< Genesis 46 >

Jacob’s father, Isaac, when contemplating going to Egypt during a time of famine, was told to remain in the promised land where God would care for him and eventually give him all of it Genesis 26:2-5.Waiting for response for Genesis 26:2-5 Consequently Jacob, the inheritor of the same promise, was reluctant to leave the land for Egypt. When he came therefore to Beersheba, the southernmost city of the land, he offered sacrifices to the LORD and received assurance that God would care for him in Egypt and that, although he would die there, his descendants would all return in due course to the promised land.

Jacob proceeded on his way into Egypt, taking with him all the members of his family who are named in this chapter and who totalled seventy. We might wonder why we are given this information, but one of the remarkable features of the Bible is the way in which God demonstrates that his dealings with mankind are closely related to his purpose with Israel, and this is an example. The scriptures say: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel” Deuteronomy 32:8.Waiting for response for Deuteronomy 32:8 And so we find that the number of nations into which the descendants of Noah were divided, to correspond to the number of Israel many years later, was seventy Genesis 10

Arriving in Egypt, Jacob had an emotional reunion with his beloved son, Joseph, who prepared him to meet Pharaoh. Jacob was advised to emphasise that he and his family were shepherds because this would engage Pharaoh's empathy even though “every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians”. The explanation is revealed in the history of Egypt for, at that time, the country was ruled by ”shepherd kings”, non-Egyptians who had established the Hyksos dynasty, Hyksos meaning “foreign rulers”.