his Egyptian duty.)—Heim: Jacob had reached a lovely evening of his wearisome and troubled life; but it might be said of him: Forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forth unto the things that are before.
[Note on the Interview between Jacob and Pharaoh—the Patriarchal Theology—the Idea of the Earthly Life as a Pilgrimage.—Commentators have bestowed much study upon the genealogical register in the preceding chapter, the meaning of its proper names (in most cases not easily determined), and the question, whether all the descendants of Jacob there mentioned were born before the migration. This is valuable, indispensable, it may be said, to a right knowledge of the Scriptures; but it has led many to pass very slightly over those scenes of touching beauty, and most exquisite tenderness, that are presented in Joseph’s meeting with his father (already alluded to in the note, p. 633), and in the interview between Jacob and Pharaoh, Genesis 47 : “And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh.” What a picture of life and reality have we here! The feeble patriarch, leaning upon the arm of his recovered son, is led into the presence of the courteous monarch, who receives him, not as an inferior, nor as a dependent even, but with all the respect due to his great age, and with a reverent feeling that in this very old man, the representative, as it were, of another age, or of another world, there was something of a sacred and prophetical character. “And Jacob blessed Pharaoh.” It is probable that Pharaoh asked his blessing. At all events, there is something in the kindliness of his reception that induces Jacob to bestow his patriarchal benediction upon him; and doubtless the king received it, not as a formality, or with a mere feeling of courtly condescension, but as something that had a divine value for himself and his kingdom. Throughout this narrative of Joseph there is a life-likeness in the character of Pharaoh that shows him to us as one of the most veritable objects presented in history. And what an air of reality in all these scenes here so exquisitely portrayed! What a power of invention do they exhibit (if we concede to them no higher excellence); what skill in the art of pictorial fiction,—that peculiar talent so cultivated in modern times, and which, it is supposed, has only reached its perfection in our own day. It is this,—inconsistent as it may seem with all we know of the most early writings,—or it is the most natural and exact drawing from the very life. There is something here in the internal evidence which the sound mind intuitively perceives, and on which it confidently relies. It is no invented tale. The picture stands out vividly before us; age has not dimmed its colors; remoteness of scene, and wide diversity of life and manners, cannot weaken its effect. It produces a conviction of reality stronger than that which comes, often, from narratives of events close to our own days, or even cotemporary. Away over the chasm of time we look directly into that old world. We see the figures distinctly moving on that far-off ancient shore. It is brought nigh to us in such a way that we could almost as well doubt our senses, as think of calling it in question. At all events, no mythical theory can explain it. We are shut up to a very sharp issue, a very stringent alternative: It is the very truth, the very life, in the minutest feature of its close limning, or it is the most monstrous, as it is the most circumstantial, and consciously inventive, lying. No “higher criticism,” as it is called, can ever make satisfactory, to a truly thoughtful mind, the comparison sometimes drawn between these “Bible stories” and the cloudy fables that characterize the early annals of other ancient nations. Study well the striking contrasts. The lives of the pilgrim patriarchs, so clear in their lifelike portraitures, the wild Scandinavian legends, the wilder Hindoo myths, presenting not simply the supernatural, for there are connections in which that is most credible—more credible even than its absence—but the unnatural, the horrible, the monstrous, the grotesque; what affinity between these? The clear, statistical story of Joseph, the picture of the veritable Pharaoh,—the shadows of Ion, of Dorus, of Cadmus, that flit across the dim page of the earliest Hellenian history; what sane mind can trace any parallel here? There is no escaping the issue, we may say again. It is sharp and decisive. The reasoning is curt and clear. Absolute fiction in these Bible stories, with a skill surpassing that of Defoe, Scott, or Thackeray,—absolute forgery, with a conscious intent to deceive in every particular, or absolute truth, self-verifying, is the only alternative. It is not such a forgery; it is not such an artful fiction; the most extreme rationalist shrinks from affirming this; it is, therefore, the truth, and nothing but the truth. We may reverently use the imagination in attempting to fill up some parts of the picture, but we may not disturb the graphic outline. How very clear it is in the passage, specially before us. Imagination needs no help. We can almost see them, the stately monarch, the very aged man, the beloved son now in the strength and glory of manhood,—they stand out as vividly as anything now on the canvas of our present history. We may as well doubt of Cæsar and Alexander, yea of Napoleon and of Washington, as of Jacob, Joseph, and Pharaoh.
“And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?” The English translation here, in departing from literalness in the question, has marred the effect of the answer, the peculiar language of which is suggested by it, or, at least, strictly connected with it. The Hebrew is, כַּמָּה יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֶּיךָ which we have reason, from what Diodorus says of their views of life (lib. i. 51), to regard as an Egyptian as well as a Shemitic idiom—“How many are the days of the years of thy life” (or, lives)? It is a drawing out of the phrase to make it intensive. It suggests the long years of the earthly sojourning, enhanced by the thought of the many days of which they are composed—or days taken in that indefinite way so common in the early languages to denote times or periods. In what perfect harmony with this is the answer? We see in it the old man’s garrulousness (using the term in its most innocent and natural sense), the feeling of personal importance which the very old exhibit, and rightly exhibit, in view of their surpassing length of years. They love to dwell on it, and to state it minutely, extending their words as though in some proportion to the long time through which memory looks back. How strongly we are reminded here of the Grecian Nestor, except that there is a holiness and a moral grandeur about Jacob, to which the old Homeric hero, in his garrulous worldliness and boasting, makes no approach. They are alike in the senile reduplication of their words. Not, however, like the frequent Nestoric prelude, εἴθ’ ὣς ἡβώοιμι, “O that I were young again,” but in a prolonged strain of solemnity and sadness comes the slow reply: “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the lives of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage.” We can see the old man as he says this, leaning on his staff, and supported by his son; we can almost hear the tones of his trembling voice, the pauses of his slow utterance, the seemingly tautological yet most emphatic sound of his repetitions. “Few and evil;” alas! how ancient is this style of speech! How from the very beginning dates this wailing language so full of the feeling that some great evil has befallen humanity, and that our earthly life, in its best condition, is but a pilgrimage of sorrow. It has not come from the world’s later experience. The farther we go back, even into what would seem to be the very youth of our race, the louder and clearer is the voice. It is not confined to t he Scriptures. It meets us everywhere in the earliest heathen writings, but without the placid resignation that is so evident in the most striking Biblical examples. Compare the Odyssey, xviii. 130.
οὐδὲν ἀκιδνότερον γαῖα τρέφει ἀνθρώποιο
πάντων, ὅσσα τε γαῖαν ἔπι πνείει τε καὶ ἕρπει—
Sophocles, Œdipus Tyrannus, 1186,
ἰὼ γενεαὶ βροτῶν ·
τίς γὰρ, τίς ἀνὴρ πλέον
τᾶς εὐδαιμονίας φἐρει,
ἢ τοσοῦτον ὅσον δόκειν,
καὶ δόξαντ’ ἀποκλῖναι.
So Pindar’s σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωπος Pyth. viii. 99. Compare Job 7; Job 14; Psa_103:15; Gen_18:27 (“who am but dust and ashes,”); the same, Job_30:19; Job_42:6; Sir_10:9 (“why is dust and ashes proud”); and other passages too numerous for quotation.
Among the most natural and truthful things in this narration is the respect shown by Pharaoh to Jacob. It might be accounted for by that courteousness and sense of justice which seems so characteristic of this monarch, as also by his great friendship for Joseph. But there is something more in the case, and having a deeper ground. It is a feeling of reverence which makes him desire the patriarch’s blessing. Respect for age was more felt, and more lauded as a virtue, in the ancient world, than in the modern, although it still holds, and nothing but a most dissolute civilization can break it up. There is, moreover, something of awe with which we look upon a very old man, a centenarian or upwards, one who has gone far beyond the ordinary limit of human life. It affects us as a strange spectacle. There seems to be something unearthly about him, superhuman, almost supernatural—as though he belonged to another age, or world. So to the young Telemachus appeared the aged Nestor who had survived three generations of men (Odyss. iii. 246),
ὥστε μοι ἀθάνατος ἰνδάλλεται εἰσοράασθαι,
“like an immortal, as I gaze, does he stand out before me”—like one seen in vision, to give the full force of that peculiar word ἰνδάλλεται—or as something transcending the ordinary humanity. This feeling was heightened by the fact that the Egyptians, as compared with the nomadic patriarchs, were not a long-lived people. Jacob, although he bad “not attained unto the days of the years of the life of his fathers,” was to them a remarkably old man. Pharaoh had, probably, never before seen a case of such extreme longevity. Herodotus (iii. 23) learns, from the Egyptians, of an Æthiopian people, among whom some reached the age of one hundred and twenty years, but the manner in which it is narrated shows that it was regarded as remarkable and exceptional, confirming the idea that such advanced age was unknown among the Egyptians themselves.
The matter however, of deepest interest, and most worthy of note in this answer of Jacob, is its pilgrim tone: “The days of the years of my pilgrimage—few and evil have they been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage.” Who can deny the fairness of the apostle’s reasoning (Heb_11:14): “Now they who say such things declare plainly (ἐμφανίζουσιν, make it very manifest) that they seek a country—that they long (ὀρέγονται) for a better country, even a heavenly—confessing themselves to be strangers and sojourners upon earth” (ξένοι καὶ παρεπίδημοι, men away from home). “Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God (not of the nonexistent, or the perished, Mat_22:32), for he hath prepared for them a city”—“a city which hath foundations,” stable, enduring, that “passeth not away.” This language of pilgrimage is not resolvable into the unmeaning, like a worn-out modern metaphor, or a mere poetical sentimentality. Such use of words would be wholly inconsistent with the character of the patriarchs, and their stern ideas of reality. It was not a pilgrimage simply in respect to the old home “whence they came out;” for thither, as the author of the epistle to the Hebrews most pertinently observes (Gen_11:14), they could, at any time, have returned. That certainly was not “the better country” they were seeking. No going back to Mesopotamia, the region of the fire-worshipping idolatry; rather go down to Egypt, the land of dreams and symbols, yea, down to Sheol even—ever pressing on their pilgrim-way with unabated confidence in the covenant God. He would be with them wherever they went. Into whatever regions they might pass, known or unknown, there would be the מַלְאָךְ הַּגֹּאֵל, the “angel Redeemer,” to “deliver them from all evil.” It was no metaphor except as a transfer from a lower to a higher sense. The true pilgrim idea is inseparable from the term constantly employed. No word in the Hebrew language maintains a more clear and emphatic sense: מָגוּר, a sojourning, a tarrying, a pilgrimage, from גור, to turn aside by the way, to tarry as a stranger, ever denoting a temporary instead of a settled residence. It is a staying in a land which is not one’s home. So, to the patriarchs, even Canaan is called אֶרֶץ מְגֻרֵיהֶם, the land of their pilgrimages. To their descendants, or to the Israelitish nation taken collectively, as a corporate historical entity, it was a κληρονομία, a settled earthly inheritance, but to them, individually, it was not “the rest provided for the people of God,” and this language was ever to remind them of it. Their only inheritance was the promise, of which the Canaanitic κληρονομία was the type, and of this they became “heirs through faith”—διὰ πίστεως κληρονομούντων ΤΑΣ ’ΕΠΑΓΓΕΛΙΆΣ, Heb_7:12. For examples of such use of גּוּר מָגוּר, and גֵּר, see Gen_17:18; Gen_28:4 (“the land in which thou art a stranger”), Psa_119:54; Psa_39:13; 1Ch_29:15; Lev_17:22 (“the stranger dwelling in the midst of you”), Deu_5:14; Deu_24:14, and many other places. The idea is ever present, that of a stranger tarrying in a strange land; and this language of the patriarchs has been taken up by later writers, thus becoming predominant among the grave pictures of the Old-Testament saintly life. See 1Ch_29:15; Psa_39:13, “strangers before thee, and sojourners as all our fathers were.” The words are also used of lodging in an inn, or dwelling temporarily in a tent, and this calls up the passage before quoted from Diodorus Siculus (Excursus on Sheol, p. 587), showing that some such an idea of life being a pilgrimage was not altogether unknown to Pharáoh, and to the early Egyptians. The other conception of life, as a transient dwelling in a tent, gives an inexpressible sublimity to some of the Old-Testament declarations, evidently accommodated to it, and intended to denote the security of the everlasting rest: “From the ends of the earth do I cry unto thee” (from this distant earth, this remote and foreign land); “O that I might dwell in THY tabernacle of the eternities (בְּאָהָלְךָ עוֹלָמִים), O that I might find shelter under the covert of thy wings,” in the “secret place of thy presence!” Psalms 61.
As Canaan was not “the rest,” so neither was Sheol, whether regarded as the grave merely, or some strange state of continued being, lying beyond. No mere sentimentality about the sepulchre as a place of repose from life’s weariness could answer to these grave declarations of grave men, much less that monstrosity of conception which would connect the ideas of rest and utter non-existence. Sheol lay in the road of their pilgrimage. Through this unknown region—so very dark then, so obscure even yet,—they had to pass; but only as a part of their appointed journey. The “city which had foundations,” lay still beyond. But why, it may be asked, as it often has been asked, did not the patriarchs, and the pious Bible writers who followed them, say more about this better country, instead of only, now and then, giving a glimpse of it in some pious ejaculation? It may be answered, that perhaps their hearts were too full of it to say much about it. They had the pilgrim’s reticence in the midst of frivolous and unsympathizing strangers. These old “men of faith” had that precious thing so pleasing unto God as the only root of any true human virtue, and which made these uncultivated Old-Testament heroes, imperfect as they were in some things, fairer in His sight than an Epictetus, a Seneca, or an Antonine, with all their lauded and refined morality. They had “this precious faith,” but they did not weave it into dogmas, or construct from it systems of heartless ethical speculation. They did not talk of their spirituality; and yet, even in the few things they said, what approach is made to them by the modern rationalist, or our flippant litterateur, who calls them gross, and pronounces their views so defective as measured by the later progress in all elevated and refined thinking? Who hears, or expects to hear, from critics of this class, the utterance of any longing desires for the better country? How strange it would sound to hear them say: “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord,” or to make, in earnest, the declaration that they regarded themselves as “pilgrims and sojourners” upon this unsatisfying earth!
Again, a reason of their silence may have been the reserve arising from the thought of the dark and unknown journey yet to be made before their pilgrimage was wholly ended. Their views of Sheol were sombre, because Sheol (in its true sense) was to them, perhaps, a stronger, a sterner, if not a clearer reality, than it has become to us with those confident expectations of an immediately perfect state that have placed the old doctrine, with much valuable Scripture connected with it, almost wholly in the background of our theology. But to understand their language we must go back to their standpoint, dark and inadequate as it may seem to us. As death was not non-existence in any view (see note on the earliest ideas of death, p. 274), but a state of being, however strange,—not the opposite of being, at all, but of active life,—so Sheol was the continuance, the prolongation of the judicial death pronounced upon man, not a state following it. Deliverance from one was deliverance from the other. Their pilgrimage led them through this shadowy place, and though they still trusted to their covenant God, they knew not when, nor where, nor how that deliverance should be. Sheol was not their home, their language implies that; it was not the end of their journey. They did not talk of going to Heaven, or to glory; these ideas, as we now hold them, had not yet come in; and yet, if we may take many expressions in the Psalms as the language of the Old-Testament religious experience, there was ever the thought of a divine presence, of a nearness unto God, of the support and guidance of the redeeming Goel, whatever ideas of locality, of time, or of condition, might be present or wanting to the conception. As their eyes grew dim in death, their hope grew stronger, though, perhaps, no more definite than before. Hence Jacob’s ejaculation, coming in so strangely, and so suddenly, whilst presenting the visions he had of his sons’ worldly destiny. To cheer his dying heart, there seems to have mingled among these far-off yet earthly pictures, as they crowded upon the seer’s mind, a ray still more remote, from the other side of Sheol. What else could he have meant in that remarkable interruption of the prophetic series: לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּיתִי יְהוָֹה, “for thy salvation have I waited, Jehovah” (Gen_49:18). What salvation? nothing, surely, in this life. It was no deliverance from Laban, or Esau, no expectation of worldly security, such as followed his vision upon the stone pillow at Bethel. That was all past and gone. Sheol was before him, but Jacob still trusts the angel of the covenant, and this dying ejaculation shows that there was with him, then and there, in some way, the presence of the nameless power that had met him at Peniel. What meaning in it all, unless that power, and that guide, was expected to go with him through the still darker journey? The supposition that this sudden exclamation refers to something seen in vision in respect to Dan and Samson (an opinion derived from its place among the blessings which it interrupts), seems the merest trifling,—with all respect, be it said, to the learned commentators who have held it. Even if we regard the whole as an ecstatic dream, there must be some consistency in it.
The whole patriarchal theology may be summed in one great article, trust in the covenant God,—a trust for life, a trust for death, for the present being, or for any other being. There was something exceedingly sublime in this faith. They were like men standing on the border of an immense ocean, all unknown as to its extent, its other shore, if it had any, or its utter boundlessness. Ready to launch forth at the divine command, they had the assurance that all would be well, whatever might be their individual destiny, since this covenant God was also the God of their fathers, who must, therefore, in some way, “live unto Him,” that is, they must have yet a being that would make them the proper subjects of such a covenant relationship. Still Sheol had a gloomy aspect; it was associated with the idea of penalty; Death and Hades went together; the one was but a form of the other, a carrying out of the great sentence. Though a part of their pilgrimage, the way was very dark. Not with rapture, therefore, but with calm confidence, did they go down into its unknown depths, still holding fast the hand of the “redeeming angel,” who in death, as well as in the active earthly life, would “deliver them from all evil.” They knew that this “ Redeemer lived “(Job_19:25), and they felt that in some way, they knew not how, his life was theirs. He could “quicken them, and bring them up again from the depths of the earth” (Psa_71:20). Thus their hope took the form of a waiting, until “the wrath should turn” (עַד שׁוּב אַפֶךָ, Job_14:13), and the dread penalty, in some way, be satisfied. Thus Job says: “all the days of my appointment (there) will I wait, until my change shall come”—my halipah, my reviviscence or renewal (see how the word is used Psa_90:5; Psa_102:27). So Psa_16:10, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades,” Psa_49:8-16, “ No man can redeem his brother”; “yet God will redeem my soul from the hand of Sheol, for He will take me.” Let the rationalist say what he will of this language, the taking out of the hand, and the preventing, for a brief and unimportant time, the hand from seizing, can never be made to mean the same thing. To the same effect Psa_31:6, “Into thy hands do I trust my spirit, for thou hast redeemed me (rescued, ransomed me), Jehovah, God of truth”—of covenant-faithfulness. Sometimes it seems to take the form of a hope that this Goel, this “angel of the covenant,” would be personally with them in Sheol. There is good, reason for thus interpreting the passage Psa_23:4, as referring rather to Sheol itself, the spirit-world, or world of the dead, instead of a state of sorrow in this life, or a drawing near unto death, as is commonly supposed. For places in which צַלְמָוֶת (tzalmaveth, there rendered shadow of death) is put for death itself, or the state of the dead, see Job_38:17 (שַׁעֲרֵי צַלְמָוֶת, gates of tzalmaveth), Gen_10:22, compared with Job_28:3, and especially Job_28:21; Job_28:23. Such a rendering seems necessary to the climax intended Psa_23:4 : “Even in the valley of tzalmaveth,” in the land of the shades, the terra umbrarum, “I will fear no evil (comp. Gen_48:16), for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they shall comfort me”—יְנַחֲמֻנִי, restore me, revive me, and hence the Syriac נוּחָמָא, for reviviscence, resurrection. In Hades they are still with “the Shepherd and Bishop of Souls.”
This patriarchal faith, in its pilgrim aspect, seems a strange thing to our modern conceptions; but there is a view of it which may lead us to regard it as even a stronger, if not a better, faith than our own. Involved in the very essence of all spiritual religion are two great truths: 1. The being of a God, a moral governor who treats man as something above the plane of nature, that is, enters into a covenant with him; and, 2. the existence of the human soul in another life, as grounded, in its ultimate perfection at least, upon such covenant. The first of these is also first in value and importance. It is the first lesson in the catechism of theology. It must be learned thoroughly, or the second, by itself, as the mere idea of continued spiritual existence, becomes a perversion, and may be a source even of dangerous imaginative error. The patriarchs were educated chiefly in this greater and more fundamental dogma, belief in God, trust in God, submission to God, whatever might be the human destiny. Nothing can be purer or more lofty than their theism when viewed alone; though, as has been before remarked, it is never wholly separate from some form of the other doctrine. The purity with which men hold the second must depend upon the thoroughness of their initiation into this prime idea of a God to be trusted, in life, in death, in light, in darkness, and to whose sovereign wisdom and goodness there must be an implicit resignation, whatever may be known or unknown in respect to his dealings with the finite being he has created. To this state Job was brought, when, at the close of the long drama, he fell upon his face before God, and said unto Him (אֵלַי, unto me, not, concerning me) that “right thing” for which he was commended, rather than for any superiority in the previous argument. Hence it is that this first truth takes precedence, not in rank only, but in the time order of revelation, though the second, in its rudimentary state, may be almost coeval with it. The one is fully developed, while the other is in its germ. As best expressing the contrast, the editor would venture here to quote from something he has elsewhere written (“Article on the Closing Chapters of the Book of Job,” Mercersburg Review, Jan. 1860): “The patriarchs were first instructed in that first and greatest chapter in theology. Is there not something in modern experience to show the evil of reversing this order of ideas, of making the subordinate primary, of coming to regard the human spiritual destiny too much as the chief thought in religion, and the belief in a God as something ministerial or mediate to it? We refer not now to that naturalistic form of spiritualism which has lately become so rife among us, but to much that appears in the better thinking of the religious world. We may yet learn from the Old Testament. We may see a glory in its theism thus standing alone in its sublimity. Boast as we may of our progress in theology, unless this order of ideas is preserved in all its purity, our belief, our reverence, our highest thought of God, may fall below that of the Syrian pilgrim, or of that ancient son of the East whose sufferings and experience are recorded in attestation of this first and greatest of truths.” We must guard against such tendency, or there is danger that our re-ligio,—our view of the bond between the infinite and the finite soul,—may become nature instead of covenant,—a dreamy sentimentality instead of faith.—T. L.]
Footnotes:
[1][Gen_46:20.—The LXX have added, after Manasseh and Ephraim, a verse seemingly from 1Ch_7:14, but differing so much, both from the Hebrew of that place, and from the LXX itself, that it can hardly be recognized. No other ancient version has it. It is not in the Samaritan, which, in most cases of variance, has been made to conform to the LXX. If it was in some old Hebrew copies, it had clearly been put in to carry out the line of Joseph; and this shows us how explanatory scholia, referring to later things, may have got a place, and some of them an abiding place, in the text of Genesis.—T. L.]
[2][Gen_46:28.—לְהוֹרֹת, to show the way—inf. Hiphil of ירה. This makes a very good sense here, but there is some reason for doubting it, since the LXX render συναντῆσαι, as though they had read לִקְרַאה here, as well as just below. To the LXX, as usual, the Samaritan is conformed, and gives לִקְרַאת twice. The Syriac has ܠ ܘܠܷܬ ܚܰܐܳ ܝܘ, to appear unto, or be seen, which shows that the translator read לְהוֹראֹת (for לְהָרְאֹת), Hophal infinitive of the verb ראה, or regarded לְהוֹרֹת as being the same defectively written. This has some support from what immediately follows in Gen_46:29, וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו (Niphal of ראה), and appeared, or “presented himself” to him. The Targum of Onkelos renders it to meet him; which shows also the reading לִקְרַאת, like that of the LXX.—T. L.]
[3][Gen_47:12.—לְפִי הַטָּף. This is sometimes a phrase of comparison, or proportion, as also כְּפִי (see Lev_25:52; Num_6:21; Exo_12:4, etc.), yet here it is more expressive taken literally, to the mouth of the little ones, preserving the sense of proportion, yet showing, at the same time, Joseph’s pathetic care—seeing to the wants and providing appropriate food even for the youngest in the great company.—T. L.]
[4] [Gen_47:13.—וַתֵּלַהּ הָאָרֶץ. The Textus Samaritanus has ותלא (וַתֵּלָא), which Rosenmüller condemns as a mere gloss. It seems, however, to be the same word, only with a different orthography, א for ה; and so all the old interpreters regarded it—either reading ותלא, or regarding ותלה as equivalent to it; LXX ἐξέλιπε, failed, fainted; Syriac ܚܖ̇ ܒܬ, was desolate. Literally, if we read לאה, the land was weary, faint. So the Greeks use the verb κάμνω of lands and cities as well as of persons. Such a poetic transfer has great pathos. So also, in Hebrew, is the verb שבת, to rest, transferred to the land. Comp. Lev_26:34-35. As also other verbs by the same or an opposite figure; Isa_24:4, אָבְלָה נָבְלָה הָאָרֶץ אֻמְלְלָה נָבְלָה תֵּבֵל, mourning, withering, is the land, languid and wasting the world. There is no need of supposing a different root, as Gesenius does, or of comparing it with כהה, which is quite a different word. See in the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, 26, the description of a land wasting with famine and pestilence:
φθίνουσα μὲν κάλυξιν ἐγκάρποις χθονός.
—T. L.]
[5][Gen_47:21.—הֶעֱבִיר אֹתוֹ לֶעָרִים, transferred it (the people) to cities, etc. The LXX read here תֶעֱבִיד אֹתוֹ לַעֲבָדִים, which is good Hebrew, notwithstanding what Rosenmüller says about it, and render accordingly, κατεδουλώσατο αὐτῷ εἰς παῖδας, made them serve him as servants, which would not, however, be slavery, in the sense of man-ownership, according to the most modern notion, but, rather, an increase of their civil subjection. The Samaritan has the Hebrew corresponding to this; but the whole argument of Gesenius on that codex goes to show that it is everywhere a conforming to the LXX, rather than an older text whence the readings of the LXX were derived. See on this passage his tract De Pentateuchi Samaritani Origine, etc. p. 39. The Hebrew gives a clear and satisfactory sense, as it stands, and the whole aspect of the case proves that the change was from that reading rather than to it. The Targum agrees with the Hebrew. So does the Syriac, only with more clearness, having, instead of the single word ערים, a repetition, ܩܠܢ ܩܖ̇ܐ ܠܩܖ̇ܐ, from city to city, or rather, from farm to farm. Raschi says he did this to break up their title by destroying the residence as a memorial of ownership, and so preventing seditions, as Grotius also remarks upon the place. The common reading is confirmed by Josephus, Antiq. Jud. ii. 7, 7.—T. L.]
[6][Gen_47:27.—וַיֵּאָחֲזוּ בָּהּ. The Niphal form, with its passive, reflexive, or deponent sense, makes the expression here correspond exactly to the technical language of the English common law in regard to the holding of land—they were seized of it—the passive of the habendum et tenendum in the language of a grant. Compare Jos_22:9, אֵרֶץ אֲחֻזָּתָם אֲשֶׁר נֹאחֲזוּ בָהּ, “the land of their holding” of which they were seized, as tenants in fee, having had “livery of seizin” given to them, בְּיַר משֶׁה, “by the hand of Moses.” Compare also Num_32:30, וְנֹאחֲזוּ בְתוֹכְכֶם, “and they were seized (that is, they had possession given them) in the midst of you.” In the verse before (Gen_42:26), Joseph is said to have given them possession (acting doubtless as agent or attorney to the king, the chief lord, or holder in capite), that is, livery of seisin, in some such manner, or with some such ceremonies as are described in our old common-law books. וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָהּ יוֹסֵף לְחֹק, “and Joseph put it for a decree”—a memorial of the grant, עַד הַיּוֹם, unto this day, that is, “in fee”—in perpetuum. It is interesting to notice how strikingly similar have been the law-language and ceremonies of different ages. Compare the prophetical, or spiritual, grant, Psa_2:8, where אֲהֻזָּה has the same emphasis, “the nations for an inheritance, the ends of the earth for a holding forever.”—T. L.]
[7][Our English translation, I am God, fails here in not giving the article (הָאֵל), or any emphasis of expression equivalent to it. The best way would have been to give the name itself—I am El—as elsewhere there is given the name El Shaddai, or else the meaning of the name as Lange renders it—I am the Mighty One, the God of thy fathers.—T. L.]
[8][See also the Odyssey xi. 426; xxiv. 296, and a very touching passage to the same effect in the Electra of Sophocles, 1138.—T. L.]
[9] [The right view of וַיֵּרָא לוֹ (appeared unto him) is necessary to determine the meaning of what follows: and he Jell upon his neck, etc. Who fell? It is not so clear that the subject of the verb וַיִּפֹּל is Joseph, although it is so taken by the LXX, the Vulgate, and most of the translators. In our English version, as in that of Luther, it is left ambiguous, though both convey the impression that it was Joseph. The Jewish commentators differ. Rashi makes it Joseph, and raises the query, why Jacob did not fall upon his son’s neck and kiss him; for which he gives reasons from the Rabbins that are hardly intelligible. Maimonides, on the other hand, makes Jacob the grammatical subject. It would not have been according to the ancient notions of reverence for the son to have first fallen on his father’s neck and kissed him. The proper action, he says, would have been to have kissed his hand, and then to have waited for the father’s embrace. Joseph, he intimates, appeared to him in all his glory. At first he did not recognize him, but as soon as he saw who it was (Heb., as expressed passively, appeared, became visible unto him) he fell, etc. We may think Maimonides’ other reason to be inconclusive in this case, but the grammatical one is entitled to much attention. The easy and natural rule is that where there are a number of verbs connected, the subject of the first belongs to them all unless there is a change direct, or implied in some way, in the number, gender, or idiom. Had וַיֵּרָא לוֹ been like the rest of the verbs, there would have been no ground for such a supposition. It is, however, passive or deponent; he appeared unto him (badly rendered, presented himself), or became visible or known to him. The Targum of Onkelos translates וַיֵּרָא לוֹ by אִתֻגְּלִי לֵהּ, was revealed to him. In such case the grammatical object of the verb preceding may become the real subject of the one that follows; and it must be looked for here in the pronoun (לוֹ) which represents Jacob. This makes a change as though it had been said actively, and he (Jacob) recognized him, and fell en his neck, etc. The verb יֵרָא is Niphal, corresponding to the Syriac ܐܷܬ ܚܐً ܝ, which is used for it here, and is employed to denote a subjective appearance. Thus, in the Peschito Version of the New Testament, it corresponds to the Greek ὤφθη, and is even used for ἀνέβλεψε (he recovered sight), taken in this passive or subjective aspect. As in Mar_10:52; Joh_9:15, where, in the Syriac, Jesus is the subject of the verb, and the blind man’s seeing, or seeing again, is most strikingly expressed by saying, he became visible unto him—that is, Jesus standing before him, as the first object on which the new eye fell. Compare, also, in the Greek, Luk_22:43, “and an angel appeared (ὤφθη) unto him, and he prayed,” etc. The subject of προσηύχετο is different, on this account, from, the grammatical subject of ὤφθη, and is derived from the preceding αὐτῷ, although no other direct cause of change intervenes. In the spirit of this the late Arabic Version of Drs. Smith and Van Dyck has well rendered it ׀ַול בו, he appeared unto him, instead of בַّ ֲׁו, when he saw him, of a previous Arabic translation following the Vulgate. Of course, the rule stated and the apparent exception, become unimportant, and are both disregarded, when the context, of itself, prevents all ambiguity. The more carefully, however, the language is examined here, the more reason will there appear for regarding the father as the subject of the verb וַיִּפֹּל; as in the parallel passage, Luk_15:20, where it is the father who sees the son, and who falls upon his neck, εἶδεν αὐτὸν ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ἐπέπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸν τράχηλον αὐτοῦ. It would have been the same had the construction been, and he appeared unto him.
But whatever view is taken, there is great pathos in the particle עוֹד, commonly rendered again, and here, very tamely, in our English Version, a good while. In this passage it must have its primary sense of repetition, reiteration, as it appears in the Arabic, ַב which the translator, Arabs Erpenianus, actually uses for it. So Rashi and Aben Ezra. They refer to Job_34:23, לֹא יָשִׂים עוֹד “for not repeatedly (or continually) does God lay upon man.” A better reference would be to Psa_139:18, when I awake, I am still with thee, עוֹדִי עִמָּךְ, again and again with thee; or Psa_84:5, “ Blessed are they who dwell in thy house, they shall be still praising thee, evermore praising thee;” as in Rev_4:8, “They cease not day nor night saying, holy, holy, holy.” He wept long, translates Luther, weinete lange, but it means more than this; he fell upon his neck and wept repeatedly,—over and over again,—unable to satisfy the ἵμερον—κλαυθμοῖο, as Homer styles the luxury of grief even for remembered sorrows, much less the joy of tears at such a recognition. Affecting is it in either view, but most of all when we regard it as the long sobbings and long embracings of the aged father. The old eyes weeping! There is not in our human life a more touching scene, even when it comes from senile weakness, and not, as in this case, from recognitions that might draw tears from the stoutest manhood, and from the recollection of events whose pathetic interest the utmost invention of the novelist or the dramatist fails to imitate. With this passage in Genesis there may be compared the interview of David and Jonathan, 1Sa_20:41 : “And they kissed one another, and wept, one with another, until David exceeded, עַד דָּוִד הִגְדִּיל,” David autem amplius; his emotion went beyond all ordinary bounds. The expression seems to have much of the force of the particle in the passage before us. It is another example of the rhetorical fact, that the briefest and simplest language is ever the most affecting.—T. L.]
[10][All this difficulty, about Joseph’s proceeding, vanishes when one studiously considers what the Egyptians would have done, or how fatal their free improvidence might have proved, without his sagacious political economy. There would have been no cattle to be sold; the lands would have been barren for the want of hands to till them. Each one for himself, without a common weal, and a wise ruler taking care of it, and taxing them for such care, there would not have been, in their future prospects, any stimulus to frugality, or industry. It is yet an unsettled question, whether unregulated individual cultivation of land, in small portions, or a judicious system of landlordism, for which, of course, there must be rent or tax, is the better method for the universal good. The twenty per cent. which Joseph exacted for the governmental care, was not a system of slavery; and it may have been far better than a much greater percentage, perhaps, to capitalists and usurers.—T. L.]
[11][So says the European commentator. The American would rather say: to the government that protects its produce and the labor employed in its cultivation,—presenting a similar idea, but in a more rational, as well as in a milder form.—T. L.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–7 God spake unto Israel--Here is a virtual renewal of…
God spake unto Israel--Here is a virtual renewal of the covenant and an assurance of its blessings. Moreover, here is an answer on the chief subject of Jacob's prayer and a removal of any doubt as to the course he was meditating. At first the prospect of paying a personal visit to Joseph had been viewed with unmingled joy. But, on calmer consideration, many difficulties appeared to lie in the way. He may have remembered the prophecy to Abraham that his posterity was to be afflicted in Egypt and also that his father had been expressly told not to go [Gen 15:13; Gen 26:2]; he may have feared the contamination of idolatry to his family and their forgetfulness of the land of promise. These doubts were removed by the answer of the oracle, and an assurance given him of great and increasing prosperity.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–6 THE JOURNEY TO EGYPT, Gen_46:1-7.
THE JOURNEY TO EGYPT, Gen_46:1-7.
“Here begins a new stage in the history of the covenant people. The chosen family is to be developed into a chosen nation. A permanent religious state, a great divinely organized commonwealth, with institutions fixed for ages, is to be evolved from the patriarchal nomadism, in order that all nations may be blessed in the seed of Abraham. The sublime revelations and spiritual experiences which distinguished the great patriarchs from all other men were not to vanish with them from the world, but were to be embodied in institutions, in a literature, in a national consciousness, which were to be immortal as the race itself. For more than two centuries Abraham and his children had walked and talked with Jehovah as they moved from one pasture to another between Sychem and Beer-sheba. Amid the hostile and idolatrous Canaanitish tribes there was no opportunity for leisurely national growth, while they were in constant danger of absorption; but in the Egyptian sojourn they had the contact with the world’s highest civilization, which gave culture, and yet the isolation and antagonism which saved their religion and their national life from extinction. Egypt’s fat soil made Israel teem with fruitful generations even under oppression; and her wisdom, art, social and religious institutions, deeply tinged the national character, and even shaped some of the religious rites of Israel. Jacob knew that this period of Egyptian sojourn was to come, for it had been predicted to Abraham, (Gen_15:13-15,) and so he recognised now the call of Providence. The rhetoric rises in tone at the opening of this chapter, as if the writer felt the inspiration of this crisis.” — Newhall.
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1. Israel took his journey — “The writer uses here, at the opening, the covenant name, from the sense of the national significance of this journey; yet afterward directs his attention to the personal experiences and movements of Jacob. He came down from Hebron to Beer-sheba, the camping place by the wells in the edge of the desert, where Abraham had called on JEHOVAH, the EVERLASTING GOD; and where Isaac his father had sojourned so long; and here, amid the scenes of his childhood, looking down upon the desert, which like a sea separated his new home and new life from the old, he offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac, who there had first taught him the name of that God.” — Newhall.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–5 1–5. Jacob at Beer-sheba
1–5. Jacob at Beer-sheba
1. Beer-sheba] Cf. Gen_21:31; Gen_21:33; Gen_26:33; Gen_28:10. Jacob, in Gen_37:14 (J), is described as dwelling at Hebron.
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the God of his father Isaac] For this reference to the God of the father, cf. Gen_26:24; Gen_28:13; Gen_31:53.
It is natural that Jacob would not leave his home without sacrificing to his God. He offers sacrifices at Beer-sheba, with which sanctuary Isaac had been especially connected; cf. Gen_26:23-25. Either, therefore, according to E, Jacob resided at Beer-sheba, or he had left his home at Hebron (J) and was now on his way south, seeking at Beer-sheba to obtain Divine approval for the descent into Egypt. Isaac had been forbidden to go down into Egypt (Gen_26:2). Other reasons have been suggested, e.g. thanksgiving for the life of Joseph, and fear of Joseph’s anger against his brethren; cf. Gen_50:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7 (1) Israel . . . came to Beer-sheba.—Though Jacob,…
XLVI.
EMIGRATION OF ISRAEL AND HIS SONS INTO EGYPT.
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(1) Israel . . . came to Beer-sheba.—Though Jacob, in the first tumult of his joy, had determined upon hastening to Egypt, yet many second thoughts must have made him hesitate. He would call up to mind the boding prophecy in Gen_15:13, that the descendants of Abraham were to be reduced to slavery, and suffer affliction in a foreign land for four hundred years. It might even be a sin, involving the loss of the Abrahamic covenant, to quit the land of Canaan, which Abraham had expressly forbidden Isaac to abandon (Gen_24:8). Isaac, too, when going into Egypt, had been commanded to remain in Palestine (Gen_26:2). Jacob therefore determines solemnly to consult God before finally taking so important a step, and no place could be more suitable than Beersheba, as both Abraham and Isaac had built altars there for Jehovah’s worship (Gen_21:33; Gen_26:25), and, moreover, it lay upon the route from Hebron to Egypt.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 37 - 50
Genesis 37 - 50
On which we shall dwell more particularly. There is not in scripture a more perfect and beautiful type of Christ than Joseph. Whether we view Christ as the object of the Father’s love, the object of the envy of His own, - in His humiliation, sufferings, death exaltation, and glory, in all we have Him strikingly typified by Joseph.
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In Gen. 37 we have Joseph’s dreams, the statement of which draws out the enmity of his brethren. He was the object of his father’s love, and the subject of very high destinies, and inasmuch as the hearts of his brothers were not in communion with these things, they hated him. They had no fellowship in the father’s love. They would not yield to the thought of Joseph’s exaltation. In all this they represent the Jews in Christ’s day. He came to His own and his own received him not." He had "no form nor comeliness in their eyes." They would neither own Him as the Son of God, nor king of Israel. Their eyes were not open to behold "his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of "grace and truth." They would not have Him; yea, they hated Him.
Now, in Joseph’s case, we see that he, in no wise, relaxed his testimony in consequence of his brethren’s refusal of his first dream. "And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren;" and they hated him yet the more....And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren." This was simple testimony founded upon divine revelation; but it was testimony which brought Joseph down to the pit. Had he kept back his testimony, or taken off ought of its edge and power, he might have spared himself; but no; he told them the truth, and therefore they hated him.
Thus was it with Joseph’s great Antitype. He bore witness to the truth - He witnessed a good confession He kept back nothing - He could only speak the truth because He was the truth, and His testimony to the truth was answered, on man’s part, by the cross, the vinegar, the soldier’s spear. The testimony of Christ, too, was connected with the deepest, fullest, richest grace. He not only came as "the truth," but also as the perfect expression of all the love of the Father’s heart:" grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." He was the full disclosure to man of what God was. Hence man was left entirely without excuse. He came and showed God to man, and man hated God with a perfect hatred. The fullest exhibition of divine love was answered by the fullest exhibition of human hatred. This is seen in the cross; and we have it touchingly foreshadowed at the pit into which Joseph was cast by his brethren.
"And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit; and we will say, some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams." These words forcibly remind us of the parable in Matthew 22. "But, last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir, come let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him." God sent His Son into the world with this thought, "They will reverence my son;" but, alas! man’s heart had no reverence for the "well beloved" of the Father. They cast him out. Earth and heaven were at issue in reference to Christ; and they are at issue still. Man crucified Him; but God raised Him from the dead. Man placed Him on a cross between two thieves; God set Him at His own right hand in the heavens. Man gave Him the very lowest place on earth; God gave Him the very highest place in heaven, in brightest majesty.
ALL this is shown out in Joseph’s history. "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel;) even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breast and of the womb; the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors, unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren." (Gen. 49: 22-26)
These verses beautifully exhibit to our view "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." "The archers" have done their work; but God was stronger than they. The true Joseph has been shot at and grievously wounded in the house of his friends; but "the arms of his hands have been made strong" in the power of resurrection, and faith now knows Him as the basis of all God’s purposes of blessing and glory in reference to the Church, Israel, and the whole creation. When we look at Joseph in the pit, and in the prison, and look; at him afterwards as ruler over all the land of Egypt, we see the difference between the thoughts of God and the. thoughts of men; and so when we look at the cross, and at "the throne of the majesty in the heavens," we see the same thing.
Nothing ever brought out the real state of man’s heart toward God but the coming of Christ. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin." (John 15: 22) It is not that they would not have been sinners. No; but "they had not had sin." So He says, in another place, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin." (John 9: 41) God came near to man in the Person of His Son, and man was able to say, "this is the heir;" but yet he said, "come, let us kill him." Hence, "they have no cloak for their sin." Those who say they see, have no excuse. confessed blindness is not at all the difficulty, but professed sight. This is a truly solemn principle for a professing age like the present. The permanence of sin is connected with the mere profession to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened; but what can be done for one who thinks he sees, when he really does not?
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–5 And Israel (as the head of the theocratic family)…
And Israel (as the head of the theocratic family) took his journeyliterally, broke up, sc. his encampment (cf. Gen_12:9) with all that he had, and came from Hebron (Gen_37:14) to Beersheba, where Abraham (Gen_21:33) and Isaac (Gen_26:25) had both sojourned for considerable periods, and erected altars to Jehovahand offered sacrifices unto the God (the Elohim) of his father Isaac. Probably giving thanks to God for the tidings concerning Joseph (Ainsworth); consulting God" about his journey to Egypt (Rosenm it may be, pouring out before God his fear as well as gratitude and joy, more especially if he thought about the stern prophecy (Gen_15:13) which had been given to Abraham (Kalisch); perhaps commending himself and family to the care of his covenant God (Keil), and certainly praying that God would confirm to him and his the covenant which had been made with his fathers (Calvin).
Vers. 1-34.
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The descent of Jacob and his family into Egypt.
I THE DEPARTURE FROM CANAAN (vers. 1-7).
1. The journey to Beersheba. Distant from Hebron somewhere over twenty miles, Beersheba lay directly in the way to Egypt. Yet doubtless the chief motive for halting at "the well of the oath" consisted in the fact that it had been, so to speak, consecrated by the previous encampments of Abraham and Isaac, by the altars they had there erected, and the revelations they had there enjoyed. It is both pleasurable and profitable to visit scenes and places that have been hallowed by the saints of former days; and though now under the Christian dispensation it is true that every place is holy ground, yet few there are who do not feel their religious emotions quickened when they stand upon some sacred spot where holy men have walked and prayed, or saintly martyrs bled and died.
2. The stoppage at Beersheba.
(1) The solemn act of worship offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac." This he did in obedience to Divine prescription, which had appointed the presentation of offerings as the only acceptable mode of worship, in imitation of the piety of his ancestors, in presence of his assembled household, in supplication of Divine direction with regard to his contemplated journey:
(2) The midnight revelation. "I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me m vain," was Jehovah"s word to Israel in a later day; (Isa_45:19) and certainly he never said so either to Jacob"s ancestors or to Jacob himself. As formerly he had appeared to Abraham and to Isaac on this very spot, so now he appeared to their descendant; solemnly, in the visions of the night; audibly, speaking to him in a voice articulate and clear; earnestly, saying, Jacob, Jacob, to which Jacob answered, Here am I; and graciously, discovering himself as the covenant God of his father Isaac.
(3) The encouraging exhortation not to go down to Egypt." Abraham had been formerly reproved for going into Egypt, and Isaac prevented from following his example; but here Jacob is both permitted and advised to go. No saint can safely guide himself by following the example of another. What is God"s will concerning one man may be the opposite concerning another. It is best to imitate the patriarch, and after asking God"s counsel follow where he, his Spirit, word, or providence, may lead.
(4) The fourfold promise: "I will there make of thee a great nation will surely go down with thee will also surely bring thee up again and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes; "a promise ofenlargement, protection, restoration, consolation; a promise, like all God"s promises in the gospel, suited to the wants of his servant.
3. The advance from Beersheba. This took place with alacrity, for Jacob "rose up; with unanimity, for they all went, carrying with them their wives and little ones; and with comfort, since they rode in Pharaoh"s wagons; and with safety, for it is added that they "came into Egypt.
II THE COMPANY OF THE TRAVELLERS (vers. 8-27).
1. Their character.
(1) Descendants of Jacob. They came out of Jacob"s loins. In the entire catalogue there is no name that cannot be traced down in a direct line from Jacob.
(2) Immigrants into Egypt. The expression of course is used with a certain amount of latitude, since Joseph"s sons were born in Egypt, and probably all the family of Benjamin. But the accuracy of the language may be defended on the principle that the historian represents the entire family as having done what was done by its head.
(3) Ancestors of Israel. Jacob"s sons were the heads of the tribes, and Jacob"s grandsons of the families, that subsequently formed the nation.
2. Their number.
(1) "All the souls were threescore and six;
(2) "all the souls of the house of Jacob were threescore and ten;
(3) according to Stephen the total of Jacob"s kindred was "threescore and fifteen souls." For the reconciliation of these different accounts, see the Exposition.
III THE ARRIVAL AT EGYPT (vers. 28-34).
1. The mission of Judah. "And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph," that he (Joseph)" might direct his face unto Goshen.
2. The coming of Joseph.
(1) Joseph and his father. Learning of Jacob"s arrival, Joseph "made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father to Goshen." It was not ostentation, but the impatience of love that caused Joseph to drive to Goshen in the royal chariot. Presenting himself before his aged parent, he falls upon his neck and weeps, unable for a good while to control his tears; while the old man is so overcome at having his long-lost Joseph once more in his embrace, that he is quite willing to depart: "Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.
(2) Joseph and his brethren. Informing them of his intention to report their arrival to Pharaoh, he explains to them that Pharaoh will inquire about their occupation, and directs them how to answer so as to secure their residence in Goshen; a mark of duplicity in Joseph according to some, but rather a proof of the kindly and fraternal interest he took in his brothers" welfare.
HOMILIES BY W. ROBERTS Gen_46:1-4 Gen_46:28-30 Gen_47:7-10.
The three meetings.
I BETWEEN JACOB AND GOD.
1. A gracious meeting. In the visions of the night, at Beersheba, Jehovah, after a lapse of upwards of a quarter of a century, again makes known his presence to his servant. It was a signal act of gracious condescension on the part of God.
2. A promised meeting. As the God of Abraham and of Isaac, Jehovah had solemnly taken Jacob into covenant with himself, and engaged to be with him for guidance and succor wherever he might wander and whensoever he might need assistance; and such an occasion had manifestly arisen then in the experience of the patriarch.
3. A solicited meeting. It is more than likely this was the explanation of Jacob"s sacrifices at Beersheba. He was asking God to come to him with counsel and help at the important crisis which had come upon him.
4. An encouraging meeting. Jacob got all that he desired and more words of cheer and promises of love, that sufficed at once to dispel his fears and animate his hopes.
II BETWEEN JACOB AND JOSEPH.
1. A longed-for meeting. How earnestly father and son had yearned to behold one another we can imagine better than express.
2. An expected meeting. No doubt Joseph instructed Judah to inform Jacob that he (Joseph) would visit him at Goshen.
3. A happy meeting. Those who have passed through experiences in any degree similar to thin of Joseph and Jacob meeting after many years, when each perhaps thought the other dead, will not be surprised at their emotion.
III BETWEEN JACOB AND PHARAOH.
1. An interesting, meeting. Of age with (probable) youth, of poverty with wealth, of lowly birth (at least, comparatively) with regal dignity, of piety with superstition.
2. An instructive meeting. No doubt the monarch would learn something of Jacob"s by-past history, and let us hope too of Jacob"s God; and perhaps Jacob would discover something in what he heard from Pharaoh concerning Joseph that would lead him to recognize the Divine hand even mere clearly than he did.
3. A profitable meeting. Pharaoh got a good man"s blessing, and Jacob won a great man"s smile. W.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Vers. 1-7.
God speaking in the visions of the night.
While there were providential intimations which were clear enough, still the direct revelation of God was necessary for Jacob"s assurance. At Beersheba, the consecrated spot, Jacob offers sacrifices in the covenant spirit, and receives in return the message of the covenant God: "I will make of thee a great nation." "I will also surely bring thee up again," i.e. in thy descendants. The vision is not a mere personal matter for Jacob"s consolation, it is another in the series of Divine revelations which are connected with the development of the covenant. R.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 And Israel took his Journey with all that he…
Gen_46:1-7
And Israel took his Journey with all that he had
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Israels journey into Egypt
I.
A JOURNEY WHICH THE PATRIARCH HAD NEVER EXPECTED TO TAKE, AND WHICH WAS FRAUGHT WITH CONSEQUENCES WHICH HE HAD NEVER HOPED TO SEE.
II. THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT IN WHICH THE PATRIARCH ENTERED UPON THIS JOURNEY.
III. WHEN THE PATRIARCH SOUGHT THE LORD AT BEER-SHEBA, HE APPEARED TO HIM AND BLESSED HIM.
1. The Lord appeared to His servant, when he had offered up his sacrifices to Him.
2. The very gracious manner in which the Lord addressed His servant in this vision.
3. The Lord gave to His servant words of wise and kindly counsel, just what was suitable in the circumstances in which he was placed.
IV. THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROMISE WHICH THE LORD GAVE TO ISRAEL IN THIS VISION CONCERNING HIS JOURNEY INTO EGYPT. (H. T. Holmes.)
The migration of Jacobs house to Egypt
I. IT WAS THE SECOND STAGE IN THE COVENANT HISTORY.
II. IT WAS THE FULFILMENT OF THE DIVINE PLAN.
III. IT WAS ENTERED UPON WITH DUE SOLEMNITY.
IV. IT HAD THE APPROVAL OF GOD. God has always appeared in some special act or word in every great crisis of His peoples history. As to Jacob--
1. He found God as he had sought Him. I am God, the God of thy father. The Name used reveals the Omnipotent God, the Mighty One who is able to fulfil His covenant engagements, and who could bring Jacob safely through all his difficulties, present and future. Israel had found his God faithful in all His gracious dealings, and he believed that he should still see the same loving kindness and truth for the time to come.
2. The will of God is clearly made known. Fear not to go down to Egypt. He was distinctly assured that it was Gods will that he should go there.
3. The protection of God is promised. Fear not--I will go down with thee into Egypt.
4. The purpose of God is declared. I will there make of thee a great nation. I will surely bring thee up again. (T. H. Leale.)
The family migration
I. THE DEPARTURE FROM CANAAN.
1. Jacob offers sacrifice.
2. God renews the promise.
II. THE REUNION IN EGYPT.
III. THE ABODE IN GOSHEN. Why was Joseph so anxious to establish his fathers family in Goshen? Joseph felt that there were many dangers incident to the sojourn of the Hebrews, his kinsfolk, in Egypt.
1. The danger of quarrels. The Egyptians might become jealous of the foreigners in their land. The Hebrews might, perhaps, presume too much on the favour shown by Pharaoh to Joseph and Jacob.
2. The danger from heathenism. There was much idolatry and animal worship in Egypt. The magicians and their arts might corrupt the minds of the children of Israel, and prevent them from the worship of the one true God.
3. The danger of his kin kinsmen forgetting Canaan as the land where their lot as a nation was fixed by God. He did not want them to be Egyptianized. They must, as far as possible, be kept a separate people. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
Emigrate, but not without God
History repeats itself, and this old story fits into multitudinous modern instances. But not always is sufficient heed given to the sacrificing at Beer-sheba; and the point I make now is, that in all such changes we should seek, above all things else, the companionship of God. Nothing will harm us anywhere if God is with us, and we cannot have the highest good if we go even into the fairest Goshen on the continent without Him. Horace Greely, long ago, set the fashion of saying, Go West, young man, go West; and there is wisdom in the advice, provided it be conjoined with the admonition, But dont go without your God. Perhaps some here are meditating on the propriety of their pushing away into the places where the labour market is not overstocked, and the opportunities are far better than they are in a comparatively crowded city such as this. Nor do we say a word against the project. Go, by all means, if you are not afraid to work; but remember the sacrifice at Beer-sheba, and dont go without your God. Too many have done that, and have gone to ruin. But take Him with you, and He will be your shield and your exceeding great reward. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Gen_46:1. Beersheba.] This was the frontier town, where Abraham…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_46:1. Beersheba.] This was the frontier town, where Abraham and Isaac had acknowledged God (Gen_21:33; Gen_26:24-25).
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Gen_46:4. I will also surely bring thee up again.] “This does not refer to the bringing up of Jacob when dead, to be buried in Canaan,—for there was in that no Divine interposition,—but to the bringing up his descendants at the Exodus, which is ever said to have been God’s act, with His mighty hand and outstretched arm.” (Alford).—And Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. Shall perform the last act of filial piety in closing the eyes of his father.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_46:1-7
THE MIGRATION OF JACOB’S HOUSE TO EGYPT
I. It was the second stage in the Covenant History. The call of Abraham was the first stage. At first, God dealt with the individual and with his seed. But the time had now come when the family is to be raised to a nation. As a nation it is to return to the promised land, and there to be trained to act a wonderful, and altogether singular part in the world’s history. “Israel was God’s illuminated clock set in the dark steeple of time.”
II. It was the fulfilment of the Divine plan. Jacob’s migration to Egypt was the accomplishment of prophecy (Gen_15:13). The Church is to be brought into the midst of heathendom to show that it is destined to conquer the world. The bringing down of Jacob’s family into Egypt had an important bearing upon the future history of Israel. It tended to separate them from the nations of the world and to preserve them as a holy people. Had they remained in Canaan, they would have been in danger of being corrupted by the people of the land. They might have been altogether destroyed by wars attempted while they were yet immature. In the course of time they would have mixed with the surrounding nations by inter-marriage, and thus have learned their vices. But in Egypt, they were kept parted from heathendom by a double barrier.
(1). Their race.
(2). Their reputation as an impure caste. (Gen_46:34.) Dwelling in a fruitful soil, well adapted to their peculiar industry, they had every means of becoming prosperous. It was also part of the Divine plan to discipline the people by affliction. Egypt was to be the house of their bondage under cruel taskmasters. Trial was to develop their strength. They were only to be made perfect through suffering. It takes long years of painful discipline to train a great nation.
III. It was entered upon with due solennity. When Jacob had arrived at the frontier town, he “offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.” (Gen_46:1.) Thus he recognises the family covenant. He remembered the word which the Lord spake to Abraham. (Gen_15:13.) He saw how wonderfully Joseph’s dreams were realised by the events of Providence. Therefore he saw that it was the will of God that he should go down to Egypt. He comes to the place where Abraham and Isaac before him had acknowledged God. (Gen_21:33; Gen_26:24-25.) Before he crosses the boundary, he will seek to know the perfect will of the Lord. He had assurance from Joseph, he had fair proof that all would be well; yet he will not take the final step until he has sealed his covenant relation with God. He longed to see Joseph, but his feelings were under the control of religion. He was going into an unknown and dangerous world, and he must commend himself to God by a special act of devotion.
IV. It had the approval of God. “God spake unto Israel.” (Gen_46:2.) This was a great crisis in the history of the Church at which we might expect God to appear. God has always appeared in some special act or word in every great crisis of His people’s history. As to Jacob—
1. He found God as he had sought Him. “I am God, the God of thy father.” The Name used reveals the Omnipotent God, the Mighty One who is able to fulfil His covenant engagements, and who could bring Jacob safely through all his difficulties present and future. Israel had found his God faithful in all His gracious dealings, and he believed that he should still see the same loving kindness and truth for the time to come.
2. The will of God is clearly made known. “Fear not to go down to Egypt.” He was distinctly assured that it was God’s will that he should go there.”
3. The protection of God is promised. “Fear not—I will go down with thee into Egypt.” (Gen_46:3-4.) The “I” is emphatic. Jacob had many reasons for fear. He was an old man now, far advanced in years. He was leaving the promised land, and going to a heathen country with the known prospect before him of centuries of affliction for his family. But he has no need to fear, for all is in the hands of God.
4. The purpose of God is declared. “I will there make of thee a great nation.” “I will surely bring thee up again.” This was, indeed, a bright prospect, and well fitted to encourage the faith of the patriarch. And God has fulfilled this word, for He has endowed the nation of Israel with an inextinguishable life. Balaam was struck with this when he said, “Who can count the dust of Jacob.” And God promised that he would bring Jacob up again. We are to understand this, of course, of his descendants, who were to be brought up from Egypt at the great Exodus. This event is ever spoken of as the mighty act of God. Thus, not merely one was selected, as of old, to receive the word of the Lord and to witness his power, but all the family, now expanded to a nation, were to be included in the chosen seed. And so the promise of Redemption was working itself clearer. This nation was to persist through human history for the salvation of mankind.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_46:1. It is both wise and pleasant for us to avail ourselves of the remembrance of our pious ancestors when we plead with God for special mercies. It is sweet to a devout mind to be able to say, “He is my God, and I will exalt Him; my father’s God, and I will build Him an habitation.”—(Bush.)
Jacob’s halt at Beer-sheba furnishes a proof of the distinction between human certainty and that derived from the Divine assurance. Thus John the Baptist knew already of the Messianic mission, before His baptism, but it was not until the revelation made at the baptism that he received the Divine assurance which he needed as the forerunner of Christ. In our day, too, this distinction is of importance for the minister of the Gospel. Words of Divine assurance are the proper messages from the pulpit.—(Lange.)
Gen_46:2. The Most High here called him by his first and ordinary name, “Jacob,” perhaps to put him in mind of what he was in himself. He was now indeed honoured with a very glorious title, but he must not forget that he was only Jacob when God met with him in his early days. The address which God here makes to his servant undoubtedly had reference to Jacob’s design in offering the sacrifices, which was to obtain some clear testimony of the Divine approbation of the step he was about to take.—(Bush.)
Gen_46:3. Cause of fear he might see sufficient; but God would have him not to look down upon the rushing and roaring streams of miseries that ran so swiftly under him and his posterity, but steadfastly fasten upon His power and providence. He loves to perfect His strength in our weakness; as Elijah would have the sacrifice covered with water, that God’s power might the more appear in the fire from heaven.—(Trapp.)
Gen_46:4. That was as good security as could be. For if Cæsar could say to the fearful pilot in a terrible storm, “Be of good cheer, thou carryest Cæsar and Cæsar’s fortunes;” how much more may he presume to be safe that hath God in his company! A child in the dark fears nothing while he hath his father by the hand.—(Trapp.)
The Lord does not say that he would bring him up again as soon as the years of the famine were ended. Indeed, the contrary might be inferred from the very words of the promise; for he was to remain there till he had become a great nation; and it cannot be supposed that he expected to live until the promise was accomplished. It was to be in the person of his seed that Jacob was to be brought up to possess the earthly inheritance.—(Bush.)
Gen_46:5. “The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father.” A debt of kindness which was justly owed to Jacob from his sons. They were little children at the time of his last journey, and he prayed and wrestled with God for them when they were in danger, and used all possible means to appease their enraged uncle, and moved slowly along the road as the women and children were able to bear. Now Jacob was himself a child in strength, and his vigorous children recompensed their father’s tender care by their care of him on the journey.—(Bush.)
The word “rose up” is emphatical, and imports that his heart was lightened. As when he had seen God at Bethel, he “lift up his feet,” and went on his way lustily. (Gen_29:1.)—(Trapp.)
Gen_46:6. In taking all his substance, as well as his kindred, he would cut off occasion from those who might be disposed, at least in after times, to reproach the family with having come into Egypt empty-handed, and to throw themselves upon the bounty of the country.—(Fuller.)
Gen_46:7. Only one daughter is named in the list, and one granddaughter. There may have been other daughters and granddaughters, who, if they married to Egyptians, or other strangers (or for other reasons) would not be included in the genealogical list, as “mothers in Israel.”—(Jacobus.)
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Descent of Jacob into Egypt. The Genealogical Table…
The Descent of Jacob into Egypt. The Genealogical Table of the Israelites
1-4. On reaching Beersheba, the southern boundary of the Promised Land, Jacob offers sacrifices to God. In return God assures him of His continued favour and of the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham.
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4. Put his hand upon thine eyes] i.e. close them in death.
5. Little ones] rather,'household servants and their families.'
6-27. This passage is from the Priestly source, and shows its characteristic fondness for genealogies.
27. Threescore and ten] This number included Jacob and Joseph and his two sons. See on Exo_1:5 as to the total number of those that went down to Egypt.
28-34. Joseph was anxious to settle his people in Goshen both because the land was rich in pasture and because their calling was distasteful to the Egyptians.
34. Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians] The reasons for this dislike are disputed. 'Herdmen are represented on the monuments as uncouth and ill clad. They led a rough, unsettled life in the marshes, and seem to have been regarded as pariahs by the scrupulously clean Egyptians' (D.).
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v3 I am God
I am God
It is important to distinguish between the directive and the permissive will of God. In the first sense the place for the covenant family was Canaan Gen 26:1-5; Gen 46:3 is a touching instance of the permissive will of God. Jacob’s family, broken, and in part already in Egypt, the tenderness of Jehovah would not forbid the aged patriarch to follow. God will take up His people and, so far as possible, bless them, even when they are out of His best. In Israel’s choice of a king 1Sa 8:7-9 in the turning back from Kadesh Deu 1:19-22 in the sending of the spies; in the case of Balaam--illustrations of this principle are seen. It is needless to say that God’s permissive will never extends to things morally wrong. The highest blessing is ever found in obedience to His directive will.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTER 46 Jacob Goes Down to Egypt
CHAPTER 46 Jacob Goes Down to Egypt
1. Israel’s departure and the vision (Gen 46:1-4)
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2. The journey and the arrival in Egypt (Gen 46:5-7)
3. The offspring of the sons of Jacob (Gen 46:8-27)
4. Israel meets Joseph (Gen 46:28-30)
5. Joseph’s directions concerning Pharaoh (Gen 46:31-34
The whole family of Jacob, consisting of seventy souls, exclusive of the wives and the servants, came to Egypt. Once more God appears to Israel, but addresses him as Jacob. He gives him permission to go down to Egypt and assures him of His presence. They were directed to the land of Goshen, which was east of Memphis. And what a meeting it was, when Joseph fell around his father’s neck and kissed him!
This emigration to Egypt was, without doubt, directed by the Lord for the purpose of guarding against the dispersion of the family, as well as against its admixture with strangers, during the important period which had arrived in which it was appointed to be developed as a nation; neither of these unfavorable results, which would have been inevitable in Canaan, could follow in Egypt: for Goshen afforded ample room for their increasing numbers, on the one hand, while, on the other, the aversion of the Egyptians to shepherds (Gen 46:34) effectually prevented the formation of ties between them by intermarriage. Besides, the opportunity which was furnished for becoming acquainted with the wisdom of Egypt, and also the pressure of the future bondage, may have been both designed to serve, in the hands of God, as means for training and cultivating the chosen nation. And the transition from a nomadic to an agricultural life, which was designed to constitute the foundation of the polity of Israel on acquiring independence and a home in the promised land, may also be assigned, in its incipient stages, to this period.--J.H. Kurtz, sacred History.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 The Journey over Beersheba to Egypt
The Journey over Beersheba to Egypt
v. 1. And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. From Hebron, Gen 37:14, Jacob, the father of the children of Israel, removed everything that could be transported without difficulty, and journeyed first of all to Beersheba, on the southern border of Canaan. Although the pressure of the famine and the invitation of both Joseph and Pharaoh were apparently hints from God, yet he was not without serious apprehension and anxiety at the greatness of the undertaking and its possible consequences.
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v. 2. And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob! And he said, Here am I. So God Himself, whom he had worshiped with his sacrifices, appeared to Jacob at this decisive moment, speaking to him in a dream-vision by night.
v. 3. And he said, I am God, the Powerful, the Mighty One, the God of thy father, the only true God. Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation. What God had said to Abraham in a general way, Gen 15:13-16, he here referred to the sojourn in Egypt. He not only sanctioned the removal of Jacob to Egypt, but promised His blessing also in the strange land.
v. 4. I will go down with thee in to Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again. His protection would attend their removal, their stay, and the eventual return of the children of Israel. This promise, moreover, was to remind Jacob of the greater and more important prophecy, that of the Messiah, who was to be his descendant. And Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes; the last service of love when Jacob closed his eyes in death would be performed by the son whom he had so long mourned as dead.
v. 5. And Jacob rose up from Beersheba, he continued his journey cheerfully; and the sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry them, all the hardships of the journey being thus eliminated.
v. 6. And they took their cattle and their goods which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, surely an immense caravan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him;
v. 7. his sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters, a general expression, which probably includes not only Dinah and Serah, but also the daughters-in-law, and all his seed brought he with him in to Egypt. No matter how conditions in life may change for believers, the Word of God’s mercy remains unchanged, and His goodness and truth is over them forever.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 5 went to Beersheba
went to Beersheba
"came to Beersheba"
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Here I am
"Yes, I am listening"
to go down to Egypt
It was common to use the phrase "go down" when speaking of traveling from Canaan to Egypt.
I will make you a great nation
The "you" is singular and refers to Jacob. Here Jacob refers to his descendants that will become a large nation. AT: "I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation" (See: Forms of You and Metonymy)
into Egypt
"to Egypt"
I will surely bring you up again
The promise was made to Jacob, but the promise would be fulfilled to all of Israel's descendants. AT: "I will surely bring your descendants out of Egypt again" (See: Forms of You and Metonymy)
bring you up again
It was common to use the word "up" when speaking about traveling from Egypt to Canaan.
Joseph will close your eyes with his own hand
The phrase "close you eyes with his own hand" is a way of saying that Joseph will be present when Israel dies and it will be Joseph who will close Jacob's eyelids at the time of his death. AT: "Joseph will even be present with you at the time of your death" (See: Idiom)
will close your eyes
It was a custom to pull down the eyelids when a person died with their eyes open. The full meaning of this statement can be made explicit. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
Jacob
Beersheba
sacrifice
God
Isaac
vision
fear
Egypt
nation
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 4 46:1-4 God reassured Jacob about his move to Egypt.
46:1-4 God reassured Jacob about his move to Egypt.
46:1 set out for Egypt: A little over 200 years earlier, Abraham had similarly gone down into Egypt during a famine in Canaan (12:10), and God had protected him there. • Jacob’s first stop was at Beersheba, where Abraham had sacrificed to the Lord and worshiped him after settling his land and water rights with the Philistines (21:31-33). This was where Isaac had lived, and where Jacob had lived before he fled from Esau’s anger (28:10). • all his possessions: See 46:5-7.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.