On Genesis, Part 55: The Descent into Egypt

On Genesis, Part 55: The Descent into Egypt

As we may have already stated too frequently over these past several presentations in this Genesis commentary, we hope to have illustrated all of the ways in which Joseph was a prophetic type for Yahshua Christ, and the salvation of the children of Israel which is promised in Christ. However even more parallels may be made in this regard, and other avenues may be explored. Here, the children of Israel attained salvation from the famine because they had obeyed a worldly ruler, but even if they did not know it at the time, that ruler was Joseph their brother.

Then, while they were indeed preserved in Egypt, at the same time, and unbeknownst to Joseph himself, they were also being led into captivity in fulfillment of the words which Yahweh had spoken to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15 where we read: “13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.”

Ostensibly, in the Scriptures time is always counted inclusively, so the four hundred years had roughly encompassed all of the time from when Isaac was born a short time later, to the time of the Exodus. So it does not conflict with the four hundred and thirty years which Paul had described as the span of time from the first call of Abraham to the Exodus. Isaac was born some time around 1855 BC, which was about four hundred and five years before our date for the Exodus, which is approximately 1450 BC. So once that is realized, it may be understood that Israel was only in Egypt for two hundred and fifteen years, and Israel was only captive in Egypt for a portion of that time, perhaps for as little as a hundred years, but at least a hundred years, from the beginning of the 18th Dynasty. It is not clear as to whether the Israelites in Egypt were enslaved in the period of the 15th Dynasty, which apparently had belonged to Canaanite rulers of Lower Egypt who are also called Hyksos.

But because the children of Israel were held in captivity as slaves in Egypt, in the later words of the prophets Egypt was used as an allegory for captivity, along with Assyria, and prophecies such as those found in Isaiah chapter 19 are not speaking literally of either ancient Egyptians or ancient Assyrians, where we read: “22 And the LORD shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to the LORD, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them. [That alone proves that Israel is the subject, and not the Egyptians who never knew Yahweh as their God.] 23 In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria [bridging the two captivities of Israel], and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians [as Christian Israelites in Europe]. 24 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: 25 Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.” This last clause is a parallelism, since Egypt His people and Assyria the word of His hands are all Israelites emerging from the captivities. There, the Egyptians represent all of Israel who had once been captive in Egypt, and their descendants, and the Assyrians are all of the later Israelites taken captive to Assyria, and their descendants. While all Israel may have been in the captivity of Egypt, many had left and went to places other than with Moses, and only a portion of Israel were in the captivity of Assyria, yet both captivities are of great importance in the history of Israel.

This view of Egypt as an allegory for captivity in the words of the prophets is corroborated in the words of Yahshua Christ in Revelation chapter 11, where, speaking of the prophesied two witnesses, we read: “8 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” Although Christ had been crucified in Jerusalem, He was nevertheless crucified in captivity, as the Romans had ruled Judaea, and as the Edomites controlled Judaea while it was under Roman rule. The Romans are prophesied in Daniel chapter 2 as having been one of the portions of Nebuchadnezzar’s image of the Beast, and we find later, in Revelation chapter 13, that it is the dragon which gives its power to the Beast. Then in Revelation chapter 12, Herod, who sought to kill the infant Christ, is described as having been an agent of that same dragon. The two witnesses, as we had explained in our Revelation commentary, represent those of Israel and Judah who would preach the Gospel from the Little Book opened by the angel, in the time of the Reformation in Europe. So they were also in that same captivity which was perpetuated in the form of the popes of Rome, which is described in both Daniel chapter 7 and Revelation chapter 13. We cannot possibly substantiate all of this here, however we have already provided sufficient substantiation in our recent commentary on the Revelation.

So Joseph, as a prophetic type for Christ, had led Israel to Egypt and ultimately into captivity, and in that respect he was the vessel through which those words to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15 had been fulfilled. Joseph acted as an agent for Yahweh God since Yahweh had wanted Israel to be captive in Egypt, and some time later Yahweh Himself had led Israel out of Egypt. Reading the words of the prophet Hosea, it could justly be stated that the descendants of Joseph, and notably Ephraim, had led Israel into the Assyrian captivity. Throughout his book, Hosea gives Ephraim all of the credit by using his name as a synonym for the kingdom of the ten tribes. But once again, Christ Himself shall lead His people out of Egypt, the modern Egypt of Revelation chapter 11, which is also described as Mystery Babylon.

Then, although Israel had suffered in captivity, Israel had also been preserved and had even thrived in that same captivity, as Yahweh had said in that promise in Genesis that “14… afterward shall they come out with great substance.” There is a similar message which is found, for example in the description of the gourd in Jonah chapter 4, as it represented Assyria in the captivity of Israel. That Israel would be sheltered for a time, and then thrive in the Assyrian captivity is found, for another example, in Isaiah chapter 54: “1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate [divorced Israel in captivity] than the children of the married wife [Israel in the Old Testament Kingdom], saith the LORD. 2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; 3 For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles [Nations], and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.”

Where Israel is finally delivered from captivity, Babylon is also used as an allegory, as we read in Micah chapter 4, a prophet who had written over a hundred years before the Babylonians had even become an empire: “10 Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the LORD shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies. 11 Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion. 12 But they know not the thoughts of the LORD, neither understand they his counsel: for he shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor. 13 Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people: and I will consecrate their gain unto the LORD, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.” In this prophecy, the ancient city of Babylon is also a prophetic type for the Mystery Babylon of the Revelation, which in turn also describes the entity which is also called there Sodom and Egypt. This we should be able to recognize as ruling over us today, and the same dragon, represented by the Edomite Jews, is in collective control. [See also Jeremiah 51:5-7 and Zechariah 2:7-13.]

In Revelation chapter 17, it should be realized that all of the great world empires have essentially been assembled by the same sinister powers, where we read “9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. 10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. 11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” The seven mountains can only be the seven great empires which have at one time or another ruled over the children of Israel, The five which were already fallen in John’s time are Egypt, and then Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece, while the one which is, in John’s time, is Rome. The Holy Roman Empire, while it was essentially German, was controlled for a long time by popes and was only an extension of Rome. The empire which supplanted Rome is that of Napoleon, who arrested the pope, but who himself had lasted only a short time as we see it described here. [Some fools have challenged this interpretation by asking “but what about Nimrod?” However the Revelation is describing facets of Yahweh’s future plans for Israel, and Israel alone. There were other world empires before Abraham, including that of Nimrod, but they are not relative to the history of Israel.]

The 8th empire is the Jewish banking system under which the entire world is now enslaved. Britain did not become an empire until after William of Orange, King William III, when the Bank of England was founded in the late 17th century. Until then, Britain had some colonies overseas, but did not rule over other non-British nations, and was also dominated in the Americas and the East by France, Spain and Portugal. Likewise, until America admitted the Federal Reserve system, which is controlled by the same Jewish banking families as the bank of England, it generally did not practice imperialism, with the minor exception of small gains from the Spanish-American War. Even that was fomented by the same nefarious forces which created the Federal Reserve. This is the captivity from which we seek relief today, which is described in the Revelation as the fall of Mystery Babylon.

Perhaps, if England is indeed largely representative of Ephraim, as it seems to be, then Joseph has once again led his people into captivity. When the modern children of Israel finally obey their own worldly ruler, Yahshua Christ as He is described in the Gospel which He transmitted as a man, then they shall be saved once again from this famine, the famine of hearing the Word of Yahweh, and He shall once again lead them out of captivity, as He did in Egypt. Once Babylon has been judged, then the children of Israel shall emerge with great substance, which is also promised in Revelation chapter 18. It was British muscle, through the spread of their Empire in the 17th century, which was the primary mechanism for the establishment of the Jewish banking families worldwide, although in 1913 America was subjected by political means, once the most formidable business opposition to the Federal Reserve was eliminated in the supposed Titanic “disaster”, and in those circumstances, it may be evident that Joseph had once again led all of Israel, the European Christian nations, into captivity.

Now, returning our attention to the point where we had left off in Genesis, Joseph had finally revealed himself to his brethren, and now they shall do his will and bring their father Jacob as well as their own families down to Egypt. In that respect, that Joseph reveals himself to his brethren immediately before they are all saved from the famine, he also serves as a prophetic type for Christ.

For example, where it is written in Zechariah chapter 12: “10 … they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” The sons of Jacob had pierced Joseph by leaving him for dead in a pit, and Jacob his father had mourned his loss, as he is accounted his first-born son. The word for only in Hebrew was also used as a metaphor for favorite or most loved, in regard to a son. That Joseph would be regarded as the first-born son will be seen here later in Genesis, where Joseph received the first blessing, and also the double portion of the inheritance which the first-born son would expect to receive.

At the end of Genesis chapter 45, the sons of Israel depart from Joseph, who told them to go home, pack their father and their families, and return to him in Egypt. In the final verses, after they told Jacob of what they had found, he is recorded as having said “It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die.” So with that, having agreed to go into Egypt, we shall commence with Genesis chapter 46:

1 And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.

Whether or not any of Jacob’s many servants had remained with him throughout all of this time, and had accompanied him to Egypt, is never stated, although it is possible that at least some of them had. Rather than being mentioned separately, any servants who remained, as well as all of his cattle, would be classified along with “all that he had”, and it is plausible that Jacob would have wanted to save any of his faithful servants from the famine. However they are not mentioned here or in any of these last chapters of Genesis, so we may never know. They had not been mentioned since Jacob’s meeting with Esau near the river Jabbok, in Genesis chapter 32.

Here it is evident that Jacob must have been in Hebron for all of these years, since he was recorded as having lived in Hebron, and that is from where he had sent Joseph to Dothan twenty-three years earlier, in Genesis chapter 37 where we read: “14 And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. 15 And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field: and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou? 16 And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks. 17 And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.” Joseph had last seen his brethren in Dothan, where they had left him in the pit.

Now Jacob has a dream very much like the one which he had experienced in Bethel around the time of the birth of Benjamin and the death of Rachel, perhaps about twenty-four years earlier, which is described in Genesis chapter 35. So we continue:

2 And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. 3 And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: 4 I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.

This dream verifies what Joseph had told his brethren when he revealed himself to them in Genesis chapter 45 and said: “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.”

As we have already explained, this circumstance and Jacob’s dream both clarify and mark the fulfillment of the words which Yahweh had spoken to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15: “13… Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years…” Of course we have no knowledge as to whether Jacob himself had been cognizant of those words to Abraham at the time when these events in his life had actually transpired.

5 And Jacob rose up from Beersheba: and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. 6 And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him:

It is about 27 miles by air from Hebron to Beersheba, and about 31 miles on the existing modern highways. So for Jacob, on a cart drawn by donkeys it was probably one full day’s journey. From Beersheba, if the capital city Itjtawy was somewhere in the general vicinity of modern Cairo, as it seems to have been, it is nearly a 410 mile journey along modern highways but only about 230 miles by air. In any event, to cover that distance would take about eight days or perhaps even a little longer, traveling no more than thirty miles each day.

Supporting some place within the vicinity of modern Cairo as the site of ancient Itjtawy is the fact that On, or Heliopolis, the city from which Joseph had acquired his wife, was indeed within the area of what is now known as Cairo, identified by the archaeological artifacts which have been discovered there. The pharaoh would not have acquired Joseph’s wife from just any temple, but from a priest from the temple where he himself would have honored his Egyptian gods, or idols, and it is certainly reasonable that the temple which he attended would not have been very far from his own residence. That is my own plausible conjecture.

Now in reference to “all his seed” it continues by describing those who had accompanied Jacob, and some who did not actually accompany him:

7 His sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt. 8 And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn.

Note that it mentions Jacob’s daughters, plural, and his sons daughters, plural, but in the subsequent list there are only two women among all his sons, Dinah and the daughter of Asher, whose name was Sarah, or Serah here. As we proceed, it becomes evident that with two exceptions, only the names of the men with Jacob are counted in the seventy-five members of his family who went with him to Egypt, since their wives are not mentioned or counted – even though his sons wives, in his household, would have a position as daughters:

9 And the sons of Reuben; Hanoch, and Phallu, and Hezron, and Carmi. 10 And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman.

This reference to the Canaanitish woman has always been problematical, because evidently it was never mentioned again, so that it is not corroborated by the mouth of a second witness, as to whether the woman was actually a Canaanite by race, or only by geography. That being said, I cannot reckon the copy of this genealogy in 1 Chronicles chapter 1 as a second witness, as it is only a copy or compilation made from this text. The only direct evidence that the mother of Shaul may have been a Canaanite by race is found in the fact that she was distinguished here. But one piece of evidence may dispute the contention that she was actually a Canaanite: the fact that Judah had taken a Canaanite wife, and he was later criticized for it, and upheld as a warning of the fate of those who would commit such a sin in chapter 2 of the prophecy of Malachi.

There we read: “11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.” So why would Judah be criticized, and then if Simeon had done the same thing, why should he have been ignored? Simeon was an older brother than Judah, and later, the inheritance of his tribe is within the territory of Judah (Joshua 19:1). It is also evident that Shelah did not have the inheritance of the first born which would have been expected to have fallen to the eldest son. Rather, throughout the balance of Scripture, it is Pharez and Zarah who are counted as the posterity of Judah, even as far as their both having been mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, although only Pharez actually belonged in the genealogy of Christ.

There were many people dwelling in ancient Canaan who were not genetically Canaanites. The Ishmaelites had dwelt in the south of Canaan, and Ishmael was close enough to Hebron that Isaac could still send to him, whereupon he came to Hebron to help bury Abraham his father, as it is recorded in Genesis chapter 35. As we had described the accounts of the battle of Abraham against the kings of Mesopotamia and then that of the destruction of Sodom, the city Sodom must have been near to the Jordan River in an area which is now covered by the Dead Sea, and could not have been far from Hebron since the angels were described as having left Hebron on foot in the morning, and had reached Sodom in that same evening.

In those accounts, it is evident that the cities of the plain were subject to the kings of Mesopotamia, and not to the Canaanites of northern Canaan, and many of the inhabitants were evidently not Canaanites. In areas of the west and north of Canaan, were found Philistines, Aramaeans and others who may have dwelt in parts of Canaan, but who were not Canaanites. The kingdom of Geshur from which David had later taken a wife was on the eastern coast of the Sea of Galilee and along the Jordan River very close to the area of Shechem, whose people seem to have been Aramaean, and certainly were not Canaanites. So in this light, it is quite possible that this “Canaanitish” wife of Simeon was actually only identified as a Canaanite by geography, and not necessarily by her race. We may never know.

However one other circumstance must be considered. The later tribe of Simeon had evidently undergone a great cleansing during the events described in the Book of Numbers. In the census which is provided at the beginning of the book, the Simeonites were listed as having had 59,300 men who could go to war. But Simeon must have played a significant role in the fornication of Baalpeor, where in Numbers chapter 25 Phinehas is said to have killed a chief of the tribe of Simeon who had been coupled in unholy union with a Midianite woman, in order to quell the plague in Israel. The Midianites in that account were in league with the Moabites who stood in opposition to Israel. Then after that event at which 24,000 Israelites were said to have died in the plague (Numbers 25:9), near the end of the Book of Numbers, the census in chapter 26 informs us that the tribe of Simeon had only 22,200 men who could go to war, which was not even forty percent of their former number, or a decrease of 37,100 men. Israel had lost twenty-four thousand men in the plague, but most of them seem to have been from of Simeon. Between the two censuses found in Numbers, Ephraim lost 8,000 men, as did Naphtali, Reuben lost 2,770, and Gad lost only 150 men, while all of the other eight tribes grew in number, some of them quite remarkably.

In any event, Reuben, Simeon and their sons here total twelve men, not counting their wives.

11 And the sons of Levi; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. 12 And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zerah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul. 13 And the sons of Issachar; Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and Shimron. 14 And the sons of Zebulun; Sered, and Elon, and Jahleel. 15 These be the sons of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob in Padanaram, with his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three.

Not counting Er and Onan, there are nineteen men here from Levi, Judah, Isaachar and Zebulun, and thirty-one adding those to the twelve of Reuben and Simeon. So the total of those men born of Leah who had actually gone to Egypt with Jacob is only thirty-one, and not thirty-three.

We will offer summaries of Jacob’s children in italics here, upon which we shall comment sparsely, and also venture to estimate the ages of each of Jacob’s sons at this time, which are conjectural because they can only truly be accurate to within a year or two. This may not be perfect, however we do this to help perceive the circumstances of the descent to Egypt in a better historical perspective.

Jacob and Leah: Reuben (age 53), Hanoch, Phallu, Hezron, Carmi, 5 males; Simeon (age 52), Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, Shaul, 7 males; Levi (age 51), Gershon, Kohath, Merari, 4 males; Judah (age 50), Shelah (age 26), Pharez, Zerah, Hezron, Hamul, 6 males; Issachar (age 45), Tola, Phuvah, Job, Shimron, 5 males; Zebulun (age 44), Sered, Elon, Jahleel, 4 males, and (Dinah, age 42), 1 female. The total is 31 males and 1 female.

16 And the sons of Gad; Ziphion, and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Areli. 17 And the sons of Asher; Jimnah, and Ishuah, and Isui, and Beriah, and Serah their sister: and the sons of Beriah; Heber, and Malchiel. 18 These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter, and these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls.

Jacob and Zilpah: Gad (age 47), Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, Areli, 8 males; Asher (age 46), Jimnah, Ishuah, Isui, Beriah, (Serah), Heber, Malchiel, 7 males, 1 female. The total is 15 males, 1 female.

19 The sons of Rachel Jacob's wife; Joseph, and Benjamin. 20 And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him. 21 And the sons of Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard. 22 These are the sons of Rachel, which were born to Jacob: all the souls were fourteen.

In verse 20 there is a long interpolation in the Septuagint, which I have not yet investigated in the ancient codices, so I will be compelled to return to it later. In Origen’s Hexapla, this version is apparently found only in the Septuagint, and not even in other Greek translations or in the early Latin copies which were also available to him. The additions are not found in the Vulgate. Most of this chapter is wanting in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So from Brenton’s Septuagint version we read: “20 And there were sons born to Joseph in the land of Egypt, whom Aseneth, the daughter of Petephres, priest of Heliopolis, bore to him, even Manasses and Ephraim. And there were sons born to Manasses, which the Syrian concubine bore to him, even Machir. And Machir begot Galaad. And the sons of Ephraim, the brother of Manasses; Sutalaam, and Taam. And the sons of Sutalaam; Edom.” I do not accept this verse as part of canon, and hope to read the available ancient codices before we proceed to Genesis chapter 47.

Jacob and Rachel: (Joseph age 40, Manasseh, Ephraim), these three were already in Egypt, so that none of them had accompanied Jacob; Benjamin (age 24), Belah, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, Ard, 11 males. The total is 11 males.

23 And the sons of Dan; Hushim. 24 And the sons of Naphtali; Jahzeel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shillem. 25 These are the sons of Bilhah, which Laban gave unto Rachel his daughter, and she bare these unto Jacob: all the souls were seven.

Jacob and Bilhah: Dan (age 49), Hushim, 2 males; Naphtali (age 48), Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, Shillem, 5 males. The total is 7 males.

Now there is a total given which may be contrary to our expectations from reading this text:

26 All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were threescore and six;

Here, by our reckoning, not counting Er and Onan, and not counting any of the women, we find only sixty-four males and two females who had actually accompanied Jacob to Egypt. If we count the only two females who were mentioned among his children and grandchildren, the number is sixty-six, which we read here. These actually went with Jacob, so these must be those who are reckoned, and the sixty-six figure cannot include Er or Onan, since they were dead. The males among the sons of Leah total 33 including Er and Onan, where the text has that figure as the number of “all the souls of his sons and daughters”, but that would be thirty-four so it must be an error. Thirty-one sons of Leah went to Egypt with Jacob, and one daughter.

Now the sons of Joseph are reckoned into a greater number:

27 And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.

Adding Joseph and his sons to the earlier figure of sixty-six, now there are sixty-nine. To attain seventy, we must add Jacob and that inclusion is evident where it gives here the total of “all the souls of the house of Jacob”, which must include Jacob himself. But we must also take notice that in the first two generations of all of Jacob’s children up to this point, there are only two females who are mentioned along with the many sons and grandsons. At this we can only marvel, and it is probably not safe to conjecture why it may be so. If one granddaughter had been mentioned, which is Serah the daughter of Asher here, then any others would have been mentioned also, if indeed they had existed, so it is evident that there were no others.

One other seeming peculiarity is found here. Benjamin could have been no older than twenty-four at this point in Genesis, but he had already sired ten sons, more than any of the other sons of Jacob. We may conjecture that perhaps Jacob took a wife, or wives, for Benjamin early in his life, because he wanted to be certain that Rachel would have a posterity in the earth. As we had already noted in the life of Judah, he must have had all three of his Canaanite sons by the time he was twenty years old, and Zarah and Pharez were born not very long after the death of Er and Onan. Pharez, who may still be in his late teens at this point, already had two sons of his own.

So all the male descendants who actually went with Jacob to Egypt are sixty-six, and Judah is described as having led the way:

28 And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen.

Jacob had been displeased with Reuben for having violated his concubine, and also with Simeon and Levi for their actions at Shechem, which becomes manifest once again where he blessed his sons shortly before his death. Perhaps he would have been angry with Judah also, if he only knew of Judah’s attitude towards Joseph in Dothan, but apparently he remained ignorant of that. So here he gives Judah the leading role, as Judah was the eldest of the sons with whom he was not displeased. As we had discussed in Genesis chapter 43, Judah had adopted a leading role in the events from that time, and it was evident again where he had persuaded Joseph and caused him to reveal himself to his brethren in chapter 45.

Interestingly, after Moses the Levite died, he was succeeded in the leadership of Israel by Joshua the son of Nun, who was of the tribe of Ephraim, and therefore a descendant of Joseph. But after Joshua died, Yahweh seems to have assigned the leading role in the wars of Israel to Judah, where we read in the opening verses of Judges chapter 1: “1 Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? 2 And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.”

Now Joseph is described as preparing to meet his father, who had counted him as dead for the twenty-three years prior to this point:

29 And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. 30 And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.

Here Jacob was ready to die, but he would evidently live another seventeen years. At this point, he was still fifty years younger than his father Isaac had been when he died. Of course, at this early point in their reunion Jacob may not have yet known that he and his family would dwell in Goshen, but Joseph seems to have purposely chosen that spot to meet Jacob and his group because he had endeavored to secure that land on their behalf. Joseph had told his brethren, in chapter 45 (45:9), that he would secure Goshen for them. So here it becomes evident that in order for his brethren to journey from Beersheba to Itjtawy, where Joseph had apparently conducted his business, they had to pass through Goshen, and that helps to establish the area of Goshen as having been situated somewhere in the eastern Delta. That circumstance also suggests that Itjtawy had indeed been located a within a reasonable distance from Goshen in the Delta, while it was also apparently quite near to Heliopolis.

Now Joseph prepares his brethren for the plan which he had apparently had for them from the beginning:

31 And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his father's house, I will go up, and shew Pharaoh, and say unto him, My brethren, and my father's house, which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me; 32 And the men are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have.

The pharaoh already had the reports that Joseph had encountered his brethren when they had come to buy grain, as he himself had commanded Joseph to bring them to Egypt in Genesis chapter 45 (45:17). Joseph continues his instructions to his brethren, where he is only really encouraging them to repeat things which were true, but which shall facilitate his plan for them:

33 And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? 34 That 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.

So it is fully apparent, that while Joseph had wanted his brethren in Egypt, he also wanted them to remain distinct from the Egyptians, rather than to dwell among them and intermingle with them. So while the things he instructed them to say are all true, he wanted them to tell the truth which would facilitate their being assigned their own separate land in Goshen.

Later, in Genesis chapter 47, where the pharaoh answers Joseph’s request that his brethren be given the land of Goshen, we read: “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.” This phrase, “rulers over my cattle”, should be of interest to us here, in relation to Egyptian history.

So before we continue, and before we proceed with Genesis chapter 47, perhaps it is fitting to speak at some greater length about the label Hyksos which had evidently appeared in Egypt around this same time. We have already discussed this in part, in Part 52 of this Genesis commentary where we had made references to the writings of Flavius Josephus in his apology Against Apion, and he explained how in his discussion of certain events related to this period of time, he had followed Manetho, an earlier Egyptian historian and priest who had probably written in the very early 3rd century BC. We commented about how Manetho’s writing was difficult, because it must have confounded certain events and the identities of certain people, and also how the editors of the Loeb Classical Library version of Manetho had noted that Josephus had seemed to have followed two different copies of Manetho, one of which was apparently edited to be more friendly to a certain perception of the accounts in the Exodus.

So in that portion of our commentary where we had discussed these things we said in part:

Although there certainly is value in his Against Apion, Josephus’ citations of Manetho confound all of the Asiatics in Egypt together, they claim that the so-called Shepherd Kings had ruled in Egypt for 511 years, and also that upon the rest of the Egyptians from Thebes and elsewhere making war against them, they left Egypt en masse and migrated to Judaea where they had built Jerusalem. As I have asserted earlier in our commentary on these chapters, the occupation of the Egyptian Delta seems to have obscured the presence of the children of Israel in the midst of the other Asiatic tribes of the 15th Dynasty and earlier, and that is fully apparent in the citations from Manetho – whatever copy of Manetho it was – which are found cited in the works of Flavius Josephus. The Canaanite kings were driven out of Egypt by Ahmose I, which ended the 15th Dynasty of Egypt, and the children of Israel did not depart Egypt in the Exodus for another hundred years, disparate events which seem to have been confounded by these later Hellenistic writers.

Josephus, in Against Apion, had written: “82 This whole nation was styled Hycsos -- that is, Shepherd Kings ; for the first syllable, Hyc , according to the sacred dialect, denotes a king, as is Sos a shepherd; but this according to the ordinary dialect; and of these is compounded Hycsos: but some say that these people were Arabians. 83 Now in another copy it is said that this word does not denote Kings, but, on the contrary, denotes Captive Shepherds, and this on account of the particle Hyc; for that Hyc, with the aspiration, in the Egyptian tongue, again denotes Shepherds, and that expressly also; and this to me seems the more probable opinion, and more agreeable to ancient history.”

In Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, there is an inscription from Hatshepsut, a queen of the later 18th Dynasty who had ruled Egypt, which is titled The Hyksos in Egypt. There, we read in an introduction to the inscription:

The greatest indignity suffered by the ancient Egyptians was the conquest and rule of their land by foreigners out of Asia, the so-called "Shepherd Kings," or Hyksos (ca. 1725-1575 B.C.). There is surprisingly little in Egyptian literature, in view of the real change which this foreign domination made in the national psychology: the change from a confident sense of domestic security to an aggressive sense of national peril. To be sure, it was not in character for an ancient people to enlarge on defeat and subjection at the hands of others. Only the victorious elimination of peril would enter the literature. Josephus has given us something of the tradition of a harsh foreign rule.

In an inscription written almost a century after the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, the queen Hat-shepsut (about 1486-1469 B.C.) gives some of the national sense of indignation. This inscription was carved on the facade of a temple of hers at Speos Artemidos (Istabl Antar) in Middle Egypt. A new edition by A. H. Gardiner, based on a copy by N. de G. Davies … supplants previous presentations of the text … The extract below comes from lines 35-42 of this inscription.

So in the extract of the text provided we read the following:

Hear ye, all people and the folk as many as they may be, I have done these things through the counsel of my heart. I have not slept forgetfully, (but) I have restored that which had been ruined. I have raised up that which had gone to pieces formerly, since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the Northland, and vagabonds were in the midst of them, overthrowing that which had been made. They ruled without Re, and he did not act by divine command down to (the reign of) my majesty. (Now) I am established upon the thrones of Re. I was foretold for the limits of the years as a born conqueror. I am come as the uraeus-serpent of Horus, flaming against my enemies. I have made distant those whom the gods abominate, and earth has carried off their foot(prints). This is the precept of the father of [my] fathers, who comes at his (appointed) times, Re, and there shall not occur damage to what Amon has commanded. My (own) command endures like the mountains, (while) the sun disc shines forth and spreads rays over the formal titles of my majesty and my falcon is high above (my) name-standard for the duration of eternity. [1]

The Hyksos capital in Egypt, which was apparently at Avaris is identified in connection with other inscriptions presented in that same source with the later Egyptian city called Tanis and Rameses [2], and here in Genesis, in chapter 47, Goshen is associated with “the land of Rameses” (47:12). It must also be stated, that the dating in our source for these inscriptions, which were edited and translated by John A. Wilson, is off somewhat from our own estimations. In the introduction to another inscription, titled The Era of the City of Tanis, we read:

About the year 1330 B.C., when Hor-em-heb was pharaoh, a vizier of Egypt named Seti came to the city Tanis in the Delta to celebrate a four hundredth anniversary. This anniversary took the form of the worship of the Egyptian god Seth, who is represented in the scene carved on the stela as an Asiatic deity in a distinctively Asiatic dress. Somewhere close to four hundred years before 1330 B.C., the Hyksos had begun their rule in Egypt, and the Hyksos capital Avaris was probably the later Tanis and the later city Ramses, while the god of the Hyksos was equated by the Egyptians with Seth. The celebration therefore commemorated the four hundredth year of the rule of Seth as a king, and apparently also the four hundredth year since the founding of Tanis. It was, of course, out of the question that the Egyptians should mention the hated Hyksos in such a commemoration, but Seth held a high position under the Nineteenth Dynasty, with two pharaohs named Seti, "Seth's Man." [3]

We have cited the inscription of Hatshepsut among the proofs that show that the Hyksos had been expelled from Egypt long before the time of the Exodus, so Israel could not have been the Hyksos. The introduction to this later inscription, which we shall not cite further here, serve to show that the archaeologists connect Avaris with Tanis, and Rameses, and Scripture connects Rameses with the land of Goshen, in Genesis chapter 47 (47:11).

Here we must also state that according to our own chronology, Jacob and his sons had went to Egypt in 1665 BC, which is only off from the stated four hundred years here by about 65 years. However we have also noted that there was a 14th Dynasty of Egypt which also had apparently ruled over portions of the Delta at various times, and at least some of its kings were also apparently Asiatics, and associated with the Hyksos. Descriptions of their rule are scant in actual surviving monuments, and there is no consensus of them among archaeologists. Here in Genesis, the pharaoh of Joseph rules over all of Egypt, and he is certainly an Egyptian, and not a Canaanite. In my opinion, the 14th Dynasty pharaohs may have represented early Canaanite chieftains who had endeavored to occupy the Delta and failed to hold onto it with any degree of permanency, as many of their supposed rules are contested by archaeologists. [4]

While 14th Dynasty pharaohs are listed in the Turin Canon, a document from the 19th Dynasty, the archaeological records for the existence of the 15th Dynasty pharaohs are much more certain, and evidently that dynasty consisted of Canaanite kings who occupied the Delta and Lower Egypt for about a hundred years from about 1650 to about 1550 BC. There are inscriptions which have been discovered in Egypt, which describe The War Against the Hyksos which was waged by Kamose [5], the last pharaoh of the 17th Dynasty which had been ruling in Upper Egypt, and also by Ahmose I, his successor and the first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, who left an inscription titled The Expulsion of the Hyksos [6]. Yet at that time, Israel was not expelled, and the Exodus was not for another hundred years. So again, the Hyksos could not have been Israel.

If the attribution of Josephus to Manetho of the definition of Hyksos as “Captive Shepherds” is true, it must be assumed that the name Hyksos could not have come into being until after the expulsion of the Hyksos, because the Exodus did not occur until much later in the 18th Dynasty, in the time of pharaoh Thutmose III who ruled from about 1479 to 1425 BC. So this is why the editor of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Manetho esteemed Josephus’ other copy of Manetho which he cited in Against Apion to have been corrupted in order to be friendly to the Judaeans in their perceived view of the Exodus account and the time of Israel in Egypt. [7] Evidently, at least some of the Hellenistic-period Judaeans were attempting to interpret the Egyptian recollections of the Hyksos as some sort of proof of Israel in Egypt, even if the status of the Hyksos contradicts the status of Israel in Egypt as it is portrayed in Scripture. In Genesis chapter 15, Yahweh had said that Israel would serve the Egyptians, and not that Israel would rule over the Egyptians.

While it seems as if the Israelites in Egypt may have been the Hyksos, and especially where at least some of them were called “rulers my of cattle” by the pharaoh in Genesis chapter 47, they were only rulers of the cattle, at least for some time, and they were not rulers of the entire Delta area and Lower Egypt as it was controlled by the 15th Dynasty pharaohs. The sons of Jacob certainly did not rule over Lower Egypt with only sixty-eight men, their wives and their sisters. Later, they may have been captive shepherds, but in relation to the Hyksos that only seems to be an interpretation of convenience made by whoever was the copyist of one of the versions of Manetho which had been accessible to Flavius Josephus.

The truth is that Joseph the son of Jacob had remained loyal to the pharaoh during all of his time in Egypt, and he died in 1595 BC. But we do not hear of Joseph or anything of Israel here in Genesis after the death of Jacob in 1648 BC. Jacob died around the same time that the actual Hyksos, the Canaanite chieftains, were invading the Delta which they had come to rule from Avaris, which also happened to be in Goshen. Whatever the relationship between Israel and these Canaanites may have been, there are several hypotheses which may be conjectured as being possible, and even plausible but none of them are certain.

Perhaps the Canaanite chieftains had remembered Joseph from his sales of grain during the famine, as he must have sold grain to the Canaanites who came to Egypt in search of food. Perhaps instead, the Canaanites only considered the Israelites to have been Egyptians themselves, and ruled over them as invaders had typically ruled over subjected peoples. Perhaps the Canaanites had recognized the Israelites as settlement of fellow Asiatics in Egypt, and left them relatively unmolested for that reason. In any event, we may never be able to answer these questions definitively, and all of our conjectures may be wrong.

As the Scriptures reflect the period, it seems that throughout all of the time of the 15th Dynasty in Egypt, Israel had done well, where in Exodus chapter 1 we read: “6 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. 7 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. 8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”

So according to Exodus chapter 1, the pharaoh who “knew not Joseph” must have come to rule after the death of Joseph in 1595 BC, and about forty-six years later, around 1549 BC, Ahmose I became the pharaoh who drove the Hyksos, but not the children of Israel, out of the Delta region. Israel remained in Egypt, and they were subsequently enslaved. So the captivity of Israel most likely did happen with the reconquest of lower Egypt by the Egyptian pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. But as we have said in earlier presentations in this commentary, the Canaanite rule of the Delta during the early period of Israel’s presence in Egypt seems to have obscured that presence in the eyes of history and archaeology.

Footnotes

1 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, pp. 230-231.

2 ibid., p. 252.

3 ibid.

4 Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Dynasty_of_ Egypt, accessed April 26th, 2024.

5 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, p. 232.

6 ibid., p. 233.

7 Manetho, W.G. Waddell, translator, Jeffrey Henderson, ed., Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1940, p. 85.