On Genesis, Part 56: Subjects of the State

On Genesis, Part 56: Subjects of the State

In March of 2009, one of the first articles I had published on the Christogenea website, which at that time was only two months old, was titled Who is your god? The article was actually written a year or so before I created the website. In June of 2018, that same article became the basis for Part 39 of my presentation of the Protocols of Satan, which bore the same title. The premise of the article is that America had begun as a Christian nation, but was slowly secularized and descended into humanism. Then, when the trial of the so-called Great Depression had come, Americans looked to the government for their salvation rather than to Christ. So the government, beginning with the so-called New Deal of the Roosevelt administration, was happy to oblige them, instituting many new social programs which had promised to save Americans out of their poverty, and assure their futures. As Americans accepted this new paradigm of government, the government became more and more powerful and more pervasive in the daily lives of the people. However poverty never ended, and instead, in the growth of the federal government which followed, now all Americans are enslaved under increasingly burdensome regulations by the resulting tyranny.

In this same manner we find one more prophetic type in these very chapters of Genesis which we now discuss. We have already mentioned this in brief, but thought that perhaps we should repeat it again here, and elaborate upon it in different ways. So in our last discussion in this Commentary, in relation to Genesis chapter 46 and the account of Israel’s Descent into Egypt, we described the seven kingdoms represented by seven mountains upon which the children of Israel, herself having been represented as a woman, would sit throughout the course of her history, as it is prophesied in Revelation chapter 17. There we further explained how Egypt had been the very first of those kingdoms. Here the children of Israel certainly are sitting upon the mountain of Egypt in that manner, as they have come to Egypt in order to survive the famine, which may be likened to an ancient Great Depression, and they would find their sustenance at the good graces of an earthly kingdom represented by the pharaoh.

While we cannot know what instruction in religion Jacob had given his family, Jacob himself was a quite and humble man who had always waited on God, rather than take any matters into his own hands – at least until the time of this famine. But it is apparent that the sons of Israel had indeed exhibited humanist inclinations. Those inclinations are manifested in some of the wives they had procured for themselves, and in their actions at Shechem, and in their actions in Dothan where they threw their own brother into a pit and left him for dead. So ultimately, facing trial in a time of famine they had turned to Egypt, and for that they would eventually become enslaved. This is the same pattern which modern Christendom has experienced, on a much greater scale, and therefore the ends of Israel’s worldly captivities are very much like the beginnings.

Therefore Jacob’s having gone to Egypt with all of his family is represented by one of the beasts upon which the whore of the Revelation sat. Egypt is the first of seven such beasts, as the children of Israel during the course of their history had been ruled over by seven world empires. So while Jacob himself had done nothing wrong, the fact that Israel depended upon the empire of Egypt for their survival, and ended up in slavery on account of that same circumstance, is certainly prophetic of this entire aspect of their modern history as Christendom. Jacob and his sons, having sought their sustenance from the State, were compelled to become subjects of the State. Likewise in modern times, Christians who sought the sustenance and protections of the government have become voluntary subjects of their respective governments, rather than remaining subject to God. Seeking the false security and comfort offered by their national governments, they are all mired in tyranny.

One cannot serve both Yahweh and Mammon.

Now we have completed our description of The Descent into Egypt, and Jacob and his sons are about to be brought before the pharaoh himself. So at the close of Genesis chapter 46 Joseph had instructed his family to be certain to tell the pharaoh that their trade was in the raising of cattle, so “that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” Having done this, we supposed that Joseph had purposely wanted his family to live apart from the Egyptians, for which reason he had sought to obtain for them the land of Goshen. This is also an indication that the Eastern Delta region of Egypt was indeed sparsely populated at this time, even though it was also described as “the best of the land”, as we shall read in this chapter, which probably helped to make its invasion by the Hyksos in the aftermath of this famine quite appealing and not too difficult.

So with this, we shall commence with Genesis chapter 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.

We cannot imagine that these conversations were private. Rather, they were more likely conducted in the public venue where the pharaoh had customarily sat and conducted the official business of his court, surrounded by servants and others of his government officials. So Joseph would have stood in turn before pharaoh and pleaded his case openly. Doing that, in order to underscore the fact that his brethren were shepherds, he also mentioned their flocks and herds.

Where it continues in verse 2, it is apparent that Joseph must have appeared with some of his brethren already accompanying him:

2 And he took some of his brethren, even five men, and presented them unto Pharaoh. 3 And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your occupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Thy servants are shepherds, both we, and also our fathers.

It is not certain whether Abraham and his father Terah had been shepherds as they had apparently sojourned for many years in Ur of the Chaldees. However when Abraham had later left Haran for Canaan with his nephew Lot, as it is described in Genesis chapter 13, we read that “2 … Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold”, and then “5 … Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents.”

While we do not really know whether any of his servants had accompanied Jacob to Egypt along with those of his family, it may be speculated that Joseph had brought only some of his brethren before pharaoh, because the others needed to remain and tend the flocks, and if that was the case, then it is likely that there were no servants, or at least, that there were not sufficient servants to tend the flocks alone. However another circumstance that seems to suggest that Jacob must have had servants with him in Goshen, is the fact that someone must have been tending the flocks since at least ten of his sons had twice journeyed from Hebron to Egypt to purchase grain, and if it were Jacob’s servants who tended his flocks at that time, it is not likely that he would have left them to die in the famine. A third circumstance that may render both of these perspectives irrelevant, which is the fact that along with Jacob’s eleven sons who had come with him from Hebron were over fifty grandsons and great-grandsons, and at least some of those were already old enough to tend flocks, although perhaps not by themselves.

Continuing with the dialogue of the brothers of Joseph:

4 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.

Their request seems to have been bold, since in the last verse of Genesis chapter 46, where Joseph had instructed his brethren, we read “34 … 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.” Here, the brothers went so far as having ventured on their own to ask for Goshen explicitly. But perhaps once it is realized how the Egyptians themselves had used Goshen, which is apparent in pharaoh’s reply which follows, then it becomes apparent that the request was not so audacious after all.

5 And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee: 6 The 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.

Here we shouldn’t necessarily imagine that the pharaoh did not answer Joseph’s brothers, but that only his instructions to Joseph are recorded. However the last statement informs us that the Egyptians themselves had been using the land of Goshen to pasture their own cattle, so Goshen appears to have been only an expansive pasture-land at this time, under which circumstances it would not have been densely settled, and it most likely would not have been used for other agrarian activities.

Here in verses 4 through 6, the Greek text of the Septuagint transposes the latter part of the text of verse 6 moving it to the end of the text in verse 4, and it adds some words, so that Brenton’s translation of the three verses reads: “4 And they said to Pharao, We are come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for the flocks of thy servants, for the famine has prevailed in the land of Chanaan; now then, we will dwell in the land of Gesem. And Pharao said to Joseph, Let them dwell in the land of Gesem; and if thou knowest that there are among them able men, make them overseers of my cattle. So Jacob and his sons came into Egypt, to Joseph; and Pharao, king of Egypt, heard of it. 5 And Pharao spoke to Joseph, saying, Thy father, and thy brethren, are come to thee. 6 Behold, the land of Egypt is before thee; settle thy father and thy brethren in the best land. ” This text seems to have been caused by some sort of ancient scribal error, because parts of it are anachronistic within the context of the overall account.

As we had also already said in relation to the text of verse 6 and the meaning of the word Hyksos, although the evidence is very thin, or even non-existent, perhaps the sons of Israel had come to manage the cattle of Egypt, and therefore, having become rulers over the cattle of the pharaohs, the term which had apparently been described to mean “shepherd kings” by Manetho actually only described the rulers over the cattle, and not shepherds who had ruled over any people. If this is plausible, then later the term must have been confounded with the Asiatic invaders who occupied Goshen in the time of the 15th Dynasty.

There is an anomaly of history which may seem to support this in some degree. Later, in the time of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Thutmose III, who was the pharaoh of the Exodus, Amenemhat, his first-born son and heir to his throne, had died under seemingly unknown circumstances. The year of his death is usually given by archaeologists as 1455 BC. Of this circumstance, it would certainly be our assertion that Amenemhat had died on the night of the killing of all of the first-born of Egypt which is described in Exodus chapter 12: “29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.”

So the second son of Thutmose III, who is known as Amenhotep II, became the pharaoh around 1425 BC, when his father died after having ruled for about fifty-four years, the first twenty of which were as a co-regent to his half-sister the pharaoh Hatshepsut. A plaque commemorating his deceased son Amenemhat has been found in an ancient temple located in Karnak, where he is mentioned on an inscription dated to the 24th year of his rule. In part, we read of this inscription that “He was appointed as Overseer of cattle – quite an unusual title for a prince – in that year.” [2]

This is conjectural, however it is plausible that if the Israelites in Goshen had once been “rulers of the cattle”, that in their later state of slavery, as Goshen had continued to be used as pastureland, that this title may have been assumed by whatever official of the Egyptian government was appointed to rule over Israel in slavery. Since the Israelites in slavery were assigned important chores, such as the building of “treasure cities” for the Egyptians [Exodus 1:11], it is even further plausible that an official of Amenemhat’s stature had been appointed to supervise them. That would explain why Amenemhat was described in the inscription as having had such an unusual title, having been a prince. It is typical that princes are assigned administrative duties, and also military duties, in their father’s kingdom, gaining the experience they would need to later rule themselves. Otherwise, the circumstances and the titles may forever remain unexplained.

Now Jacob himself is introduced to pharaoh, so that he may have been present throughout this entire occasion.

7 And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8 And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?

As we have frequently explained, Joseph was about forty years old at this time, or at least thirty-nine. There are still as many as five years of famine left, as Joseph had explained to his brethren in Genesis chapter 45 (45:11), and he was thirty years old when the seven years of plenty had begun, in Genesis chapter 41 (41:46). So it has been at least nine years, and possibly another, since Joseph was thirty. Now Jacob is recorded as having answered pharaoh:

9 And 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. 10 And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh.

The conversation may have been much longer, but only the necessities are recorded in Scripture, which was almost always written in a rather concise manner. This is an important point anchoring our entire chronology of the Exodus account, as well as the timing of the births of his sons and other events in the life of Jacob. If Joseph was born forty years earlier, then Jacob was ninety years old, and not much older than that when he had left Haran. So Jacob was about seventy years old when he went to Haran and first encountered Laban, who became his father-in-law, and seventy-seven years old when he first started having children.

So our entire chronology is tied to this event, and the estimation that the approximate date of the Exodus is about 1450 BC. With that method, which is supported by statements containing remarks pertinent to this chronology found in the New Testament and throughout Genesis, we can be certain that the date here, where Jacob stands before pharaoh, is within reasonable proximity of 1665 BC. Then, as we have already explained, since it was four hundred and thirty years from the call of Abraham to the giving of the law at Sinai, as Paul of Tarsus had attested in Galatians chapter 3, then the children of Israel were in Egypt for only two hundred and fifteen years, and they were not enslaved until after the death of Joseph at the age of a hundred and ten, in 1595 BC. So it is most plausible that they were not enslaved until the reconquest of the Delta by Egyptians around 1550 BC, and Moses was born around 1530 BC, or eighty years before the event of the Exodus. All of this chronology continues in agreement with statements throughout later Scriptures, which also generally agree with our knowledge of ancient history, whereby we are confident that it is reasonable, but would never claim that it is perfect.

11 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 Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded.

Here on the surface it may seem that Moses had used the name of Rameses anachronistically, but that is not necessarily the case. In Exodus chapter 1 we read, in the time when Israel was subjected to slavery and speaking of the Egyptian oppression of Israel, that “11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.” The site of the city of Ramesses, which was later called Pi-Ramesses is quite uncertain. But here in Genesis we learn that Goshen was also referred to as the “land of Rameses”, so Rameses may have been adjacent to Goshen, or it may have been the best portion of the land of Goshen, as the text seems to imply here, before the city which the Israelites had been tasked to build while they were in bondage was also given that same name. While archaeologists frequently imagine that the city had been named for the 19th Dynasty pharaohs who bore the name Rameses or Ramesses, it is at least just as plausible that the city and the later pharaohs had all been named for this land.

There is a hymn found in papyri which are esteemed to date from the 13th century BC, from the later 19th Dynasty of Egypt, titled In Praise of the City Ramses, which is reproduced in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, where in an introduction to the hymn we read in part that “The pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty established their residence city, the biblical Ramses or Raamses, in the northeastern Delta. The glories of this new capital were celebrated in poetical compositions like the following.” While we have no reason to read the composition, in a footnote related to this statement we read: “The location of Ramses has been much disputed, and scholars are not yet in agreement.” The note goes on to cite sources which propose the site of ancient Tanis, or that of modern Qantir, but none were definitive. Today, archaeologists generally uphold Qantir as the site of ancient Ramesses, a site about 75 miles northeast of modern Cairo [3], which is also very close to the esteemed location of ancient Avaris, the city of the Canaanite rulers of the 15th Dynasty who were also later called by the name Hyksos. It is they whom the label best describes, as they were rulers of all of the people of Lower Egypt for at least a hundred years.

There were several 19th Dynasty pharaohs who had bore the name Ramses, such as Ramesses I, who ruled from about 1292 BC, or Ramesses II who is said to have ruled for 66 years from about 1279 BC. Other estimates of all of these dates vary by as many as two decades. Then Ramesses III, a pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty, had ruled from about 1186 BC, for over thirty years. His sons and grandsons, Ramesses IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and XI, had each followed him in succession. The physiognomy in their mummies, at least from the time of Ramesses II, seems to reflect the exchanges which had been made between the pharaohs and the kings of the Canaanite Hurrians and Hittites for one another’s princesses as wives.

Returning to the actions of Joseph after he had presented his father and brothers to pharaoh:

12 And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father's household, with bread, according to their families. 13 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 fainted by reason of the famine.

The Hebrew word כול or kuwl (# 3557) which is translated as nourished here may have been rendered as sustained or supported, which are other less personal ways in which it is also defined. Joseph must have nourished his brethren simply by making certain that they received shipments of grain.

Now the focus shifts to Joseph’s success in storing, managing and selling the grain which he had amassed before the famine had begun:

14 And 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. 15 And 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.

The statement that “the money faileth” simply means that at least a significant portion of the common people of Egypt had no more money with which to buy grain. The Egyptians did not print cash, nor did they have plastic cards. The word translated as money here is כסף or keceph (# 3701), which is primarily silver, which was customarily used as a medium of exchange.

Where there was now no money, Joseph had then agreed to allow them to barter their cattle. [I guess the ancient Egyptians hadn’t heard of the keto or carnivore diets.] So we read:

16 And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail. 17 And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the 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.

While we should not doubt the veracity of the account, we certainly may wonder about the Egyptians themselves. It seems that they were accustomed to eating bread primarily, and perhaps meat was only secondary, as well as dairy products. There is sufficient archaeological evidence that the Egyptians had something of a dairy industry, which included the making of cheese. Both ancient Greeks and Romans had primarily eaten grains and vegetable products, where meat was eaten less frequently or in lesser quantities on account of its greater expense and depending upon one’s economic class. So it is plausible that Egypt had a similar economy, but it is nevertheless evident here that at least many Egyptians had possessed cattle of their own.

But evidently not many cattle, as that supply was also soon exhausted:

18 When 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 ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands:

The Septuagint reading seems to represent a clearer understanding of the original Hebrew, where Brenton’s translation has it to read: “18 And that year passed, and they came to him in the second year, and said to him, Must we then be consumed from before our lord? for if our money has failed, and our possessions, and our cattle, brought to thee our lord, and there has not been left to us before our lord more than our own bodies and our land, we are indeed destitute.”

So here also, just as we read later in verse 25 where the people are portrayed as having said “thou hast saved our lives”, the people seem to have accepted their fate as slaves in exchange for the comfort and security offered to them by the administration of the pharaoh managed by Joseph. So this same pattern we see throughout Christendom today. So they appeal to Joseph once again:

19 Wherefore 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.

By taking all of the cattle of Egypt on behalf of the pharaoh, Joseph would also augment the status of his own brethren, who had evidently been the rulers of the pharaoh’s cattle. Furthermore, up to this time, here it is evident that the Egyptians were also the owners of their own property. However with at least two years of famine remaining, now at least most of them would not even have that:

20 And 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. 21 And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.

Here the Egyptians had sold themselves into a state of destitution, because they relied on their government for their daily bread. The acts of Joseph were, in the worst possible assessment, opportunistic, but he himself was a servant, and therefore he was obliged to work in a manner which was loyal to the interests of his master. That is also how Yahshua Christ served His Master, and it is an example to us today, that we should put the interests of Christ our Master ahead of those of all the people. So in that manner, Joseph once again serves as a type for Christ.

However there is a further lesson in this for us today, that as we had said earlier in this presentation, once men rely on the government for their comfort and security, they inevitably become subjects of the State, and such consequences are absolutely unavoidable. So the State, which is the prevailing government or ruler, becomes his god. That both reflects and explains the conditions of America and the rest of Christendom in the modern world.

So ostensibly, where Joseph had moved the now-destitute people into cities, the people themselves would be easier for the government to manage. In the modern world we also witness that same phenomenon in the pushing of people into subdivisions and so-called “sustainable” cities.

But the State protects those who help serve to keep it in power, so here in Genesis that is also evident, as we continue:

22 Only 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: wherefore they sold not their lands.

The government, supporting the priesthood, would also ostensibly be able to control both them and the religious beliefs of the people, and that would in turn assist the implementation of its policies. Today in the United States, there is the IRS 501c3 tax-exemption which serves in that same capacity, and as a result, all of the churches teach doctrines which are fully in compliance with government policy, rather than being in compliance with God.

What Joseph had done here was not dishonest. The pharaoh to whom he was obliged must have had a significant investment in infrastructure, in order to store all of the grain which would be needed to sustain Egypt through the seven years famine, far more grain than Egypt would typically store from year to year. In addition to that, there would be other significant expenses, for military to protect and police the grain, for inspectors to check the grain for mold, or to make certain it does not become infested with vermin, etc. So there was nothing dishonest in charging the people for the grain which they sought, and by that their lives were preserved through the famine, as they are portrayed as having admitted here.

Now that the pharaoh owns all of the land, perhaps we see the beginnings of the medieval feudal system:

23 Then 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. 24 And 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.

This is actually a better arrangement than most Americans have today, where landowners and homeowners are taxed annually for the mere value of their land and houses, whereby the government is the effective owner, but not the acknowledged owner, and then they are typically taxed more than twenty percent of their annual income by the federal government, and sometimes far more, and then they are also taxed on their income by many local or State governments. Aside from that, they cannot purchase anything with the money they have left, unless they also pay sales and other taxes.

So the people of Egypt were happy to become the serfs of the pharaoh:

25 And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants.

What Joseph had done may have been seen as evil, but as we had said, at the worst, it was only opportunistic. That is because his actions were based on information to which only he and the pharaoh had access, which was Joseph’s interpretation of pharaoh’s dream prophesying this seven years of famine. On account of that, the government was able to set itself up as the savior of the people, and that must also have been the will of Yahweh as it helped to effect His plans for Israel, and also for Egypt. Now Joseph is described as having set this ancient feudal system in place as a matter of law:

26 And 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. 27 And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions therein, and grew, and multiplied exceedingly.

It is ambiguous, whether or not the sons of Israel in Goshen also had to pay a fifth of their increase to the pharaoh, however the text here suggests that Joseph had sustained them freely, without condition. Furthermore, since they would be the managers of the cattle of the pharaoh, their position would be augmented since the flocks and herds of the pharaoh must have increased greatly in number as Joseph sold grain to the people in exchange for their cattle.

The famine must have nearly run its course by this time, and the account moves on to focus on the death of Jacob and the things which he had done before he died:

28 And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years: so the whole age of Jacob was an hundred forty and seven years.

According to our chronology, Jacob would have died around 1648 BC, and it was right around that same time that the Canaanite Hyksos had invaded Lower Egypt. As we had stated in Part 49 of this Commentary, the most likely candidate to have been the pharaoh of this account is the 13th Dynasty pharaoh Merneferre Ay, who by some archaeologists is dated to have ruled about 1681-1657 BC. But by others accounts, he ruled some decades earlier, and if that is the case then another candidate must be sought. But there are no other viable candidates. None of the other pharaohs of the 13th Dynasty, the last to rule both Upper and Lower Egypt until the time of the 18th Dynasty, had ruled long enough, or even close to long enough, to have been the pharaoh of Joseph.

As for the 14th Dynasty, while some claim that it began as early as 1805 BC, none of its chronology is certain, none of the dates in which its pharaohs ruled are known, and it only ruled Lower Egypt, where the pharaoh of Joseph had ruled all of Egypt. All of the 14th Dynasty pharaohs had ruled for only a very short time, many of their names are now lost, and only a couple of monuments or other historical documents have been found, which verify the existence of only four of them. [4] Furthermore, it is admitted by at least some archaeologists that they may have only ruled as contemporary vassals of the pharaohs of the 15th Dynasty, which are well attested in monuments and known to have ruled Lower Egypt from the middle of the 17th century BC, from around the very time of the death of Jacob. By that time, the pharaoh of Joseph was dead, the seat of government of his successors would move to Thebes, and it is unclear whether Joseph had remained in their service, or if he was retained by the 15th Dynasty rulers, or if he had retired to be with his own people in Goshen. As for the 14th Dynasty, we may perceive that it was merely a succession of Canaanite tribal rulers who were trying to hold on to a foothold in the northeastern Nile Delta area, so that perhaps they could take over the Delta, and had varying degrees of success mixed with failure, where their occupation was finally successful with the coming of the 15th Dynasty. While that is only my opinion, it also differs greatly from the novels created by some archaeologists.

Knowing that he was approaching death, Jacob makes an appeal to Joseph:

29 And 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: 30 But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their buryingplace. And he said, I will do as thou hast said. 31 And he said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head.

The Septuagint has Israel at this point “leaning on the top of his staff”, which seems much more likely. The word must in verse 29 in the phrase “Israel must die” is not explicitly expressed in Hebrew, and the verb was translated into a simple infinitive in the Greek of the Septuagint, where Brenton has “29 and the days of Israel drew nigh for him to die…” Later, after Jacob had died, his sons did not bury his bones in Egypt. Rather, in Genesis chapter 50 we read that after his death, “12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: 13 For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.” So Jacob was indeed buried with his fathers.

This concludes our commentary for Genesis chapter 47, however before we commence with chapter 48, another discussion is in order.

A Discussion about Asenath, the wife of Joseph

As we are about to arrive at Genesis chapter 48 in our Commentary, and the blessings which Jacob will place upon the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, it may be fitting here to first discuss Asenath, the wife of Joseph and the mother of these sons who would represent the double-portion of the inheritance of Jacob-Israel. Doing this, I hope to amend for some old errors. Over twenty years ago, in several of Clifton Emahiser’s Watchman’s Teaching Letters from the year 2001, Clifton had followed Howard Rand, primarily from an article published by Destiny magazine in October 1962, which was titled “Enoch’s Mission and Shem’s Responsibility”. Doing so, Clifton had concluded with certainty that both Asenath, as well as the pharaoh from the account of Joseph in Egypt, must have been Shemites, from a supposedly early group of Hyksos, or so-called Shepherd Kings, who had been in Egypt some time around the time of the 4th Dynasty pharaohs, and perhaps even earlier.

Doing this, Howard Rand made many assertions which are unfounded in either Scripture or in ancient Egyptian inscriptions. For example, he equated Shem with the Egyptian idol Set or Seth, and labelled Shem as the Hyksos ruler of Lower Egypt. He even went so far as claiming that “… after the Deluge, Shem became the first of the shepherd kings who reigned in Egypt. He was held in highest honor by the people in that land for having delivered them from the Cushite yoke… Thus, when the idolatrous priests were again in the ascendancy, everything possible was done to blacken Shem’s memory.” Here I must wonder whether Rand had truly read and believed his Bible, since Cush was a son of Ham, and Mizraim was also a son of Ham, and the nephew of Shem, he could not have preceded him in Egypt, if Shem had ever even been in Egypt. It was Mizraim which was the tribe that settled in Egypt, while the sons of Cush remained in Mesopotamia, until a portion of them founded a colony in what later became known as Ethiopia.

Howard Rand evidently made his conclusions based on a description by Herodotus which was a repeat of contemporary Egyptian tales which he reported as having been conveyed to him by Egyptian priests, and which described the building of the Great Pyramid. Along with those, Rand had also drawn from the disparate and confused statements attributed to the Egyptian priest and chronicler Manetho concerning the Hyksos which are found in the writings of Josephus, and also apparently from some of the so-called Enoch literature, much of which is spurious and which was written long after Enoch was taken from the earth. We have already spoken of some of the problems with the later copies of the texts of Manetho in relation to the Hyksos. But Rand apparently followed him errantly and uncritically, and Clifton followed Rand, even if he had criticized him to some degree.

As it is in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Herodotus, which was translated by Alfred Denis Godley and published at Harvard University Press in 1920, from about chapter 124 of Book 2, Herodotus had described the building of pyramids of Cheops and his brother Chephren who was said to have succeeded him. These were said to have been the sons of an earlier pharaoh named Rhampsinitus. In the course of this explanation, Herodotus had also described these brothers as having ruled over Egypt in an oppressive manner. Then in Book 2, chapter 128 of The Histories we read the following, speaking of the combined periods of the reigns of these two brothers: “Thus they reckon that for a hundred and six years Egypt was in great misery and the temples so long shut were never opened. So much do the people hate the memory of these two kings that they do not greatly wish to name them, and call the pyramids after the shepherd Philitis, who then pastured his flocks in this place.” Then, from chapter 129, Herodotus described a more moderate pharaoh, Mycerinus the son of Cheops, who also built a smaller pyramid. These are the famous three pyramids of Giza which still stand today. [5]

Howard Rand insisted that the passage of Herodotus concerning Philitis, or Philition, as the name appears in George Rawlinson’s much earlier translation, represented the “Shepherd Kings” of Manetho, and also claimed that there were two groups of so-called Shepherd Kings which were recollected by the Egyptians as Hyksos, from the writings of Manetho and this passage of Herodotus. This we must dispute, and we must assert that Rand’s claims are wrong. First, as we have already discussed and cited from the writings of Josephus in earlier portions of this Commentary on Genesis, the citations of Manetho found in Josephus do not imply that there were two groups of Hyksos, but rather, Josephus himself had only explained that the name Hyksos, assigned to those who ruled from the time of their pharaoh Apophis, was in one copy of Manetho defined as meaning “shepherd kings”, and in another copy as “captive shepherds”. The pharaoh Apophis is correctly associated with Apepi, an Asiatic pharaoh who ruled Lower Egypt during the 15th Dynasty, from around 1575 BC. Apophis was one of the longer-ruling pharaohs of the Hyksos 15th Dynasty.

So the fragments of Manetho as they are described by Josephus certainly do not describe two groups of so-called “Shepherd Kings” in Egypt, an error which Howard Rand had apparently not originated on his own, according to the notes found in Rawlinson, but which Clifton had repeated. Furthermore, the statement by Herodotus concerning the shepherd Philitis, or Philition, does not even come close to implying that he was a king. Rather, the statement implies that he was far from having been a king, and that the people had attributed the building of the pyramids of Cheops and Chephron to him as an insult to those kings, on account of their having oppressed them. As we had read at the end of Genesis chapter 46 in the words of Joseph, “every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians”, and that seems to be reflected in the reasons which Herodotus had given for the pyramids having been attributed by the people to a common shepherd. Therefore, there was only one group of so-called Shepherd Kings in Egypt, the Asiatic invaders of the 15th Dynasty who were remembered as Hyksos, and the time of their rule began about 1650 BC.

As for the relation of this Philitis to the Philistines, we cannot discount the notion that the ancient Caphtor mentioned by Amos (9:7) as the original location of the Philistines could have been near the area of Giza in the Delta, but we have already presented evidence outside of this Genesis commentary that it was much more likely on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, in the area of Biblical Gerar, in a recent discussion on The Philistines and Biblical Archaeology. That being said, in Part 15 of this Commentary I wrote the following, where I was citing the edition of Herodotus by George Rawlinson:

In relation to the Philistines we may also note an obscure remark by Herodotus where he wrote: “Hence they [the Egyptians] commonly call the pyramids after Philition, a shepherd who at that time fed his flocks about the place.” Some commentators must have supposed that this may be a memory of the ancient Philistines in Egypt, and the first “shepherd kings”, connected to the building of the Great Pyramid, since George Rawlinson disputed that idea in a footnote in his own edition of Herodotus.

Although he was much later than Rawlinson, who first published his translation of Herodotus along with those notes in four volumes from 1858 to 1860, Howard Rand was one of these commentators. But of those others who had come before him, I do not know of them specifically. However since Rawlinson had to dispute the idea in his footnotes, there must have been some others, since he wrote over a century before Rand’s article was published.

While there certainly seems to have been people related to the Nephilim who were in Egypt before the Hamitic tribe of Mizraim had settled there, Shem himself certainly could not have been in Egypt during the 4th Dynasty of the pharaoh Khufu, who is popularly called Cheops. By most accounts, Cheops ruled for twenty-eight or twenty-nine years from about 2589 BC, and by some estimates, possibly as many as several decades later. But from our Genesis chronology, Shem, who had lived for six hundred years, had died by about 2685 BC. The division of the land among the sons of Noah happened a short time later, during the life of Peleg, who was born around 2656 BC, some years after Shem was dead. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence in Scripture that any of the patriarchs had ever left Mesopotamia before the division of the nations described in Genesis chapter 10. Howard Rand’s story concerning Shem is basically a fairy-tale.

Where Rand had said that “when the idolatrous priests were again in the ascendancy, everything possible was done to blacken Shem’s memory”, he actually displays a profound ignorance of ancient Egyptian literature, in which the Egyptian idol Seth, whom Rand claimed was Shem, had a significant part. In some of the most ancient Egyptian inscriptions, the surviving inscriptions containing the creation myths which date to at least as early as the 24th century BC, the Egyptian god Seth, whom Rand had insisted was Shem, is said to have been born in Upper Egypt and to have been the king there, while his nephew Horus had been made the king of Lower Egypt, the portion which includes Heliopolis and the Delta, a division which was judged by Re after the two struggled for control of Egypt upon the death of Osiris, who was the brother of Seth and the father of Horus. [6] Throughout Egyptian history, Seth was associated with Upper Egypt, and not with the Delta. In contrast, Shem was the son of Noah, not of Osiris, and he was born before the flood, somewhere in Mesopotamia. There is no ancient basis upon which Shem could ever be identified with Set, the idol of Egypt.

Unfortunately, the tales woven by Howard Rand had been repeated by Wesley Swift and others, and many Identity Christians blindly repeat them to this very day. To his credit, at the end of Watchman's Teaching Letter #33, dated for January, 2001, Clifton had rejected at least several of Rand’s assertions. But then quite disappointingly, in the opening of Watchman's Teaching Letter #34 a month later, Clifton said in part “In the last lesson, we touched on the topic of Shepherd Kings. Because it is a subject of such great magnitude in importance, we must prioritize our time to delve into it. It may come as a surprise to many of you, the symbol of the Shepherd Kings is the Sphinx and the first Shepherd King was Adam, and the priesthood was called the Order of Melchizedek.” These are also fairy-tales from the writings of Howard Rand. There Clifton repeated these, and further assertions by Rand that Shem left Egypt, and founded Jerusalem, where he also established the Melchizedek priesthood.

But the name Jerusalem does not even appear in Genesis, where Melchizedek is only the king of Salem, and we cannot be certain that Salem should be identified with the much later city of Jerusalem. At first, Jerusalem was a Canaanite city, and it was never mentioned in any of the accounts of the travels of the patriarchs, who passed by its location on many occasions, in their journeys from Hebron to Shechem or Haran, so the Canaanites must have built it some time after Jacob went to Egypt. The children of Israel had not taken Jerusalem, which was at first called Jebus, from its inhabitants the Jebusites until some time shortly after David had become king in Israel, as it is recorded in 2 Samuel chapter 5.

While later in that same teaching letter Clifton once again challenged some of Rand’s assertions, he left many of them stand. For example, Clifton refuted Rand’s claim that Shem was the Melchizedek priest that met Abraham after his battle with the kings of the East, but he approved of a claim by Rand which had associated the Sphinx of Egypt with Adam and Shem, and once again with the Egyptian idol Seth, as a writer which Rand had cited in another article in his Destiny Magazine went so far as to say that “Sphinxes were the particular form of sculpture associated with the shepherd kings, and were constructed in honor of Set [an Egyptian name given to Shem], while the Great Sphinx seems to be especially associated with the Great Pyramid built by Suphis [another name associated with Shem]. As the Tanis Sphinxes [a group of three sphinxes at Tanis, Egypt]; are unmistakably the likeness of one particular individual, it seems certain that they represent the features of the first great shepherd king. Set the Powerful [Shem] … If, then, these heads are likenesses of the great Shepherd King Set, they represent the exact features of the antediluvian patriarch Shem, and we behold in them something of the type of primeval man as he first came from the hands of Yahweh … In representing him, therefore, as a lion with a human head, there was a certain fitness, and the idea was probably borrowed from the Cherubim, the form which seems to have been generally known …” Clifton credited this article to one Colonel J. Garnier, and the article was titled “Shem The Powerful”, and published in the October, 1955 issue of Destiny Magazine. But it was actually unattributed, and almost certainly written by Howard Rand himself. Although it quotes several lengthy passages which were attributed to a Colonel Garnier, the entire article was not written by him.

There is absolutely not one shred of Scriptural or archaeological evidence supporting any of these claims by Howard Rand and his writers. In this later article, aside from Garnier, Rand had only cited the writings of one Sir John Gardner Wilkinson in a work titled Egyptians, who apparently connected Manetho’s supposed identity of the Hyksos as “shepherd kings”, an identity which even Josephus had admitted was not consistent in the manuscripts, to the statement in Genesis that the Egyptians had esteemed shepherds as abominations. But this alone does not mean that the “shepherd kings” of Manetho were Shemites, or that the “shepherd kings” built the pyramids. As he was cited by Rand, Wilkinson also described the Hyksos as having had long flowing hair and Asiatic dress, and elsewhere in his writings, Clifton himself established that the Hyksos of the 15th Dynasty of Egypt, the Hyksos Dynasty, were Hittites, who would indeed fit that same description. There are no known inscriptions describing any Hyksos in Egypt besides the Canaanite invaders of the 17th century BC. Howard Rand had used evidence from the 17th century BC to help support his spurious claims about Shem, who had lived well over a thousand years earlier.

Then unfortunately, in that same teaching letter, based solely on the tales told by Howard Rand, Clifton had also written that “It should be becoming quite clear in our studies on this subject that Joseph and his pharaoh … Joseph’s wife Asenath and her father were all descendants of Shem.” Later, Clifton used as a litmus test for the truth of this claim only one disparate fact: that Rand had correctly pointed out that there was a lapse in the Melchizedek priesthood from the time of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, to the time of Christ. While we would agree with the fact of the lapse, we would not relate it to Nahor. Clifton also accepted another false premise, the source for which is not certain, that Nahor was the Melchizedek priest of Genesis chapter 14, and that is certainly not true. In Genesis, when Abraham departed for Canaan his brother Nahor had remained in Haran, and the children of Nahor are found there in subsequent generations, as both Isaac and Jacob obtained their wives from among them.

Another problem with the Nahor theory of Melchizedek is this: Japheth was the eldest son of Noah, and not Shem, which is stated explicitly in Genesis 10:21. So Japheth would have been the preacher of righteous who had succeeded Noah. A further problem is this: Elam and Asshur were the two oldest sons of Shem, and not Arphaxad, through whom Nahor and Abraham had descended. If Nahor were Melchizedek, according to the manner in which the Preacher of Righteous was apparently reckoned in Scripture, then all the family lines of Japheth, Elam and Asshur would need to have first been eliminated, something which we can be certain did not happen.

One last problem with the identification is this: we can not claim to know any better than Paul of Tarsus, who had explained in Hebrews chapter 7 that the Melchizedek of the Genesis account had no apparent genealogy. Neither did Maimonides, a 12th century AD rabbinical Jew whom Rand had cited in these articles, and neither did any of the other late writers of Jewish pseudepigrapha know any better than Paul. I would rather believe that the Melchizedek priesthood became useless from the time of Abraham, because the whole Adamic world was given to idolatry, and on that account Abraham, who was not in that line, had received the promises of God for the future of the Adamic race. Therefore the priests of God who would uphold the Abrahamic covenant until the time of Christ would all come from him.

So while Clifton had criticized some aspects of Rand’s assertions, he nevertheless accepted the general premises, and without any real evidence. Where Clifton continued his accounts in those teaching letters, he discussed Manetho, and also some of the confusion with Manetho, and he also discussed Josephus, who is the only source of the surviving fragments of Manetho’s work which had discussed the Hyksos. Then Clifton resumed and continued with his own account of the life of Joseph accepting that for the reasons provided by Rand, that Asenath must have been of the house of Shem. However in Rand’s articles there is not one shred of archaeological, Scriptural or historical evidence cited to support any of these claims. While Clifton was somewhat critical of Rand, he was not critical enough, and we should not accept Rand’s claims today.

Furthermore, archaeologists such as Wilkinson, or writers such as Rand cannot even be trusted to determine for us which invaders into Egypt from Asia were Canaanites, and which were Semitic or Shemites. The problem with such identifications lies in the fact that usually, Egyptians had labelled all Asiatics with the same general term, unless specific tribal names or specific names of cities were given, and in the earlier centuries of Egyptian history, perhaps as late as the 18th Dynasty, that was rare.

In modern times, all archaeology has developed through a Judeo-Christian lens, whereby Jews are upheld as authorities on Scripture and ancient history, but in truth, Jews do not really know anything about Scripture or history. Jews only use those things to twist the world into a paradigm that is accommodating to themselves. As Paul of Tarsus had taught in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, the Old Testament is a Christian book, just like the New Testament. So today, the Canaanite tribes are identified as “Semitic” by archaeologists and other academics solely by their apparent language, where, as we have illustrated in earlier portions of this Commentary, that the truth is that all of the former subjects of the Akkadian Empire of the 3rd millennium BC had spoken dialects of Akkadian, whether they were Cushites, Canaanites, or of the various tribes of Shemites, including the Hebrews and the Assyrians. Originally, Akkadian was a Cushite language, from a tribe of Ham, and not of Shem. So from another perspective, not all those who are identified as Canaanites on account of their Semitic language may have actually been Canaanites, but Canaanites certainly were not Shemites in spite of their common language, which was really Akkadian.

In a later edition of his teaching letters, Watchman's Teaching Letter #41 dated for September of 2001, Clifton gave further evidence in support of the people of Heliopolis, or On, as having been Shemites. However just as we have found in the claims posited by Howard Rand, the evidence presented is always circumstantial, or even merely conjecture. The name Bethshemesh, which is used to describe On or Heliopolis in Jeremiah chapter 43, is indeed intriguing because in Hebrew it may mean either “house of the sun” or “house of the people of Shem”, however that alone is not a definitive proof that the priests of On could have been of Shem. Even if we want to believe it, it is not a proof.

The city of Heliopolis, which means “house of the sun” in Greek, was not only the center of the worship of the Egyptian sun god Re for many centuries, but also the seat of the Egyptian Ennead, which is the name that identifies the pantheon of the nine principle deities of ancient Egypt, and among them are familiar names such as Set or Seth, Osiris, Horus and Isis. So regardless of the earliest myths of which Clifton had written, which certainly do seem to correspond to aspects of Scripture in several ways, Heliopolis from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, in every single one of the surviving inscriptions, is inseparable from pagan Egyptian religion.

So with all of this, we could never assert that Asenath was of the house of Shem, because we cannot prove it with any reasonable evidence. We cannot prove that she was not of the house of Shem, and we cannot prove that she was. But on the surface, and from the information which we do have from Scripture, we must assume that she was an Egyptian, because that is all that we are actually told. Asenath is an Egyptian name, and so is that of her father, Potipherah. We wrote the following, in Part 51 of this commentary:

According to Gesenius, the name פוטי פרע or Potiphera (# 6319) is said to be an Egyptian phrase meaning “who belongs to the sun”, or the idol Re. The name is very similar in form and in meaning to Potiphar, Joseph’s master when he first arrived in Egypt, but that does not mean that they are the same man. Likewise, אסנת or Asenath (# 621) means “she who is of Neith”, the Egyptian idol. Both of these names are decidedly Egyptian. But Neith, who is said to have been a goddess, or idol, of warriors and wisdom, certainly seems to be akin to the Phoenician Anath and the Athenian Athena, both of whom were warrior goddesses.

In an inscription titled The Contest of Horus and Seth for the Rule, on several occasions Neith is referred to as “Neith, the Great, the God's Mother”, as she was esteemed to have been the mother of the sun god Re. [7] Likewise, the name of Potiphera is related to Re. The priestly class in Egypt was a noble class, the pharaohs appointed priests from the nobility, or even from among their own family members, and at least many of the priestly positions were hereditary. So it is plausible that Asenath and her father may even have been related to the pharaoh himself.

We have dated the time of Joseph to the pharaohs of the 13th Dynasty. As we have also explained, this dynasty had withdrawn from Itjtawy to Thebes and ruled parts of Upper Egypt from Thebes after the Hyksos, who were apparently Hittite chieftains, had invaded the area of the Delta, from which they ruled Lower Egypt for a little over a hundred years. While we do not know precisely when the Egyptians had evacuated Itjtawy, the invasion which drove them out must have come to fruition around 1650 BC, or about the same time as the death of Jacob in Egypt.

In a 13th Dynasty inscription discovered at Thebes and titled Asiatics in Egyptian Household Service, there is found a lengthy list of Asiatics who were apparently servants to the nobility of the later part of this dynasty. In the inscription, most of about fifty-one names had been preserved, and the positions which they had held in the household. Two women were named Anath, and certain of the men had names similar to those of Asher and Issachar. Some had baal in their names, among other recognizably Akkadian words. They were listed as cooks, weavers, field-hands, gardeners, hairdressers, house-men, and even tutors. [8] Of course, none of them would have been priests. Perhaps the list was necessary on account of the invasion, because the Asiatics would have naturally been distrusted at this time.

While we have observed the rejection of Ishmael, as his mother was an Egyptian descendant of Mizraim, until we have authentic and conclusive evidence of the race of Asenath, we must accept the fact that she was very likely an Egyptian, and therefore it is also very probable that she was a descendant of Mizraim, the son of Ham. One notable difference between Asenath and Hagar, however, is the fact that Hagar was a bondwoman, and Asenath was a noble woman, having been the daughter of a priest.

Yahweh willing, we shall return to discuss Genesis chapter 48 in the very near future.

Footnotes

1 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, pp. 470-471.

2 Amenemhat (son of Thutmose III), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenemhat_(son_of_Thutmose_III), accessed May 10th, 2024.

3 The reconstruction of Pi-Ramesse, Artefacts -- Scientific Illustration & Archaeological Reconstruction, https://www. artefacts-berlin.de/portfolio-item/the-reconstruction-of-pi-ramesse/, accessed May 10th, 2024.

4 Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Dynasty_of_Egypt, accessed May 10th, 2024.

5 Herodotus, Book II: chapters 99-182, Perseus Digital Library, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/ Herodotus/2b*.html, accessed May 8th, 2024.

6 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, pp. 3-4.

7 ibid., pp. 14-15.

8 ibid., pp. 553-554