1 So Israel set out with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. 2 And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” 3 And He said, “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. 4 I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes with his hand.”
5 Then Jacob arose from Beersheba; and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob and their little ones and their wives in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. 6 And they took their livestock and their possessions, which they had accumulated in the land of Canaan, and they came to Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him: 7 his sons and his grandsons with him, his daughters and his granddaughters, and all his seed he brought with him to Egypt.
8 Now these are the names of the sons of Israel - of Jacob and his sons - who were coming to Egypt: Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn. 9 The sons of Reuben: Hanoch and Pallu and Hezron and Carmi. 10 The sons of Simeon: Jemuel and Jamin and Ohad and Jachin and Zohar and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman. 11 The sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. 12 The sons of Judah: Er and Onan and Shelah and Perez and Zerah (but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan). And the sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul. 13 The sons of Issachar: Tola and Puvvah and Iob and Shimron. 14 The sons of Zebulun: Sered and Elon and Jahleel. 15 These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob in Paddan-aram, with his daughter Dinah; all his sons and his daughters numbered thirty-three.
16 The sons of Gad: Ziphion and Haggi, Shuni and Ezbon, Eri and Arodi and Areli. 17 The sons of Asher: Imnah and Ishvah and Ishvi and Beriah and their sister Serah. And the sons of Beriah: Heber and Malchiel. 18 These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to his daughter Leah; and she bore to Jacob these sixteen persons.
19 The sons of Jacob’s wife Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. 20 Now to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, bore to him. 21 The sons of Benjamin: Bela and Becher and Ashbel, Gera and Naaman, Ehi and Rosh, Muppim and Huppim and Ard. 22 These are the sons of Rachel, who were born to Jacob; there were fourteen persons in all.
23 The sons of Dan: Hushim. 24 The sons of Naphtali: Jahzeel and Guni and Jezer and Shillem. 25 These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to his daughter Rachel, and she bore these to Jacob; there were seven persons in all. 26 All the persons belonging to Jacob, who came to Egypt, who came out of his loins, excluding the wives of Jacob’s sons, were sixty-six persons in all, 27 and the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt were two; all the persons of the house of Jacob, who came to Egypt, were seventy.
28 Now he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to point out the way before him to Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. 29 And Joseph harnessed his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father Israel; as soon as he appeared before him, he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a long time. 30 Then Israel said to Joseph, “Now I can die, since I have seen your face, that you are still alive.” 31 And Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh and say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me; 32 and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock; and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’ 33 And it will be when Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’ 34 then you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth and until now, both we and our fathers,’ that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”
We know from Genesis 37:14 that Jacob was dwelling in Hebron (top right of map). After setting off to Egypt, Jacob came to Beersheba, which marks the southern most part of Canaan. And it is at Beersheba, just before Jacob left the Promised Land, that Jacob offered sacrifices to God, and God visited Jacob in visions. Jacob is leaving the land promised to him and his ancestors before him in response to Joseph’s call.
Previously, when he left Canaan for Mesopotamia to live with Laban (Genesis 28), it was on the proviso of returning soon. But this migration to Egypt would be for the remainder of Jacob’s life. On his return from Mesopotamia to Canaan, Jacob was instructed by God to do so (Genesis 31:3). This migration to Egypt was Jacob’s decision in response to Joseph’s call.
Jacob, then, in setting out from Hebron, was caught between not knowing God’s will and wanting desperately to see Joseph. He was conscious of his call to dwell in Canaan (Genesis 35) but knew he could be reunited with Joseph.
How comforting to Jacob must God’s words have been at Beersheba? - “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes with his hand.” Any doubt as to whether he should leave his own land and dwell in Egypt was put to rest. The words, “I will be with you,” were familiar words; words spoken by God to Jacob many years previous as he departed Canaan to live with Laban (Genesis 28:15), and when returning back to Canaan (Genesis 31:3).
But there were also more sobering words that spoke of Jacob’s death. In one sense they are somber words but, given the context, they are also comforting words. Somber because Jacob was old in years (130) and was coming towards the end of his life. Comforting because he knew he would see Joseph again. And not only see Joseph but Joseph would close Jacob’s eyes with his hand.
But there is also something else comforting in these somber words. God promised, “I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you up again.” Jacob would die in Egypt, so what is meant by the words, “I will also bring you up again”? In a practical sense, Jacob was taken back to Canaan and buried in the cave bought by Abraham. But what comfort is it to Jacob that his body would be taken back to Canaan? From a secular-minded perspective, what does it matter? He was dead.
Hear Jesus’s response to the Sadducees who questioned the resurrection. The Sadducees rejected the supernatural and thus the resurrection, and asked Jesus which wife would be a man’s in the resurrection if he remarried following the death of the first? Jesus’s answer is two-fold, and it is the second part that provides the key to answering the question about what it matters that Jacob was taken back to Canaan.
Matthew 22:31-32 - “But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
Though Jacob would die, viz. his body will die, he trusted God that he would be resurrected. Jesus said to the Sadducees, “He [God] is not the God of the dead but of the living.” And to whom is Jesus referring? Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Though Jacob’s body was dead his soul was alive and will be reclothed in a resurrected body at the resurrection.
What evidence do we have that Jacob trusted God in his resurrection? The author of the epistle to the Hebrews writes the following:
Hebrews 11:9-10 - By faith he [Abraham] sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise, for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
And
Hebrews 11:13-16 - All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. 15 And indeed if they had been remembering that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But now, they aspire to a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He prepared a city for them.
The city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God, is heaven (Hebrews 11:16). Look at Hebrews 11:13 which states that they were strangers and exiles on earth. If they were strangers and exiles on earth then their citizenship was elsewhere - heaven. Did they, like many Christians today, believe their future existance would be only a spiritual existence in heaven? Of course not. Why else take the trouble to carry Jacob’s body back to Canaan and bury him with his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham if there was no physical resurrection?
“But if their resurrected existence is in heaven, and not here on earth, then why take the trouble to carry Jacob’s body back to Canaan?” the skeptic might ask. It’s a valid question and one deserving of an answer. Those who are resurrected in glory will exist on earth, but it won’t be this earth in its broken state. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. When Christ returns he will return to the Mount of Olives from where he ascended, and will rule the earth as King of kings. Jacob’s bones will be reclothed in a glorified resurrected body here on a new earth to dwell again here on a new earth.
And what about all believers? Are they resurrected, and will they live on the earth? Yes indeed. Look again at the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” This promise refers to Christ who came into the world two millennia after Abraham, and it is because Abraham believed this promise that it was credited to him as righteousness (see Genesis 15:6). Therefore, anyone who likewise believes in Christ as the only one to atone for sin exercises saving faith, and is it is credited to that individual as righteousness. The doctrine of justification by faith is spelled out in Romans 4. Do read it.
Moving on, this section includes a lengthy list of sons and daughters born to Jacob and his sons. In summary, there were seventy in total who travelled down to Egypt from Hebron. Over the course of their four hundred year sojourn in Egypt the seventy became millions - an unlikely number if they remained in Canaan. They settled in a region of Egypt called Goshen which, if we look at a modern map, shows desert land. However, during the days of Jacob, Goshen was a rich and fertile pasture well suited to keeping flocks and herds.
There’s an interesting statement at the end of this section that reads, “for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.” It seems disjointed and without purpose at first until we begin to think about the future plan God had for Israel. In being shepherds, and therefore and abomination to the Egyptians, there was less possibility of them integrating into Egyptian society and being polluted by their pagan ways. They would remain, for the most part, a separate people dwelling in their own part of Egypt. There they could multiply until God took them out during the great exodus under the leadership of Moses four centuries later.
Their separateness was important; something they needed to get used to, for in the course of time, when they would return in great number to Canaan, they were to be a separate people, distinct from the surrounding nations, a people of God whose lifestyle and practices were to be holy (Leviticus 20:26).
There is much to consider in this section and much could be written, but I hope to expand on some of the points raised in future posts.