Preservation in Egypt
Notes
Transcript
Preservation in Egypt
Genesis 46:1-34
Some four hundred years following Israel’s entrance into Egypt at Joseph’s invitation, Israel’s descendants would make their astonishing exodus as a nation.
The contest between Moses and Pharaoh would cast all of Egypt into mourning for their firstborn, which then left Israel free to go. Moses’ initial act in the exodus was to remember Joseph’s final request that his mummified remains be buried in Canaan.
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.”
And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.
And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.
The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
Joseph’s sarcophagus and his centuries-old remains would have been overshadowed by the pillar of cloud during the day and illuminated by the pillar of fire by night, dramatically commemorating God’s preservation of Israel in Egypt through Joseph’s faithful service.
So, we see ironically that some four centuries before the exodus, God had nestled an ark of salvation and preservation, figuratively speaking, right in the midst of the intense paganism of Egypt, from which the covenant nation would emerge.
The story before us is about how God got his people into the ark.
Assurance About Egypt
Assurance About Egypt
The news that Joseph was alive had at first almost killed Jacob because he thought it was another of his sons’ wicked fabrications. But his numbed heart was revived by the material evidence, and his trademark determination returned, “I will go and see him before I die” (45:28).
Jacob was apparently living in Hebron, near his family tomb, Machpelah, when he heard the news and set out from there for Egypt by way of Beersheba, which was about twenty-five miles to the west at the beginning of the desert expanse that extends to Egypt.
And it was there at Beersheba that he worshiped.
Beersheba was especially rich in patriarchal history and devotion because there Abraham had made a covenant with Abimelech, named the place Beersheba, planted a tree, and called on the name of the Lord (21:23, 24, 31–34).
And it was there that Abraham’s faith had shone brightest in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac (chap. 22).
It was also there that his son Isaac later experienced a theophany, built an altar, and was three times assured that the Lord was with him (26:3, 24, 28).
And Jacob himself knew Beersheba well because it had been his home in the early days before he journeyed to Haran (28:10).
Beersheba’s history, plus it’s being on the edge of the land, plus the momentous action of Jacob’s leaving the land that God had promised to Abraham and Isaac, plus fears of what could happen in Egypt drove Jacob to God.
So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.
Jacob’s sacrifices were not burnt offerings, but offerings of thanks that Joseph was alive and, likely, vows to follow God.
Jacob’s fear-driven devotion was then matched by God’s direct revelation to him.
And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.”
Then he said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.
I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”
At once Jacob learned that the revelation was in continuity with that given to his father and that he must not fear going down to Egypt for four divine reasons.
First, do not be afraid, “for there I will make you into a great nation.”
It was the same promise that God had originally given to Abraham:
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
God repeated this upon the promise of Isaac’s birth (17:19) and then repeated it through Abraham’s angelic guests (18:18)—all implicitly highlighting the other prophecies about his having uncountable descendants.
But the fresh revelation to Jacob was that his family would become a great nation “there”—in Egypt. Astonishingly, Israel would not become a great nation in the land of promise but on the pagan Nile! This was amazing but encouraging. Great things would come out of his move to Egypt. So, he must not fear.
Second, do not fear because, “I myself will go down with you to Egypt.”
This recalled Jacob’s dream of a ladder extending between Heaven and earth with angels ascending and descending upon it (28:12) and God’s words:
Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
God knows no territorial constraints. He was with Jacob in Mesopotamia and likewise in Canaan (31:3; 35:3), and now in Egypt it would be the same. Not to fear.
Third, do not fear because “I will also bring you up again.”
The use of the personal pronoun “I” and the grammar of the Hebrew make this statement very emphatic: “It is I that shall surely bring you up” a forceful personal prophecy by the God of the exodus!
Likely, Jacob didn’t immediately make the connection of this promise with God’s earlier prophecy in his covenant to Abraham:
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.
But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
Jacob may have not made the connection, but as time passed, his descendants saw it clearly and took heart.
Fourth, do not be afraid because “Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”
So, Jacob learned that his long-standing fear of a sorrowful death was groundless because his beloved Joseph would be at his side for his peaceful passing and would gently close his eyes.
Down to Egypt
Down to Egypt
In the morning, as Jacob looked off to the south and west over the wildernesses to Egypt, he understood that Egypt would provide an ark of preservation for his people, from which they would emerge as a great people.
His gaze across the expanse was that of faith.
· By faith everything and everyone near and dear to him would be transported to Egypt.
· By faith he would entrust his drought-stricken family to the offices of Egypt.
· By faith he would abandon the land promised to Abraham and Isaac, leaving it to the Canaanites until the iniquity of the Amorites was complete (15:16).
The reality was that apart from the family tomb in Hebron, not an inch of land belonged to Israel. Only once, for the burial of Jacob, would they return. Afterwards, until the exodus, no child of the covenant ever entered the land.
Significantly, Wenham has pointed out that some of the phraseology of their departure echoes key terms from the flood story—for example, “into Egypt” (twice), which parallels the two occurrences of “into the ark” (6:18–20), as well as the similar emphasis on bringing the entire family (6:18).
Then Jacob set out from Beersheba. The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.
They also took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him,
his sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters. All his offspring he brought with him into Egypt.
So it was that Israel began the journey into the unlikely safety of the ark of Egypt.
So, who has their Bible out? Who wants to read verses 8 to 25?
I’m going to let you read that to yourselves now or maybe later. I don’t even know if I could pronounce all of those names, to be honest, and I don’t want you to fall asleep either.
But because the event was so momentous, the writer gives an extended list of the “seventy” who went down to Egypt. The list has definite symmetries.
Both Leah and Rachel bear twice as many descendants as their maids. Leah has thirty-three, and her maid Zilpah has sixteen. Rachel has fourteen, and her maid Bilhah has seven. These numbers, 33 plus 16 plus 14 plus 7 = 70 (v. 27).
However, the writer notes that only sixty-six (v. 26) made the trip because Er and Onan were buried in Canaan (v. 12), and Joseph and Manasseh and Ephraim were already in Egypt (v. 27).
This equals sixty-five; so evidently Dinah (v. 15) must be added on to get sixty-six.
Confusing? Just a little bit.
It gets even more so when we see that Exodus 1:5 lists seventy but excludes Jacob from the calculation, but Deuteronomy 10:22 includes him in the number. So, virtually all the major commentators agree with Nahum Sarna that:
There is no way of satisfactorily solving the problem and reconciling the differences unless 70 is understood here to be a typological rather than a literal number. It is here used, as elsewhere in biblical literature, to express the idea of totality.
Thus, it reiterates, in another way, the point made in verses 1 and 6–7, emphasizing the comprehensive nature of the descent to Egypt because this event is seen as the fulfillment of Genesis 15:13.
Israel, then, was God’s covenant people in well, round numbers—the hope of the world in miniature to be placed in the ark of Egypt.
Reunion in Egypt
Reunion in Egypt
The Egyptian wagons loaded with the aged patriarch, the women, and his children and grandchildren must have been a lonely spectacle as they lurched across the drought-parched desolation toward Egypt.
Judah rode scout, guiding them to Goshen, the best of the land of Rameses in the Nile Delta.
It had been twenty-two years since Jacob had been told that Joseph was dead. Now word sped ahead that Jacob’s seventy were in Goshen. Both father and son must have welled with anticipation and possibly even some apprehension.
The language suggests that Joseph arrived in style.
Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father in Goshen. He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.
Israel said to Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.”
“Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father in Goshen” likely surrounded with a great entourage of servants and runners.
The phrase “he presented himself” is always used elsewhere in the patriarchal narratives of God appearing to man, and its use here “draws attention to the overwhelming impression on Jacob of the power, grandeur, and graciousness of Joseph in his own chariot attended by numerous servants” (Wenham).
Jacob’s son, the magnificent, costumed viceroy of Egypt, dressed in the fine white linen of aristocracy, descended from his chariot and “fell on his [father’s] neck and wept on his neck a good while.”
The eleven brothers and their wives and their children’s children looked on with joy. At length the old man lifted his head and looked upon his son, and “Israel said to Joseph, ‘Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.’”
Virtually all of Jacob’s recorded words after the supposed death of Joseph had been about death, but after the revelation that Joseph was alive, that all changed (45:28). Jacob’s words are basically the same words that old Simeon in the Christmas story would speak when he held baby Jesus: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace” (Luke 2:29.).
Here Jacob beheld his son, his temporal savior, and said he could now die in peace. Later Simeon would behold the Son, his eternal Savior, and knew he would die in peace.
Entering the Ark
Entering the Ark
When Joseph regained his composure:
Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me.
And the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock, and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’
Joseph’s emphasis to Pharaoh regarding his family’s pastoral vocation was intentionally nuanced. Since the seventy brought their own livestock, they would not be an economic burden. And more, their interests in husbandry would discourage nepotism.
But most of all, Joseph was subtly telling Pharaoh that Goshen was the best place for his flock-keeping family, as it was pastureland and at the edges of Egyptian society. In this respect, what Joseph told the seventy to say to Pharaoh was somewhat of a masterpiece of diplomacy.
When Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’
you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,’ in order that you may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”
And it worked brilliantly, as the next episode will show.
Egypt had been miraculously opened up for the sake of Israel’s family because though the Israelites were never permitted to eat at the table of an Egyptian, they were given the very best part of the land! So, they were given both separation and prosperity.
What a grace the ark of Egypt was.
There at the fertile borders of Egypt, the people of Israel benefited from the prosperity and protection of Egypt without surrendering their origins.
· There they refined their spiritual and national identity.
· There they grew from a mere handful to a great nation.
· There they later fell out of favor with a new regime that “did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8) and underwent the sanctifying graces of suffering.
· There they birthed their greatest of all leaders, Moses.
· There they experienced the mighty power of God as he brought about the exodus.
The exodus itself was a singular grace, as the words of God through Moses declare:
‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.
The ark, the sojourn, the deliverance, they were all from God.
So, it is with the second Moses, the Messiah, Jesus.
Just as there was no salvation outside Noah’s ark, there is none outside of Christ. In Christ there is salvation and deliverance in the second exodus: “ ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’ ” (Matthew 2:15).
Now, as then, it is all of grace.
Every word of God came true.
When Jacob died, Joseph had his father’s remains embalmed, and Joseph himself went up with him with chariots and horsemen to Canaan, to Hebron, to Machpelah and buried Jacob with Abraham and Sarah and Isaac (Genesis 49:28–50:14).
And when the 430 years of Israel’s layover were completed, and the iniquities of the Amorites was made full, Joseph’s coffin was brought out first as the exodus began. And the presence of God accompanied them. A cloud by day and a fire by night rose above his remains and over all Israel.
Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
This is the mighty God of our salvation.
This is Christ our redeemer.
This is the gospel!