Genesis 46

Isaac’s son only outlived him by some five-and-twenty years. For the first fifteen years of his life, Jacob was brought up on Abraham’s knees. For the first seventy-eight years he kept his father company; so that he carried with him into exile in Haran a middle-aged man’s full knowledge of all that his father knew. Besides that, he returned again to reside with his aged father, some twenty years or so before the death of the latter. Again, therefore, in the ripeness of age, with his interest in the revelations of his house quickened now through his own personal experience and acknowledged position as the heir of promise, Jacob enjoyed the amplest opportunity for thoroughly mastering the story as Abraham had taught it to Isaac. Of his own personal adventures, Jacob was of course a witness at first hand; and it is noticeable that after he enters on the scene as an actor (at the opening of chapter 27), the narrative becomes very much more ample and discursive. No longer confined to the most essential and memorable incidents, it ranges over a wider area, and enters into a crowd of subordinate details.

At the age of one hundred and thirty, therefore, when Jacob entered Egypt, he carried down to that land of literature the entire stock of tradition which had come to him from grandfather and from father, augmented by those fresh reminiscences which he himself had gathered. In Egypt he spent seventeen more years, in close and affectionate intercourse with a son whose devout intelligence was very capable of measuring the importance to future generations of his tribe of all this sacred lore now treasured up in one old man’s memory; and very well qualified, had he so pleased, to find for it a secure literary record. It is impossible, of course, to prove that Joseph or any other of his family caused to be committed to written documents the traditions of his house, as it is impossible to prove that such documents came into the hands of Moses. But we are now, at any rate, on the firm ground of a literary land, where such a preservation of the narrative was, to say the least, possible. Joseph was a member of the priestly college at On, the most famous seat of Egyptian learning. He possessed every facility, not only for having the story written, but even for securing it a place in the government archives; where Moses, centuries after, had by an equally singular providence no less facility and motive for disintering it. Or, for aught we know, some written form of the family tradition may even have been current among the Beni-Israel from the days of the Hebrew Vizier to the days of the Hebrew Foundling-Prince. It is sufficient to indicate by what a natural succession of circumstances the most minute facts recorded of Abraham might find a written record after an interval of only one hundred and fifteen years (from his death till the removal to Egypt), that interval being bridged by the single life of Jacob. Dykes.

46 : 28 And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to shew the way before him unto Goshen; 29 and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen; and he presented himself unto him, and fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, that thou art yet alive. And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his father’s house, I will go up, and tell Pharaoh, and will say unto him, My brethren, and my father’s house, which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me; 32 and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have. And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? that ye shall say, Thy servants have been keepers of cattle from our youth even until now, both we, and our fathers: that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.47 : 1 Then Joseph went in 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, 2 behold, they are in the land of Goshen. And from among his brethren he took five men, 3 and presented them unto Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your occupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Thy servants are shepherds, both we, and our

4 fathers. And they said unto Pharaoh, To sojourn in the land are we come; for there is no pasture for thy servants’ flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now 5 therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen. And Pharaoh 6 spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee: the land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell; and if thou knowest any able men among 7 them, then make them rulers over my cattle. And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, 8 and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, 9 How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of 10 the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and 11 went out from the presence of Pharaoh. And 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 12 Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father’s household, with bread, according to their families.

The connection of Egypt with Scripture history is long and intimate. Abraham and Sarah visited it in a time of famine about two hundred years before Jacob came into it; and even then it was evidently in a state of high civilization. The long residence of the Israelites in it, after Joseph brought them to its fertile plains, made it in a sense their native land. Their intercourse with Egypt was suspended for a long time after the Exodus, but was resumed under Solomon and Jeroboam. In after years, the kings of Egypt frequently attacked or passed through Palestine: on one of these occasions king Josiah was slain. During the struggles of Nebuchadnezzar, a body of Jews courted the favor of the king of Egypt, and, in spite of all the efforts of Jeremiah, went to dwell in it when Jerusalem was destroyed. W. G. B.

From the same valley of the Nile, whence flowed the culture of Greece, was to flow also the religion of Palestine. That same land of ancient learning, which in the schools of Alexandria was, ages afterward, the first settled home and shelter of the wandering Christian Church, was also the first settled home and shelter of the wandering Jewish nation. Egypt was the meeting-point, geographically and historically, of the three continents of the ancient world. It could not but bear its part in the nurture of that people which was itself to influence and guide them all. A. P. S.

28. Into the land of Goshen.** The “land of Goshen,” also called Goshen simply, appears to have borne another name, “the land of Rameses” (47: 11). It was between Joseph’s residence at the time and the frontier of Palestine, and apparently the extreme province toward that frontier. Gen. 46: 33, 34, shows that Goshen was scarcely regarded as a part of Egypt Proper, and was not peopled by Egyptians, — characteristics that would positively indicate a frontier province. Goshen was a pastoral country, where some of Pharaoh’s cattle were kept. From Ex 13: 17, 18, we infer that the land of Goshen must have in part been near the eastern side of the ancient Delta, Rameses lying within the valley now called the Wádiá-Tamykát, about 30 miles in a direct course from the ancient western shore of the Arabian Gulf. P. S.

We gather from the Bible that the “land of Goshen,” or, as it is sometimes called, “the land of Rameses,” was in the eastern portion of the Delta, as it is nowhere stated that the Israelites crossed the Nile at the time of the exodus; that it was a frontier province not far from the residence of the Pharaoh of Joseph, either Memphis or Zoan; that it was between that place and Palestine; and that it was a pastoral country, in which Pharaoh’s own cattle were pastured, in “the best of the land.” Wilson. —The land of Goshen, in which, or which was, “the land of Rameses” (47: 11), is fairly well identified. The various references to it in the Bible text and on the Egyptian monuments, as well as later historical data, all go to fix it as including the Wady Toomilát (which sweeps from above Cairo, northerly and easterly toward Lakes Timsáh and Ballah), together with more or less of the country on either side of that Wady. Ebers outlines this region graphically, when he says: “As far as it is possible to fix its ancient limitations, it exhibits the form of a cornucopia, bounded toward the east, at the widest end or opening of the cornucopia, by the water-way [the series of lakes through which runs the Suez Canal] that divides Africa from Asia. The fresh-water canal which already existed at the time of the sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, and which was reopened by M de Les-seps, washes its southern frontier; the lake of

Mensaleh lies to the north of it, and to the west the Tanitic arm of the Nile—which has now dwindled to a narrow water-course.” There are many who would not carry the Goshen district west of the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, but who would extend it southward somewhat below the fresh-water canal. Apart from these differences the boundaries indicated by Ebers would be generally accepted among scholars. Trambull.

The ancients knew and made mention of seven branches and mouths of the Nile along the Southern Mediterranean coast, between the present Alexandria on the west and Port Said at the mouth of the Suez Canal on the east. Thus, beginning at Alexandria and travelling eastward toward Southern Palestine, the traveller would pass, in the time of Moses, seven bayous (as we would call them) and seven mouths of the Nile. First—The Caosopic arm or bayou, which is now partly merged into the canal of Alexandria, and partly is lost in the Lake Elko. Second—The Bolbatine, or R-setta. Third—The Schennytic probably running into Lake Burlos. Fourth—The Bucolic or Phatnitic, at Damietta. Fifth—The Mendesian, emptying into Lake Mensaleh. Sixth—The Tanitic, running into the eastern portion of Lake Mensaleh. Seventh—The Pelusiac, emptying at the Eastern mouth of Lake Mensaleh, and not far west of the present Port Said and Suez Canal. This last arm of the Nile, now choked up with sand, was even in the time of Alexander, a thousand years later than Moses, so large and deep as to be navigable for Alexander’s war fleet; and through it he actually ascended to Memphis and the main trunk of the Nile. We may assume then that the eastern border of Egypt at the time of Joseph extended nearly or quite to the present line of the Suez Canal. S. R.

29,30. What a beautiful picture of reunion is this! “He fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.” See them there! The old man not speaking, because he cannot speak,—speaking most because saying nothing. Joseph not speaking for some time. Only weeping upon one another! Then Jacob says, “Now let me die!” It was as old Simeon spake when he saw the Child of God, “Now let thy servant depart in peace.” J. P.

33,34. Joseph directed his brethren to introduce themselves as shepherds, not only in spite of the fact that shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, but on that very account. His reason for doing so is apparent. In the occupation of his brethren there was the surett guarantee that their national and religious peculiarities would not be endangered or destroyed, and that they would not be absorbed by the Egyptians. The hatred and contempt which the Egyptians cherished toward the shepherd caste, as existing monuments attest by many a characteristic sign, may be traced to the fact that agriculture, with its regular and methodical habits, was the sole support of the Egyptian state, and that the irregularities of a nomad life must have appeared to a pedantic Egyptian to be rude and barbarous in the extreme. K.

Joseph’s anxiety now was to secure to his people a separate settlement in Egypt, where they would not be mingled with the idolatrous Egyptians. But for his paramount influence with the king this would have been impossible; and at any other epoch of Egypt’s history not even Joseph could have effected it. One may say with much confidence that, with their strong natural antipathy to foreigners, no native king could have been easily persuaded to grant the concession of territory that Joseph asked for. But the reigning Pharaoh was not of Egyptian but of Shepherd race. It will be seen at once how singularly this favored Joseph’s purpose. Not only was the king free from the national prejudice, but in this national prejudice Joseph found his best argument for a separate allotment of land to his people. Hence the care with which he instructed his brethren to describe themselves as shepherds when introduced to Pharaoh: “When Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? 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 [apart] in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” These last words—otherwise so difficult—become clear at once on the supposition that Pharaoh was himself of shepherd race. J. P. N.

47 : 5, 6. The number of those who entered Egypt with Jacob has been reasonably calculated at “several thousands.” To place such a body of foreigners “in the best of the land,” on the eastern frontier, where they could readily give admission to others, is what no king of either the Old or the New Empire would have been likely to have done; but it is exactly what might have been expected of one of the Hyksos. G. R.

It is to secure that Israel grow without let or hindrance, that Jacob’s household is removed to a land where protection and seclusion would at once be secured to them. In the land of

Goshen, secured from molestation partly by the influence of Joseph, but much more by the caste-prejudices of the Egyptians, and their hatred of all foreigners and shepherds in particular, they enjoyed such prosperity and attained so rapidly the magnitude of a nation that some, forgetful alike of the promise of God and of the natural advantages of Israel’s position, have refused to credit the accounts given us of the increase in their population. In a land so roomy, so fertile, and so secluded as that in which they were now settled, they had every advantage for making the transition from a family to a nation. Here they were preserved from all temptation to mingle with neighbors of a different race, and so lose their special place as a people called out by God to stand alone. Dods.

7. Brought in Jacob his father.** 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 of another age, or of another world, there was something of a sacred and prophetic character. Lange.—Jacob blessed Pharaoh. We see here the type of the true relation in which Israel was to stand to heathenism in all their future intercourse. K.—“Beyond contradiction, the less is blessed of the better” (Heb. 7: 7), or greater. In one respect Pharaoh was greater than Jacob; but in another Jacob was far greater than he. He was a son of Abraham, whose peculiar honor and prerogative it was, that he and his posterity should be blessings to mankind. He was also himself a man who “as a prince had power with God and men, and prevailed.” The blessing of such a man was of no small account, for God would not suffer his words to fall to the ground. Bush.—When Abraham went down to Egypt, unsent of the Lord, he brought trouble on Pharaoh and all his house. But when Jacob, guided and instructed by the Lord, goes down into Egypt, he carries a blessing with him. So when we are in the line of duty, in the path that God marks out for us, we are sure to carry blessings wherever we go. Gibson.

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! 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. 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. 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. We may as well doubt of Cæsar and Alexander, yea, of Napoleon and of Washington, as of Jacob, Joseph, and Pharaoh. Lange.

8. How many are the days of the years of thy life? 9. My pilgrimage.** Pharaoh asked of “the days of the years of his life.” He replies by speaking of the days of the years of his pilgrimage. The patriarchs spoke of life as a pilgrimage or sojourning, because they sought another country, that is a heavenly (Heb. 11: 9, 13). Earth was not their home, but their journey homeward. E. H. B.—If we look into the story of those friends of heaven, the ancestors of the Israelitish nation, we find them sojourning in a land that was not theirs; dwelling only in tents, soon pitched and as soon removed again; having no ground of their own to set their foot on save only a possession of a burying-place, and that purchased of the inhabitants; where they might rest from their travels, till they shall pass at the resurrection of the just to their durable inheritance in the kingdom of God. Such was Jacob’s notion of human life, expressed in his answer to the Egyptian monarch who had inquired his age. Bp. Horne.

Few and evil have been the days. In the verse days and years are repeated and repeated, sounding in the ear like the tolling of a time-bell. Life, in Jacob’s e-timate—a pilgrimage, no stoppage by the way, no home along the passage, rough the road often and weary the traveller; but beyond death and the grave another and better country, even a heavenly. The length of his own life Jacob compares with that of his immediate ancestors. Isaac had lived one hundred and eighty years; Abraham one hundred and seventy-five. He had reached but one hundred and thirty; and evil as well as few had the days of the years of his pilgrimage been. Few men have had such a series of domestic trials and sufferings to look back upon as he had, from the day of that dark deed which drove him from Hebron. Exile from home; separation from a mother he was never to see again; seven years of labor for the object of his love, and then humiliatingly deceived; twenty years of toil in the house of a selfish uncle, the drought consuming him by day, the frost by night, sleep departing from his eyes, his wages changed ten times; sons multiplying rapidly around him, the crowded household bringing but little comfort; a daughter’s dishonor, her brothers’ deliberate fraud and desperate cruelty; Rachel’s premature and melancholy death; Reuben’s incest; Judah’s disgrace; the falsehood and malignity of the sale of Joseph, the presentation of the bloody coat of many colors—a long line of sorrows. How often and how strangely the specific form of his own early offence repeated itself and was reflected back upon him; his uncle cheating him as he had cheated Isaac; the very kind of sins that he had committed against his father and brother, committed in an aggravated form by his own children against himself and toward one another. But if the discipline was singularly adapted to the subject, and singularly protracted and severe, it was as singularly successful. He fancied, as he stood before Pharaoh, looking back upon the past, that he was standing on the very border of eternity. He spake as one who thought that his days were numbered. He was mistaken. There were seventeen years still in store for him. These closing years in Egypt offer a striking contrast to those which preceded them. They were years of unruffled rest, of unshadowed prosperity. Not a single disturbing or distressing incident—no difficulty, no sorrow, no death; things ran on so evenly, so calmly, so brightly, there is nothing to record. The first five were years of famine in Egypt, but the Israelites were not neglected in the distribution of the hoarded stores. The other twelve were years of plenty, during which “Israel dwelt in the land of Goshen, and they had possessions therein, and grew and multiplied exceedingly.” The quiet evening of a long, dark, troubled day, it was a period of perfect outward rest and enjoyment; and over its close there shines a light which tells us that there was an inward peace, and trust, and hope of which the outward was an image. W. H.

All the points in which men differ, health and strength, high or low estate, happiness or misery, vanish before this common lot, mortality. Pass a few years, and the longest-lived will be gone; nor will what is passed profit him then, except in its consequences. And this sense of the nothingness of life, impressed on us by the very fact that it comes to an end, is much deepened, when we contrast it with the capabilities of us who live it. Had Jacob lived Methuselah’s age, he would have called it short. This is what we all feel, though at first sight it seems a contradiction, that even though the days as they go below, and be laden with many events, or with sorrows or dreariness lengthening them out and making them tedious, yet the year passes quick though the hours tarry, and time bygone is as a dream, though we thought it would never go while it was going. And the reason seems to be this; that, when we contemplate human life in itself, in however small a portion of it, we see implied in it the presence of a soul, the energy of a spiritual existence, of an accountable being; consciousness tells us this concerning it every moment. But when we look back on it in memory, we view it but externally, as a mere lapse of time, as a mere earthly history. And the longest duration of this external world is as dust and weighs nothing against one moment’s life of the world within. Thus we are ever expecting great things from life, from our internal consciousness every moment of our having souls; and we are ever being disappointed, on considering what we have gained from time past, or can hope from time to come. And life is ever promising and never fulfilling; and hence, however long it be, our days are few and evil. Newsman.

The holy patriarch who had the name of Israel had a life made up largely of sorrows. His posterity have afflictions left them for their legacy. Egypt, the wilderness, Canaan, Babylon, were the stages of Israel’s tragedies. The spiritual Israel is in all the parts and ages of the world a distressed member. Witness that “book of martyrs” epitomized (Heb. 11). Of all people God would have his Israel holiest, and he corrects them to make them partakers of his holiness. If he suffers weeds in the forest, he endures them not in the garden. Affliction is appointed for the consumption of sin. It is poison to lust and food to graces. The sheep of Christ thrive best in shortest pasture. Affliction is God’s touchstone, to difference between the precious and the vile; his fan, to sever between the wheat and the chaff; his furnace, to separate between the metal and the dross. God sees it best for his people (like waters) to be in motion: should they stand still they would soon putrefy. The rest of the people of God remains. It is too much to have two heavens. He who said he should never be removed, like Peter in the mount, knew not what he said. That saints may be always safe; they must never be secure. Of all people those should be least censured who are most corrected: they may be, nay are most like to be, Israelites. The happiness of Israel is not to be judged by outward appearances. The Israels, the princes of God, are in this world but princes under a disguise. This life is but the obscurity of their adoption. We see their combats, we see not their crowns: we view them in the tents of Kedar, not within the curtains of Solomon. Jenkyn.