Genesis 46 (Bible Study)

Let's open with a word of prayer. Our Father, we thank you for your goodness towards us. We thank you for all of our many blessings. And as we study your word this evening, help us to be attentive with open hearts and open minds.

Encourage us through your word, instruct us in thy ways, we ask it all in Christ's name. Amen. Genesis chapter 46.

Jacob’s Journey to Egypt and God’s Assurance at Beersheba

Took his journey with all that he had and came to be a Sheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac. Then God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night. Jacob. Jacob.

Here I am. I am God, the God of your father. Fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation then. I will go down with you to Egypt and I will also surely bring you up again. And Joseph will put his hand on your eyes.

Then Jacob arose from Beersheba and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob, their little ones, and their wives in the carts which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. So they took their livestock and their goods, which they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and went to Egypt.

Jacob and all his descendants with him, the sons of his sons' sons, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his descendants, he brought with him to Egypt. Now these were the names of the children of Israel, Jacob and his sons, who went to Egypt.

Jacob's firstborn, the sons of Reuben, were Hanoch, Paliu, Hezron, and Carmi. The sons of Simeon were Gemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul, the son of a Canaanite woman. The sons of Levi were Gershon, Kohath, and Mererai.

The sons of Judah were Ur, Oman, Sheba, Perez, and Zerah. Berer and Oman died in the land of Canaan. The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamel. The sons of Isserah were Tola, Puber, Job, and Shimra. The sons of Zebedee were Sered, Elam, and Jalilel.

These were the sons of Leah, whom she brought to Jacob in Padan-era with his daughter Dinah. All the persons, his sons and his daughters, were 33. The sons of Gad were Zipheon, Hagar, Shunah, Ezban, Eri, Arodai, and Areli.

The sons of Asher were Jimna, Ishura, Issui, Beriah, and Sirah, their sister. And the sons of Beriah were Heber and Malthael. These were the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah, his daughter. And these she brought to Jacob, 16 persons.

The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife, were Joseph and Benjamin. And to Joseph, in the land of Egypt, were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar, priest of Arn, bought in. The sons of Benjamin were Binah, Echir, Asher, Girah, Naaman, Rash, Mabin, Habin, and Ar.

These were the sons of Rachel, who were born to Jacob, 14 persons in all. The son of Dan was Hushir. The sons of Naphtali were Jazereb, Gunaeb, Jezer, and Shilu. These were the sons of Ilah, whom Laban gave to Rachel, his daughter.

And she bore these to Jacob, seven persons in all. All the persons who went with Jacob to Egypt, who came from his body, besides Jacob's sons' wives, were 66 persons in all. And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two persons.

All the persons of the house of Jacob who went to Egypt were 70. Then he sent Judah before him to Joseph to point out before him the way to Goshen. And they came to the land of Goshen. So Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father, Israel.

And he presented himself to him and fell on his head and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said to Joseph,.

Now let me die, since I have seen your face, because you are still alive. Then Joseph said to his brothers.

And to his father's household, I will go up and tell Pharaoh and say to him, My brothers and those of my father's house who were in the land of Canaan have come to me. And the men are shepherds, for their occupation has been to feed livestock.

And they have brought their flocks, their herds and all that they have. So it shall be when Pharaoh calls you and says, what is your occupation, that you shall say, your servant's occupation has been with livestock from our youth even till now, both we and also our fathers, that you may dwell in the land of Goshen.

For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.

Moses, the Patriarchs, and the Reliability of Genesis

All right, so you're gonna remember that, the sons of Benjamin, Muppin and Huppin. All right, before we look at Genesis 46, this will be important later on. Remember who wrote Genesis 46? Who's writing this?

Moses. Moses, okay, so just remember that. Moses is the one writing. So last time in chapter 45, you remember Joseph revealed himself to his brothers. And when he did, it says that the brothers were dismayed or they were afraid, they were terrified.

Why? Because they really were not sure of Joseph's intentions. But he does reassure them, even though what they did to him was evil, Joseph lets them know that God intended it for good. The Lord used it in order to save the family's life.

So Joseph, of course, asked that his father, Israel, is brought down to the land of Egypt. So to make a long story short, plans were made for the brothers to travel back to the land of Canaan, where the famine was, and it hit the land hard, and to bring Jacob back down to Egypt, because in Egypt, there was plenty of grain, plenty of food.

So chapter 45 ends with these words. Then Israel said, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. And then chapter 46 opens. So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac.

So why Beersheba? Why did he stop there? Well, if you remember, this is an important site. This is where his grandfather had lived and his father had lived for a time. In Genesis 21, verse 33, that is where Abraham called upon the name of the Lord.

In Genesis 26, verses 22 and 24, that is where God reaffirmed the covenant with Isaac, Jacob's father. So this was an important religious site. And because of that, Jacob, when he arrives, what's the first thing that he does?

Well, naturally he offers a sacrifice. So verse two, it says, then God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, here I am. So he said, I am God, the God of your father.

Do not fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt and I will also bring you up again, surely bring you up again. And Joseph will put his hand on your eyes.

So the first thing that we wanna look at is how the Jews would refer to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Notice that's how God refers to himself. He said, I'm the God of your father. And he tells Jacob, I'm the God of your father.

And of course, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are referred to as what? What's the common term that? The patriarchs, right? And what does patriarch mean? Or the patriarchs are basically the fathers. So here in the United States, we have the founding fathers that we all know, George Washington and John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson.

Well, Israel had their own founding fathers, so to speak. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Although I would point out that the word patriarch is never actually applied, at least to Isaac and Jacob.

In the scripture where you find the word patriarch, it's usually referring to the 12 sons. For example, in Acts chapter seven, verse eight, it says that Jacob begot the 12 patriarchs. And that's fitting because they were the heads of the 12 tribes.

So when you think of the 12 tribes of Israel, the patriarchs would have been the brothers. So in the New King James Version, Abraham is referred to as a patriarch once. So that term is not used in the scripture for Isaac and Jacob.

But still, I think it's an appropriate use of the term. So that's the first thing I wanted to touch on with that passage. The second thing, God spoke to Israel, it says in verse two, in the visions of the night.

So this has happened before. You remember when God made the covenant with Abraham back in Genesis chapter 15. Before he made the covenant, when he appeared to Abraham, what did he do first? He put Abraham to sleep.

So Abraham was in a deep sleep when he encountered God there. And then in Genesis 28, when Jacob first encountered God, you remember that's the story of Jacob's ladder. And it says that before he went to bed, he used a stone as a pillow, remember that?

And then some translations say that, no, he put a stone at his head. Either way, that always struck me as odd, no matter which way it goes. But when the Lord appeared to Jacob for the first time, it was in a dream.

And he saw the ladder or the staircase with the angels ascending and descending on it. So what does the Lord say to Jacob? He affirms the covenant with him. He tells him how his descendants would multiply to be like the dust of the earth.

That's what he told him then. But now in chapter 46, he says something, there's something very similar between what he said to Jacob in chapter 28 compared to verse or chapter 46. In chapter 28, he said, behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to the land.

And in chapter 46, he says, I will go down with you to Egypt and I will surely bring you back up. So similar statements in both chapters. So whenever the Lord appears to Jacob, the consistent thing is these are turning points in his life.

The Lord must know that Jacob needs to hear some reassuring words from the Lord. So that's when God chooses to speak to him. So there's a few things I wanna look at in the words that he spoke. They're words of comfort, threefold words of comfort here.

First, the Lord says that he will be with him on his journey. So Jacob's an old man. Can you imagine being 130 years old? Of course, you can't even imagine that. So it doesn't matter what I say next. But being 130 years old and traveling from Canaan all the way to Egypt.

So that's pretty daunting mission. So the Lord tells him, I will be with you. So that's number one. Number two, the Lord tells Jacob, I will surely bring you up again and we'll come back to that statement.

And then the third statement of comfort is that Joseph will put his hand on your eyes. And what does that refer to? But when he dies. Right, so that refers to his death. So Joseph will be with you. Joseph will be by your side when you pass.

So no more comforting words could Jacob have heard. God is gonna be with him. Joseph is gonna be there with you when you die. And this is exactly what happens when we get to chapter 49 and verse 50. That's how it plays out.

Now, what about this statement that the Lord tells Jacob, I will also surely bring you up again. He's talking about bringing him back up to the land of Canaan. We understand that. And I suppose you could look at it this way that he's telling Jacob that when you die, you will be brought back up and your body will be buried in the land of Canaan.

This is Jacob's dying wish that he's buried in the cave at the field of Machpelah. But I'm not so sure that's the primary meaning there. Remember that Jacob is also called what? What's his other name?

Israel. So Jacob personifies the nation. So Israel is both a man and he is a nation. So I think what the Lord is telling him is don't worry. You'll go down to Egypt. That's fine. I will bring you, that is I will bring the people back up to the land.

So I believe that this is actually a reference to the Exodus where the Hebrews are led back into the land of Canaan from Egypt. So any questions or comments so far?

Ray. This spot, Beersheba, also the future site of Jerusalem?

No, Beersheba is the, it's on the Southern tip or it's down to the South in Israel. Jerusalem's slightly North. So Jerusalem was controlled by the Jebusites up until the time of David. And you don't read anything.

That's the interesting thing, not to get sidetracked, but you don't read anything about Jerusalem in the first five books of the Old Testament. So because of that, there were some who didn't think that that was, I think it was the Samaritans who didn't believe Jerusalem was the place to worship because it's not in the Pentateuch, but that's another story for another day.

So yeah, I think that's what the Lord is telling him. I will bring the people back. And if you think about it, how many years passed from the time they traveled down, what we're looking at now, to the time of the Exodus?

How many years? 430 years. Yeah, 430 years. So the estimated dates of what we're reading about now, Jacob going down into Egypt was about 1875 BC and the Exodus would be around 1445 BC. All right, look at verses five through seven.

It says, then Jacob arose from Beersheba and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob. So he didn't have to walk, at least. They get to put them in the cart and carry them. Their little ones and their wives in the carts, which Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

So they took their livestock and their goods, which they had acquired in the land of Canaan and went to Egypt. Jacob and all his descendants with him, his sons and his sons' sons, his daughters and his son's daughters and all his descendants he brought with him to Egypt.

So in verse eight, there's something significant it's worth pointing out. This is the first time in scripture. And remember, this is Moses writing all these years later. This is the first time we see in the scripture, the term, the children of Israel.

And of course, this literally refers to the children of Israel, Issachar and Zebulun. But it also, later it's gonna become a term used for the whole group, for the nation. Just one comment about the genealogy.

You know, genealogies, people think they're boring and there's all these names that are really hard to pronounce and a few funny names once in a while, as we saw, but just one comment about the genealogy.

It lists the 12 sons and Jacob's daughter, Dinah. And then a long list of descendants from the next generation that we don't really think much about and they don't seem all that significant, but there are two members of that following generation that are very significant.

Now, who are they? What's that? What's that? Okay, why are they significant? Okay, fair enough. Well, I had in mind, well, look at verse 19. The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife, were Joseph and Benjamin, and to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim.

The funny thing is there's gonna be another familiar situation. We've seen this so many times where Abraham kind of gets himself into trouble and then Isaac does the same thing and there's kind of a repeat of behavior from one generation to the next.

Well, when we get to chapter 48, Joseph gets a little upset that Jacob, his father, he goes to bless his sons and then he goes to bless the grandchildren and he tries to bless the younger son. And Joseph is, no, he's displeased, and no, you're supposed, dad, you're supposed to bless the older.

And you just think about it, it's like, Joseph, haven't you figured this out by now? I mean, you're the younger son, but that's just the way that goes. So a moment ago I had said. It was about my tradition.

Yeah, well, the tradition was reversed with these guys.

Well, Jacob was the younger son as well.

Yeah, I mean, that's the way it went. And he had to have known that, but he had it in his mind just like all the others. No, it's the older, bless the older. So maybe even a little favoritism from Joseph, although we don't really see that.

So I said a moment ago that from this time until the Exodus was a period of 430 years. So look at verse 27. It says, and the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two persons. All the persons of the house of Jacob who went to Egypt were how many?

70. Okay, 70 people total, which is a big family, but it's not that many people. So there's 70 of them now, 430 years later, the estimated total of the Hebrew people was about 2 .4 million. I mean, 430 years isn't a fair amount of time.

Be fruitful and multiply. Yeah, they were being fruitful and multiplying. That's for sure. But God was blessing them. So we see in Numbers chapter one, verse 46, and you say, well, how do you estimate that there's 2 .4 million?

Well, according to Numbers chapter one, there was 600 ,000 men of fighting age, of military age. So it's estimated that if there's 600 ,000 men of this age group, there must have been about 2 .4 or two and a half million.

And the reason why I bring this up, there's a few things. Many modern liberal scholars will look at that and they'll just say, that's not possible. For them to go from 70 to two and a half million, it's just not realistic.

They'll say this couldn't happen. And some of them, of course, go as far as to say that the Exodus never happened and that the Israelites were never even in Egypt. How many of you have heard these theories?

If you ever watch one of these specials on NBC or the History Channel, yeah, they'll trot out their liberal scholars, the Reverend Dr. So-and-so will tell you why the Bible really isn't trustworthy.

Yeah, it's important to me to bring this up because when I was younger, I had no idea this was even a thing. So it was really, I was very naive, apparently. But when I found out that there were churches, pastors, theologians, seminaries that actively taught people that the Bible isn't true, I was shocked.

And I wondered, why didn't anyone ever tell me this? Of course, people probably did. I just wasn't listening. There's a good possibility. So I bring this up because we all have a choice. Every person who ever hears a sermon or ever opens the Bible to read it, we all have a choice.

Either you can believe the scripture or you can believe the secular sources. And I think it's estimated that about 95 of seminaries are on the liberal side of things. So you have to make a decision, who are you gonna believe?

You gonna believe the scripture or the secular sources? The two are and always have been at odds with one another. And starting in the 17 and 1800s, these skeptics, they started to infiltrate the mainline denominations to where the majority, not all, but the majority of the mainline denominations no longer take this story as just a historical fact.

But here's the thing. Many of the same scholars will estimate, and probably correctly, that the population of Egypt was about three million around that time period. So if the Israelites were around 2 1⁄2 million and they were stronger because God was with them and God was blessing them, that totally backs up what Moses wrote in the beginning of Exodus.

Exodus 1, verses seven and eight says, "'Now there arose a new king over Egypt "'who did not know Joseph. "'And he said to his people, "'Look, the people of the children of Israel "'are more and mightier than we.'".

So, I mean, this really is amazing. In 430 years, they went from this just group of shepherds, 70 total, to being more mighty than the largest empire on the face of the earth. There's only one explanation for that.

What is it? God, right? Yeah, I mean, if you don't have faith without God, then yeah, this does seem unlikely, if not impossible. So I'm trying to say that the Bible is very consistent with itself. And even when you do compare it to some secular sources with Egypt being three million people, this whole story is bordering on the miraculous.

With God blessing Jacob and his descendants. But if you have faith, it's not really hard to believe, is it? I don't think it's hard to believe at all. Yeah, with God, all things are possible. Now, there's a deeper thing, too.

People that don't believe in the book of Genesis, people that don't believe that the Exodus actually took place, if they don't believe that, what do you call them? Unbelievers. If they don't believe, they're an unbeliever.

Here's where it really matters. If a person tells me they don't believe what Moses wrote, on what basis do they believe in Christ? You know what Jesus said in John 5, verse 46? He said, for if you believed Moses, you would have believed me.

For Moses wrote about me. If what Moses wrote is untrustworthy, guess what? The whole Christian faith is untrustworthy. How many times have we said it? Joseph is a type of what? Joseph is a type of Christ.

Moses wrote about Joseph. If there's no Joseph, maybe there's no Jesus. You see how it's all connected. Or if this whole story is unbelievable, on what basis is it credible that a man died and rose from the dead the third day?

You cannot chop up the Bible and say, well, this part of it we believe, this part seems too incredible. That's the temptation because there are scholars and pastors who are considered evangelical that consistently cast doubt on the veracity of the Old Testament.

And it's a dangerous road. What did Jesus say in John 5, 39? I know I'm preaching more than teaching tonight, but I can't help it. What did Jesus say in John 5, 39? He said, you search the scriptures.

And at that time, the only scriptures that existed were what? The Old Testament. He said, you search the scriptures for in them, you think you have eternal life, but these are they which testify of me.

So the Old Testament is all about Christ. And Joseph is a type of Christ. All right, and now chapter 46 ends with Joseph, speaking of Joseph as a type of Christ. Joseph is now interceding on behalf of his brethren.

Jacob arrives in Egypt with the family, verse 29. So Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father, Israel. And he presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.

And Israel said to Joseph, now let me die. Of course he didn't mean right at that moment, but what he's saying is it's all come together now. Now I'm ready to die in peace. Now let me die since I have seen your face because you are still alive.

So this is a sweet reunion. And Joseph now speaks to his family about the conversation he's gonna have with Pharaoh. Now they weren't lying. I mean, what he said was true, but let's make sure we got our story straight.

This is what you're gonna say to Pharaoh, because at the last verse of the chapter, it tells us that shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians. Didn't this happen when they went to eat together and like the Hebrews or the Israelites could not eat with the Egyptians because they are an abomination to them.

It's like, no, it's really the other way around, but we didn't wanna say that. But yeah, shepherds, those who tend to livestock were an abomination to the Egyptians. So Pharaoh's already agreed to let them live in the land.

He loves Joseph and yeah, it's great. Bring your father down in the family. That's already been established. What's the, yeah, yeah. 70, gonna turn into two and a half million in a little while, but don't worry about that.

So Joseph is interceding and he secures one of the most fertile spots in all the land of Egypt. And he does that because, well, they're shepherds. So this accomplishes two things. Number one, it kept them away from the Egyptians, which is what the Egyptians would have wanted, right?

They're an abomination. The second thing that it accomplished, it kept the Egyptians away from them. And now the Israelites were kept separate. They were kept set apart. They were kept holy and a distinct people unto the Lord.

And I'll just close with what Joseph said to his brothers back in chapter 45, verse seven. God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So in the Old Testament, God sent Joseph to deliver Israel. And in the New Testament, God sends Jesus to deliver us.