On Genesis, Part 59: The End of the Beginning

On Genesis, Part 59: The End of the Beginning

The first and last books of the Bible are its most important books. The book of Genesis is the story of the origin of our race, and the Revelation is the story of its destiny after its reconciliation to Christ. The entire purpose in the interim, is succinctly described by Solomon, in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 where he wrote that “13 … I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” With this, Paul of Tarsus agreed, and upon it he expounded, in Romans chapter 8 where he wrote: “18 Therefore I consider that the happenstances of the present time are not of value, looking to the future honor to be revealed to us. 19 Indeed in earnest anticipation the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of Yahweh. 20 To transientness the creation was subjected not willingly, but on account of He who subjected it in expectation 21 that also the creation itself shall be liberated from the bondage of decay into the freedom of the honor of the children of Yahweh.” By “creation” in that passage, Paul meant the Adamic creation, since later in the chapter he compared that creation to other elements of the creation of God.

So while the Greek word γένεσις means origin or beginning, and the book of Genesis describes the origin and beginning of our race, the Revelation describes the beginning of the end. While Genesis contains the promises to our race, the Revelation reveals how Yahweh God shall keep those same promises. Here as the book of Genesis closes, it offers an uncertain future for the children of Israel since it has already warned that they would be afflicted in Egypt, in the promises which Yahweh had made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. But in the final chapters of the Revelation, that end is described as having a more promising future, where it offers yet another beginning and the promise of something much greater than what this world has offered, although we continue to remain uncertain as to how that shall materialize.

Furthermore, ever since the promises which were given to Abraham, which had been passed down in succession to Isaac, Jacob, and ultimately to Ephraim, the entire purpose of Yahweh God has been centered around that collective exercise of the children of Israel which was first described by Solomon. With this aspect of Solomon’s words Paul had also agreed, and put into perspective, where he wrote in Galatians chapter 3 that “23 … before the faith was to come we had been guarded under law, being enclosed to the faith destined to be revealed. 24 So the law has been our tutor for Christ, in order that from faith we would be deemed righteous.” Then in Galatians chapter 4, and just a few verses later, he wrote that “4 … when the fulfillment of the time had come, Yahweh had dispatched His Son, having been born of a woman, having been subject to law, 5 in order that he would redeem those subject to law, that we would recover the position of sons.”

So at the end of the Bible, in the Revelation, the City of God is described, and it is populated only by the twelve tribes of Israel, which is apparent because only their names are inscribed on its gates. It also contains the Tree of Life, which is first mentioned in Genesis chapter 2, and there are twelve types of fruit which it bears. They must also represent those same twelve tribes of Israel, as Christ had told His disciples “I am the Vine, ye are the branches”, in John chapter 15 (15:2). But along with the Tree of Life, the fallen angels, or Nephilim, were first seen in Genesis, where in that same chapter 2 they are first described as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However that tree is no longer found in the descriptions of the City of God, or anywhere else in the Revelation. Rather, in the chapters of Revelation which immediately precede the description of the City of God, Satan, the Devil, the Beast, the False Prophet, Death, Hades and everyone who is not written into the Book of Life, all of which collectively represent the enemies of God, are cast into the Lake of Fire, in which is eternal destruction.

All of the books following Genesis up to and including the Revelation describe the history of Israel in the time of its exercise in vanity, as well as containing the laws of God, prophecies reflecting His will for Israel, and records of their sins and failures. Where the enemies of God are mentioned, it is only relevant to their interactions with the children of Israel. In the Gospel of Christ, there is a mention of reconciliation which is made on account of the promises to the fathers which Yahweh God had made here in Genesis, and that message itself was a promise which Yahweh God had repeatedly expressed in the books of the prophets. But in announcing the Gospel, there are also many recorded occasions where Christ had rebuked His enemies, and in turn He was also crucified by them. However His death achieved the redemption of Israel, because in it Israel had been released from the punishments of the law, as Paul had described in Romans chapter 7, and His death also achieved our salvation, since through it Christian know that they have life as He lives.

So we may conclude that these closing chapters of Genesis are the end of the beginning, and that everything which happens hereafter reflects Israel’s exercise in vanity. But the Revelation describes the deliverance of Israel from that vanity, and the fate of the enemies of Yahweh through which the vanity had come, represented by the serpent of Genesis chapter 3. However the final chapters of the Revelation also describe a new beginning, where the children of Israel will flourish free from the oppression which they had suffered at the hands of the enemies of God. If, following the end of the beginning, the promises of Yahweh to Abraham had been fulfilled in their immediate context, then we can be certain that at the end of the Revelation, the promises of Yahweh to Abraham shall be fulfilled in their overarching objective, as Paul had written in Romans chapter 4, that Abraham – through Isaac and Jacob, would he the heir to the entire world. Through those promises, it is manifest that the hope of the entire Adamic race shall also be fulfilled.

Therefore even vanity itself has an end, where we shall realize that it also had a purpose. But the keeping of the commandments of God remains important unto the end, and even beyond that, as we read in Revelation chapter 14: “12 Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. 13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord [Christ] from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” For that same purpose, Solomon wrote at the close of his investigation of vanity at the end of Ecclesiastes chapter 12: “13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

Now in regard to the more immediate context, one important lesson which we hope to have taken away from Genesis chapters 47 and 48, and Jacob’s blessings for his sons, is that Jacob had passed the promises of Abraham which he had come to possess on to Ephraim, the son of Joseph, above all of his other sons. Then, as we have already cited, the Word of Yahweh God through the prophet Jeremiah had confirmed this, where we read in Jeremiah chapter 31 (31:8), in part: “… for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” Then, out of all of Jacob’s sons, in these blessings only Ephraim and Manasseh had a promise and an assurance of independent nationhood. So the blessings, or lack of blessings, which he had imparted to his other sons must be understood and fulfilled within that context, because they did not receive such a particular promise of nationhood. Ultimately, for example, Judah would bear the sceptre, but he would bear it within the nations of Ephraim and Manasseh. Dan would judge his people in that same context, and Zebulun would dwell by the havens of the sea within that same context.

For this reason and others, we cannot make assumptions today, that any particular Christian nation can be completely associated with any particular tribe of Israel, in spite of the fact that some Christian nations seem to resemble the promises which were made to certain of those tribes. It is evident in the circumstances expressed in some of the blessings, that it is impossible for certain tribes to represent unique, independent nations. For example, Dan shall judge his people, but if Dan lived only in isolation, the premonition is meaningless. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, and neither shall a lawgiver. But if Judah has only ruled over Judah, while other tribes had their own rulers, then once again, the premonition is meaningless. Therefore at least four tribes, by the nature of the blessings which had been imparted to them by Jacob, could not possibly be autonomous and distinct nations today. Those are Judah and Dan, and also Simeon and Levi, whom Jacob had said would be “scattered in Israel”. Furthermore, wherever Ephraim and Manasseh are found, these other tribes are among them, so neither are their nations exclusive to their own tribes. So the popular charts identifying various European nations with particular tribes of Israel, which were spread by various publishers of British-Israel literature, and which are still spread by certain Christian Identity ministries, are therefore highly inaccurate, and represent a rather childish and incomplete understanding of Scripture.

This is true in spite of the fact that certain ancient nations were comprised, in whole or in part, of people from particular tribes of Israel. The Danaan Greeks may certainly be associated with the Israelite tribe of Dan, something which the ancient Greek legends fully support, but the Danaans were ultimately scattered among and mingled with other tribes of Greeks, such as the Dorians, whose origin was evidently within the tribe of Manasseh. Furthermore, it is plausible that the Danes are of Dan, as well as the Tuatha de Danaan, one of the tribes who had settled in Ireland by early times. However other tribes, such as the Milesians, who were Phoenicians and of the northern tribes of Israel, had also settled in Ireland and elsewhere on the coasts of mainland Europe. Later, in the migrations of the Germanic tribes, the Jutes had settled in Jutland, which is a large part of modern-day Denmark. Even later in history, many Danes, Jutes, Angles and Saxons, among others, had all migrated into Britain, but the English certainly cannot claim to be a unique tribe apart from those Danes, Jutes, Angles and Saxons which had also remained behind in Europe.

So in the fourteen books of the prophets which are preserved in the Bible, Israel, Ephraim, Judah, Benjamin and Levi are all mentioned quite frequently. But outside of the temple vision in the late chapters of Ezekiel, Reuben is not mentioned at all, and neither are Simeon, Issachar and Asher. Manasseh, Zebulun and Naphtali are each mentioned only once in Isaiah, and Gad is only mentioned once in Jeremiah. Dan is mentioned twice in Jeremiah, and once each in Amos and Ezekiel, apart from the temple vision.

However Ephraim is mentioned sixty-six times in the prophets, and Judah is mentioned two hundred and ninety-eight times, while Israel is mentioned five hundred and eleven times. But many of those references to Israel include Judah. Some of the disparity in the frequency of mentions is because the ten northern tribes are often referred to as Israel rather than Ephraim, but distinct from Judah, and some of the disparity is for reason that the northern tribes were only present in Israel during the time of four of the fourteen prophets, Hosea, Amos, Micah and Isaiah. This is also why Benjamin and Levi are mentioned so much more frequently than the other remaining tribes, because they had also had a presence in Judah throughout all of the lives of the prophets. Yet Israel and Judah, or Ephraim and Judah, are the subjects of nearly all of the prophecies, because they represented the chief portion of each half of the divided Kingdom. After a large portion of Judah and Benjamin went into Assyrian captivity with the rest of Israel, there they also became indistinguishable, for the most part, from the rest of Israel.

Furthermore, as we cited from Hosea chapter 3, the children of Israel were prophesied to live many years without the symbols and insignia of their former nationhood, where they were also prophesied to be blind as to their own identity. For example, as we read in Isaiah chapter 42, where Yahweh had said through the prophet: “16 And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. 17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods. 18 Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see. 19 Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the LORD'S servant?” Then, much later, this is why Christ had announced in the Gospel that He had come to open the eyes of the blind, and free the prisoners from the prison house, terms which are descriptive of Israel in captivity.

Then in Isaiah chapter 43 we read: “6 I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; 7 Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him. 8 Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears. 9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth. 10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.”

The children of Israel were already spread abroad, and even many more of them were taken into Assyrian captivity, when Isaiah had written those words some time shortly after 700 BC. They had already rejected Yahweh their God, they had already been practicing paganism for several centuries, so we cannot expect to find them as Israelites after they were released from Assyrian captivity. In their subsequent migrations, they remained pagans until they were reconciled with Christ. So if they would not remember that they were Israel, how would they remember that they were Gad, or Zebulun, Issachar or Manasseh? Of course they did not, and the selection of the symbols which were affixed to their medieval coats of arms many centuries later cannot be connected to any such memory. If Identity Christians are to ever merit credibility, they must depart from these errors of the past, because the twelve tribes have certainly not had any distinct identities as independent entities through the history subsequent to that of the divided Kingdom.

With that, we shall resume where we had left off, at the end of Genesis chapter 49, where after Jacob had finished his blessings, or his premonitions for his sons, he continues to instruct them concerning himself, since he knew that he was about to die:

29 And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30 In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace. 31 There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. 32 The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth.

It was described in Genesis chapter 23, that Abraham had purchased this cave from Ephron the Hittite. Being near Mamre, the cave was near to Hebron, as it was also described in that chapter. Hebron was situated in what had later become the land of Judah, about 20 miles south of the site of Jerusalem. The last time this cave was mentioned was at the death of Isaac, in the closing verses of Genesis chapter 35, when he was buried there by Jacob and Esau. According to our chronology, that was only ten years before Jacob and his sons had gone to Egypt. Since Isaac had lived a hundred and eighty years, and since he was sixty years old when Jacob was born, then he lived until Jacob was a hundred and twenty years old, and ten years later Jacob was a hundred and thirty when he stood before pharaoh upon his having gone to Egypt. It is likely that Isaac had come to know the sons of Jacob, and had opportunity to spend time with them, but none of that is recorded in Genesis.

This is the first time in which we heard of the death of Leah. The last time her presence was known is when she was brought by Jacob, along with the rest of his family, to meet Esau shortly after he departed from Haran. Her death is not mentioned at all, but the death of Rachel is described, and Rachel died when Benjamin was born, at a time when Joseph must have been fifteen or sixteen years old, as it is described in Genesis chapter 35. There is a digression which was made in order to list the descendants of Esau in chapter 36, and Joseph is described as having been seventeen years old when he went into captivity at Dothan, in Genesis chapter 37.

It seems strange that Jacob had buried Rachel in Bethlehem when she died, since Bethlehem is only about 12 miles from Hebron, where Abraham and Sarah had already been buried in the cave at Mamre. But perhaps this was the will of Yahweh, as Rachel was later used as a symbol of anguish foreshadowing Herod’s killing of the children in Bethlehem in his attempt to kill the Christ child, where in his description of that event in Matthew chapter 2 the apostle had quoted a prophecy found in Jeremiah chapter 31 which reads: “15 Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.” In the immediate sense the prophecy is a premonition of the deportation of Benjamin to Babylon. But in the far vision, the voice having been heard in Ramah, which is north of Jerusalem while Bethlehem is south of the city, symbolizes that all Jerusalem heard the cries of anguish from the slaughter of the children where Rachel was buried.

So ostensibly, Rachel had died in childbirth some time around 1686 or 1687 BC, but Leah was apparently still alive. Rachel had two sons, and they were born fifteen or sixteen years apart. Rachel was already a young woman tending sheep on her own when she first encountered Jacob at Haran, and she became his wife fourteen years later. So even if Rachel was sixteen years old when Jacob, a seventy-year-old man, first saw her in Haran, Joseph was born no sooner than when she was thirty-one years old, and she died no younger than the age of forty-six, when Benjamin was born. She may very likely have been a little older than that.

Leah was at least a couple of years older than Rachel, but we can only narrow down her death to some time between Joseph’s captivity in 1688 BC, and Jacob’s sojourn to Egypt in 1665 BC, and precisely how old either of the sisters were cannot really be determined, but they must have been older than forty-six, the youngest age at which we may expect Rachel to have died, from the circumstances which are apparent in the text. Rachel’s death was premature, but although it is possible that Leah could have lived into her seventies, even that age is rather young for the time, since Sarah had lived for a hundred and twenty-seven years. There is no mention of the deaths of the handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah.

The final verse of chapter 49 describes the death of Jacob:

33 And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.

The phrase “gathered unto his people” seems on the surface to indicate that Jacob was buried with his family, but its actual meaning is much deeper than that. When Abraham had died, up to that point the only person recorded as having been buried in the cave of Mamre was Sarah his wife. But we read in Genesis chapter 25: “8 Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.” So the phrase “gathered to his people” must have a deeper meaning, since Abraham had no people but Sarah in his place of burial. It must have instead been a reference to the destiny of the spirit in the netherworld, or Sheol, which is often mentioned in later Scriptures.

This is also apparent where it was said of Aaron, in Numbers chapter 20, that “24 Aaron shall be gathered unto his people: for he shall not enter into the land which I have given unto the children of Israel, because ye rebelled against my word at the water of Meribah.” Then the instructions continue with Moses being told to: “25 Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto mount Hor: 26 And strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son: and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people, and shall die there. 27 And Moses did as the LORD commanded: and they went up into mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. 28 And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount. 29 And when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel.” There were no other Levites, or even Israelites, who had been buried at the top of the mountain where Aaron had been left, so the phrase must have that same deeper meaning, that his spirit would join the spirits of those of his people who had died before him.

With this we shall commence with Genesis chapter 50:

1 And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. 2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel. 3 And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days.

The fact that the Egyptians had mourned for Jacob for such a long period reflects the esteem which they must have had for Joseph, who guided them through the famine. Even if they lost ownership of their property, they still had residence on it, and their lives were preserved, and for that they were grateful. Later, for example, when Aaron had died, the children of Israel mourned him for only thirty days (Numbers 20:29). This also magnifies the gravity of the statement in Exodus chapter 1 which says “8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph”, whereby Israel was enslaved.

4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, 5 My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again. 6 And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.

While Joseph submitted himself to the authority of the Pharaoh, he must have been a different pharaoh than the pharaoh of the dream, since well over twenty years have passed since that time, and this is also an indication of the respect which the Egyptians had for Joseph. But there was none of the hostility which had become manifest only much later, so the pharaoh would have had no reason to deny the request.

7 And Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, 8 And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house: only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen. 9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company.

Here Joseph’s esteem is once again evident, since the elders and the nobles had voluntarily made the journey to bury Jacob along with him. The children of Israel having left their children behind in Goshen, they most likely also left many of the women and whatever servants they may have had, in order to look after the children. So it is evident that Egypt, even with the presence of Israel and other foreigners in the land, nevertheless must have enjoyed a high element of trust in its society. The chariots and horsemen here were not accumulated by Israel in the seventeen years since Jacob had gone to Egypt, but rather, they must have also all been Egyptians who were brought along by Joseph, as were the elders who were willing to go with him.

10 And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

The word אטד or atad (# 329) is defined as a thorn-tree. The phrase אשׁר בעבר הירדן or asher b-eber ha-iordan, which seems to mean “which is beyond Jordan” is curious here. But although it is translated in that same manner in the Septuagint, perhaps there is a better interpretation. In the conventional translations, the letter ‘b’ or bet which prefixes the word eber or beyond is ignored. As a prefix, the bet is a preposition which means with, in, on or by. So it might indicate that the words which follow are an ancient place name and that the threshing-floor at which they had stopped here was by a place called “Beyond Jordan”. Otherwise, we may have to speculate as to whether the burial procession of Jacob had circled the entire Dead Sea and traversed the mountains of Edom in order to get to Hebron, which adds many more miles and a great degree of difficulty to the journey.

The next verse seems to corroborate our alternate translation, since while they were at this threshing-floor, they must have been in Canaan and not beyond the Jordan, from the perspective of Egypt:

11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan.

Once again, we would assert that the phrase “which is beyond Jordan” may have better been translated “which is by Beyond Jordan”, or even “which is by Eberjordan”, which would be a transliteration of the place name indicating a place of passage either to or over the River Jordan.

Note that from the Canaanite perspective, the men in the entourage were just Egyptians. This may have been deduced from the chariots alone, but since there must have been an equal numbers of Hebrews in the group, it still seems to reflect a high degree of racial homogeneity between Egyptians and Hebrews. Later, Moses was also mistaken for an Egyptian, which is evident in Exodus chapter 2 and the account of the daughters of Reuel in Midian who had been harassed by shepherds: “19 And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.”

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.

As we have already said earlier in this commentary, according to our chronology the year of Jacob’s death was about 1648 BC. That same year, Joseph was about fifty-seven years old.

14 And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father. 15 And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.

Sometimes, when men are raised in a low-trust environment such as ancient Canaan must have been, they become paranoid and suspicious, forever projecting upon others the natural distrust that has developed within them from their experience. Here that seems to have been the case. Joseph had already set his brethren at ease and expressed his forgiveness for what they had done to him, when he had first revealed to them his identity, and then, as it is recorded in Genesis chapter 45: “4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. 5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.” Joseph’s own piety and fear of God would never have allowed him to backtrack on these words, and perhaps his brethren should have realized that aspect of his character.

16 And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, 17 So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father.

Joseph had already told them that they were forgiven, and he explained to them why: because it was on account of God that he had to go to Egypt, so that ultimately the lives of his brethren could be preserved. In that manner, the promises of Yahweh to Abraham would also be fulfilled, where he was told that his seed would serve another nation, and at the end they would come out with great substance. While Joseph may not have understood those words to Abraham, he certainly did see the hand of God in the events of his own life, and having been a pious man, he accepted his own fate as having been the will of God for good, even before he was elevated to be a ruler in Egypt.

While the details here are sparse, this event seems to have happened on the road back to Egypt. While the brethren sent a messenger to Joseph, they must have only sent the messenger to the tents where Joseph would have been camped, and they must have waited outside. This is apparent, because now they are in his presence, so he must have come out to see them:

And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. 18 And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants.

Once again, Joseph’s dreams of his brethren worshipping him, which he had in Hebron as a teenager, are fulfilled here.

19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?

This is a statement of both piety and humility on the part of Joseph, and now he explains to them once again what he had explained earlier, when he first spoke to them of forgiveness:

20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. 21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.

Joseph not only saved his brethren from the famine, but here he promises to continue providing for them, something which would ostensibly be at least partially at the expense of the Egyptians. But the Wisdom of Yahweh must have been with him, as he continued in that manner for some years:

22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. 23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph's knees.

Evidently Joseph may only have seen Manasseh’s children to the second generation, and he was the elder of the two brothers. Perhaps Ephraim had wanted a jack-rabbit start at becoming a company of nations. If Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation, that seems to indicate the third generation from Ephraim, so that he must have seen his great-great-grandchildren, and he was truly blessed.

But rather interestingly, only Machir, who seems to have been the only the son of Manasseh, is actually named here. The word מכיר or makir (# 4353) is defined by Strong’s to mean salesman, but by Gesenius to mean sold [1], and while the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon fails to define the word [2], it is clearly related to the verbמכר or makar (# 4376) which is to sell, and that is the root to which Strong’s also relates the word. We would agree with Gesenius, that it means sold. So in that manner, perhaps this mention of Machir here, and none of Joseph’s other grandsons, is by itself a premonition, that Israel had now been sold into Egypt, and now, where Joseph continues, he projects the understanding that Yahweh shall redeem them:

24 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 25 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.

The deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt was often termed as an act of redemption in the later books of Scripture. For example, in Deuteronomy chapter 7 we read: “8 But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

Now the Book of Genesis comes to a close with a description of the death of Joseph, the heir to the promises made to Abraham which are now passed down to his son Ephraim by Jacob:

26 So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

According to our chronology, Joseph had lived until about 1595 BC. About a hundred and forty-five years later, the children of Israel departed from Egypt, and with them they carried the bones of Joseph, as he had desired of them here.

Thus we read in Exodus chapter 13: “17 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: 18 But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. 19 And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you. 20 And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness.”

Much later, we read of the death of Joshua the son of Nun, the successor to Moses who was of the tribe of Ephraim (Numbers 13:8), in Joshua chapter 24, and upon that event, the bones of Joseph are finally also buried: “29 And it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years old. 30 And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnathserah, which is in mount Ephraim, on the north side of the hill of Gaash. 31 And Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the LORD, that he had done for Israel. 32 And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph. 33 And Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in a hill that pertained to Phinehas his son, which was given him in mount Ephraim.” So Joshua lived to the same age as Joseph, his ancestor.

Returning to this chapter of Genesis: Jacob had died around 1648 BC, and the popular chronologies of Egypt date the beginning of the period of the so-called Hyksos, or Canaanite rulers of Lower Egypt and the area of Goshen which was given to the children of Israel, to around 1650 BC. But regardless of who had ruled Lower Egypt, these fifty-three years from the death of Jacob to the death of Joseph seem to have been without any incident which was sufficiently notable for Moses to have recorded. Joseph, an Egyptian court officer, perhaps retired in the later part of this period, seems to have seen the first few generations of his children raised up in relative peace. So it seems that perhaps the children of Israel were not enslaved until the Egyptian rulers had gained back control of Lower Egypt.

Monuments and other inscriptions recording the Egyptian war against the Hyksos which had been initiated by Egyptian pharaoh Kamose I have been discovered by archaeologist in western Thebes, the city from which the pharaohs of the 17th and 18th Dynasties had ruled part, and then all of Egypt. One such inscription, titled The War Against the Hyksos, portrays Kamose I as follows:

His majesty spoke in his palace to the council of nobles who were in his retinue: "Let me understand what this strength of mine is for! (One) prince is in Avaris, another is in Ethiopia [Cush], and (here) I sit associated with an Asiatic and a Negro! Each man has his slice of this Egypt, dividing up the land with me. I cannot pass by him as far as Memphis, the waters of Egypt, (but), behold, he has Hermopolis. No man can settle down, being despoiled by the imposts of the Asiatics. I will grapple with him, that I may cut open his belly! My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatics!" [3]

Kamose I was the last ruler of the 17th Dynasty, who by popular chronologies had ruled for only five years, from 1555 to 1550 BC. After him, in another inscription The Expulsion of the Hyksos it is described that the immediate successor of Kamose, Ahmose I, drove out the Asiatics and recovered Lower Egypt for the Egyptians. [4] He also drove out the Nubians who by that time had already also occupied the ancient land of Cush, which was later known as Ethiopia to the Greeks. Ahmose I, the first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, was said to rule Egypt until 1525 BC. A later successor, Thutmose III, is said to have ruled Egypt for nearly fifty years, from 1479 to 1425 BC, the first twenty years of which were as co-regent to his elder half-sister, Hatshepsut. It is therefore certain that Thutmose III was the pharaoh of the Exodus, and the tomb of his eldest son and appointed heir, Amenemhat, has been discovered in Egypt. He is said to have died under mysterious circumstances in the 24th year of his father’s rule. That would put his death, which we believe had resulted from the deaths of all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, to about 1455 BC, so the Exodus must have occurred shortly thereafter. We commonly date the Exodus to 1450 BC, but have always admitted the possibility of being off by a few years. [5] In this case, either of these dates may be off somewhat, but either of them are fairly approximate.

We have called this presentation the end of the beginning, but it should be evident that in Yahweh, every end is a new beginning. While a Genesis commentary may never be fully completed, we hope to have discussed all that is necessary for us to discuss, in order to demonstrate the fact that Genesis is indeed historical, and that what we call Christian Identity agrees fully with genesis. We also hope to have demonstrated how it should be understood in the light of the words of Christ, since that is the only way that Genesis may be properly understood. So here, we shall conclude our commentary on the Book of Genesis.

Footnotes:

1 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, p. 471.

2 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 2021, p. 569.

3 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 232.

4 ibid., p. 233.

5 Amenemhat (son of Thutmose III), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenemhat_(son_of_Thutmose_III), accessed June 14th, 2024.