The Book of Genesis

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Jacob sets out for Egypt, but on the way he stops at Beersheba, a place rich with family memory, and offers sacrifices "unto the God of his father Isaac." He does not rush into this huge move without seeking God. That night God answers, calling him by name, "Jacob, Jacob," and Jacob responds, "Here am I." God gives him four precious assurances. First, "fear not to go down into Egypt," calming the fear of leaving the promised land. Second, "I will there make of thee a great nation," for Egypt would be the nation's cradle. Third, "I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again," promising His presence and the eventual return of Israel, the Exodus foretold. And fourth, tenderly, "Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes," a promise that Joseph would be with him to the very end. Comforted, Jacob rises and travels down with all his household.

Gospel Focus

Notice what Jacob did before the journey: he stopped and worshiped. At a great crossroads, facing a move that would change everything, he sought God first, and God met him. That is wisdom for every believer facing a big decision or an unknown road: seek the Lord before you go. And hear the promise God gave: "I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again." God does not always keep us from the hard or uncertain places, but He promises to go with us into them. It is the same word the Lord gives His people still: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee ... when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned" (Isaiah 43:2). The promise is not always an easy path, but always His presence on it. And God's word to "bring thee up again" was looking centuries ahead to the day He would say, "I am come down to deliver them ... and to bring them up out of that land" (Exodus 3:8). The God who leads His people down into their Egypts is always planning the way back up.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Scripture pauses to record the names of all who came down to Egypt with Jacob, the sons of Leah, Zilpah, Rachel, and Bilhah, along with grandsons and a few great-grandsons. The careful count is given twice and summed up: "all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten," seventy in all, counting Joseph and his two sons already in Egypt. It is a small number, one family, seventy people, arriving in the greatest empire of the age. Yet this little household carried the promise of God. From these seventy would come, in a few centuries, a nation of hundreds of thousands, so many that Pharaoh would fear them. The list of names is not filler; it is the roll call of the seed of promise, each name a link in the chain that God was building toward the nation of Israel and, through them, toward the Savior of the world.

Gospel Focus

Seventy souls seem so small a thing to enter a mighty empire, but God delights to begin great works with small beginnings. Moses would later remind Israel of exactly this: "Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude" (Deuteronomy 10:22). What looked like a tiny, fragile family was the seed of a great nation. This is God's way throughout Scripture. He begins the church with a handful of fishermen, He works through the small and overlooked, and He is not to be despised in "the day of small things" (Zechariah 4:10). If your beginning feels small, your resources few, your household or your work seemingly insignificant, remember the seventy. God can multiply the little that is surrendered to Him beyond all counting. He is not limited by our numbers; He is honored to make the stars of heaven out of a household of seventy. The God of small beginnings and vast harvests is still the same today.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Jacob sends Judah ahead to Joseph to get directions to Goshen, and when the family arrives, Joseph makes ready his chariot and rides up to meet his father. The reunion is overwhelming. Joseph "fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while," a long, deep weeping of joy and grief and love, more than twenty years of separation pouring out at once. Jacob, having now seen with his own eyes the son he mourned as torn by beasts, is filled with a peace so complete that he says, "Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive." He does not mean he wants to die, but that his greatest earthly longing is fulfilled; he could depart in peace, for the impossible has happened and his beloved Joseph lives. The years of sorrow are swallowed up in this embrace.

Gospel Focus

"Now let me die, since I have seen thy face." Jacob's words are the sigh of a heart at rest, a joy so full that death itself has lost its sting. It echoes forward to another old man, Simeon, who took the infant Jesus in his arms and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ... for mine eyes have seen thy salvation" (Luke 2:29-30). To see the face of the one you have longed for is to be ready for anything, even death. For the believer, this points to the deepest longing of all, to see the face of our Savior. When at last we behold Him, every sorrow will be swallowed up in that sight. Jacob's long grief was ended in a moment by a face. So will ours be. And notice the healing power of reconciliation and reunion; God had turned the family's deepest wound into its deepest joy. The God who reunites what sin and sorrow have torn apart is preparing a reunion for His people that will make us say, with a fullness Jacob only tasted, it is enough.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Joseph plans carefully for his family's settling in Egypt. He will tell Pharaoh that his brothers are shepherds who have brought their flocks, and he coaches them to say plainly that their trade has always been keeping cattle. The reason is strategic: "every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians." Because the Egyptians looked down on shepherds, they would want Israel kept apart in the pasture region of Goshen rather than mingled into Egyptian society. What looks like a social insult is actually God's protection. By being confined to Goshen, separate and unwelcome, Israel would not be absorbed and lost among the Egyptians. They would keep their own identity, their own faith, and their own family life intact through all the years of their stay, until the day God brought them out. God was using even Egyptian prejudice to keep His people distinct.

Gospel Focus

There is a quiet wisdom of God in Goshen. Israel needed to be in Egypt for provision, but not of Egypt in identity, and God arranged, even through the Egyptians' scorn, that His people would dwell set apart in Goshen. Had they blended fully into Egyptian life, they might have vanished as a people and lost the promise. Instead they were kept distinct until the Exodus. This is a picture of the believer's calling in the world. We live in the world and God provides for us here, but we are not to be swallowed up by it. God calls His people "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people" (1 Peter 2:9), set apart for Him. Sometimes the very fact that the world looks down on the people of God serves to keep us from being absorbed into it, and what feels like rejection is actually preservation. Like Israel in Goshen, we are to keep our distinct identity and faith while we sojourn here, remembering that this is not our final home, and that the God who set us apart will surely bring us up again.