Christians should always be ready to give an answer to those who ask us about the hope that is within us (1 Pet. 3:15). Jacob has a prime opportunity to share his faith with Pharaoh, yet he responds to Pharaoh’s question about his life by saying, in effect, that it has been solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Jacob has certainly suffered much, though many of his wounds have been at least partially self-inflicted. But, like so many of us, he is unprepared when the opportunity arises to recount God’s faithfulness and abundant mercy to him. Nevertheless, he does bless Pharaoh (Gen. 47:7, 10), an audacious act in a world in which the greater blesses the lesser and not vice versa. He knows that as the heir of Abraham he has a blessing that is not merely for his own descendants but for the wider world as well, because he serves the God of all creation and the Lord of all history.
God demonstrates his power over creation and history in the widespread famine for which he has sent Joseph to Egypt to enable them to prepare ahead of time. Like the ark of Noah’s day, Egypt becomes a refuge for God’s people from the surrounding devastation, a place where they can be fruitful and multiply, even while the Egyptians are reduced to impoverished servitude. Later Israelites will also testify to how the Lord distinguishes between them and the Egyptians when bringing multiple plagues on the land (cf. Exodus 7–12).
The Lord’s purpose is to bring his people back in due time to the land of Canaan, which he has promised to give them. Jacob’s faith in that promise is evidenced by the vow he makes Joseph swear to carry his bones back to his ancestral burial place. Yet even Canaan is not Jacob’s true home. The Promised Land is itself emblematic of the true city with foundations for which the patriarchs longed. Here on earth, they would always be sojourners, as all Christians are as well. But God has prepared a place for them ahead of time, to be entered by faith, not works. That heavenly ʾakhuzzah, or possession, will not be given to them as the gift of Pharaoh, or even Joseph, but is found in the true Son of Israel, Jesus Christ. He endures a life that is much more solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short than Jacob’s. He is a man of sorrows, acquainted with sickness and many griefs (Isa. 53:4), culminating in a shameful death on the cross (Phil. 2:5–11). But that death and subsequent resurrection enable Christ to be the first of many brothers (Rom. 8:29), pioneering the way to our true heavenly home (Heb. 12:1–2), which we now receive from him as our inheritance (1 Pet. 1:3–5). Just as God is faithful to his promise to be with Jacob and his sons in Egypt, bringing them at last to the Promised Land, so also is he faithful to be with us wherever our earthly sojourning leads us until it is time to take us to our eternal home.Genesis 47
Samaritan, Septuagint, Vulgate; Hebrew he removed them to the cities
Hebrew; Septuagint staff
47:1–6 Thus far Joseph has been in charge of the arrangements for his brothers’ arrival and lodgings in Egypt. Pharaoh has promised to give them the best of the land of Egypt (45:18) and has left the specifics for Joseph to organize, but now the arrangements have to be ratified by Pharaoh himself. This requires a representative sample (“five men”) of the brothers and their father to appear before Pharaoh; all twelve might have felt like too imposing of a presence (47:2). It is not clear whether these are the most impressive brothers or merely a random assortment. The brothers have been coached carefully by Joseph to reply to Pharaoh’s question about their occupation by saying they are shepherds, as in fact they are (v. 3; cf. 46:34). This answer has a twofold function, first to assure Pharaoh that they are not politically ambitious and second to affirm that they are no threat to Egyptian society. All they want is to be allowed to raise their animals peacefully—preferably in the land of Goshen, as Joseph has planned (cf. comment on 46:28–34). Their presence in Egypt is not intended to be a permanent relocation; rather, they have come to “sojourn” (Hb. ger, a verb indicating a temporary stay) in the land for the duration of the famine (47:4; cf. 15:13).
Pharaoh agreeably gives them exactly what they seek: royal permission to occupy the best of the land, including, if they so choose, Goshen. What is more, he offers them royal patronage, inviting Joseph to put the most skillful of the brothers to work in caring for the royal flocks and herds (47:6). Although this offer would no doubt be an attractive one for anyone set on advancement in Egyptian society, we hear no more about this opportunity subsequently, since Joseph’s purpose for his brothers is exactly the opposite: to keep them distinct and separate from Egyptian society in the somewhat isolated region of Goshen. In this way they will be near the road leading back to the land of Canaan, ready to return home when the call finally comes.
47:7–12 Having first presented his brothers to Pharaoh, Joseph now brings in his aged father, Jacob, to meet one of the most powerful men of the ancient world. Far from being intimidated by the occasion, Jacob blesses Pharaoh (v. 7). The scene may have looked incongruous to Pharaoh’s servants: an elderly nomadic figure solemnly pronounces his benediction on the semidivine ruler of all Egypt, as though he has something to impart to Pharaoh, as opposed to being the impoverished recipient of Pharaoh’s generosity in recognition of his son’s achievements. Yet Jacob is deliberately invoking Genesis 12:2–3, the Abrahamic blessing that promises good for all who bless Abraham’s offspring. Since Pharaoh has dealt kindly with Jacob and his family, he deserves to receive a blessing in the name of Israel’s God, the God of all creation. As Abraham’s heir, Jacob is authorized to deliver such a blessing, which he does both upon entering and upon leaving Pharaoh’s presence (47:7, 10).
If Jacob’s blessing of Pharaoh is an act of faith in Israel’s God, the substance of his conversation with Pharaoh is less doxological. Pharaoh asks a politely conversational question, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” (v. 8), just as he earlier asked Joseph’s brothers about their occupation (v. 3). This question provides Jacob with the opportunity not merely to give a number in reply but to reflect on the nature of those “days of the years of [his] life” (v. 8), which he does. Yet, instead of giving clear testimony to the Lord’s faithfulness to him over his long and challenging life (as he does when meeting Esau in 33:5–11), his response to Pharaoh is largely bitter and negative: “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning” (47:9).
In reality, Jacob is not yet about to die. To be sure, his impending death has been on Jacob’s mind for some time. When he saw Joseph’s bloodstained robe many years earlier, he was sure he was about to go down to Sheol in sorrow (37:35). When the brothers wanted to take Benjamin down to Egypt on the second trip, Jacob’s concern was that, should anything happen to his son on the journey, it would kill him (42:38). When Jacob heard that Joseph was still alive, he declared that he would go to see him before he died (45:28). Even when he finally saw Joseph, Jacob said, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive” (46:30). Yet Jacob has another seventeen years to live in Joseph’s company (47:28), the same length of time he spent with Joseph during the first years of his life. It is too soon for him to summarize the length of his days. He will reach 147 years, an age that, while short of Abraham’s 175 years (25:7) and Isaac’s 180 (35:28), is longer than nearly anyone will live after him. In comparison Joseph lives to be 110 years old (50:22) and Moses to 120 (Deut. 34:7). In Egypt 110 years was considered the ideal life span.
It is interesting to speculate whether Jacob’s response to Pharaoh would have been different had he been asked it at the end of those seventeen peaceful years in Egypt; his blessings in Genesis 48–49 have a more positive tone to them. Yet Pharaoh’s question invites a positive reflection on the way in which the Lord has transformed his mourning over the son he thought he had lost into great joy, while providing abundantly for all his needs in the famine. God has been with Jacob from the day he left his father’s house with nothing other than the staff in his hand until the point upon which he has become a family of more than seventy persons, with abundant livestock and material goods (cf. Gen. 32:10). Now that Jacob has arrived in Egypt, Joseph has given his father and brothers an inheritable “possession” (Hb. ʾakhuzzah; 47:11) in the best of the land, the land of Goshen, and supplied them with sufficient food to see them through the remaining five years of famine (v. 12).
One aspect of Jacob’s response to Pharaoh is a clear word of testimony. He makes it clear to Pharaoh that this world is not his home. There is a crucial difference between Pharaoh’s question to Jacob and Jacob’s answer. Pharaoh asks, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” But Jacob responds, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years” (vv. 8–9). Jacob knows that his time here on earth is merely a sojourn, a temporary stay and not a permanent residence. His grandfather Abraham had left Ur to sojourn in the land of Canaan, and now Jacob is sojourning in the land of Egypt. Even though Egypt probably provides the best living situation that Jacob has ever experienced, it will never be home. The Lord who promised to go down to Egypt with him had also promised to bring him back up to Canaan (46:4); that land is his true and everlasting “possession” (ʾakhuzzah; 17:8; cf. 47:11; 48:4). The departure of Jacob and his family from the Promised Land is only temporary, a faith commitment evidenced in Jacob’s making Joseph swear that after his death he will not bury him in Egypt but will take his body back to the family burial plot at Machpelah (47:29–31).
47:13–26 There is a sharp contrast between the fortunes of Joseph’s family, which is protected and provided for at every turn, and the rest of the Egyptian people (as well as those remaining in the land of Canaan), whose fortunes gradually get worse and worse. The pairing of “the land of Egypt” with “the land of Canaan,” which occurs three times in verses 13–15, is very unusual and evokes the standard calls by critical scholars to emend the text. But there were strong ties between Egypt and the Canaanite city-states during at least some of this general period, as witnessed by the Amarna letters, which may account for the connection historically. From a literary perspective the point is much simpler: the populations of both Egypt and Canaan are suffering at this point, despite their rainfall’s being dependent on different factors.
It must have seemed strange to Moses’ audience to recall a time in which they were the favored class in Egypt while the Egyptians were suffering and oppressed. Jacob and Joseph’s brothers seem to have plenty of food to eat without having to come to Joseph repeatedly and beg for provisions; they are even given their own portion of Goshen as their “possession” (Hb. ʾakhuzzah; v. 11). Meanwhile the native-born Egyptians become progressively poorer. First they lose their financial resources, as Joseph gathers into the royal coffers all the money in Egypt in exchange for grain (v. 14). Next, after the money is gone, Joseph takes ownership of all their livestock in exchange for food (vv. 16–17). As the most valuable animals, horses head the list of livestock. Finally, Joseph purchases all the land of Egypt for Pharoah and reduces its inhabitants to slavery in return for food (vv. 16–21). Apart from Israel, only the priests are excepted from the general ruination of the land, since they receive an allowance of food directly from Pharaoh (v. 22); everyone else becomes Pharaoh’s slaves. The irony is rich when the Egyptians, to whom Joseph was once sold as a slave, come to him and ask him to buy them and their land (v. 19).
As a result of this purchase of land and people by Pharaoh, the Egyptians are now indebted as sharecroppers to their overlord; 20 percent of the produce of their fields is to be remitted to Pharaoh, while the remaining 80 percent is theirs. Yet the Egyptian people are grateful to their master, saying, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh” (v. 25). The implications ought not to have been lost on Moses’ hearers: they and their children had also been delivered from death in Egypt and promised a possession (ʾakhuzzah) in the land of Canaan, where the Lord required a mere tithe (10 percent) of their agricultural produce, whether vegetable or animal, as a mark of his overlordship. How much more should they come to their Overlord with gratitude and say, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to the Lord” (cf. Josh. 24:14–24)? Out of that tithe the Lord will provide for his priests and Levites, just as Pharaoh provides for the Egyptian priests (cf. Num. 18:21). These laws continue to be valid down to the time of the writer (Gen. 47:26), an assertion that presupposes familiarity with the extant Egyptian tax code—a familiarity that makes perfect sense for someone like Moses but seems less likely of a hypothetical Israelite author writing at a much later time.
There is extensive discussion in the commentaries as to whether these actions on the part of Joseph ought to be viewed as repressive against the Egyptian people, as a demonstration of Joseph’s wisdom and a model of good governance, or merely as an explanation of ancient taxation practices. These discussions tend to miss the point that the original readers would have discerned from the account. Joseph is undoubtedly a wise ruler over Egypt, whose measures save the lives of the Egyptians at a time when they would otherwise perish. The Egyptian people are depicted as grateful rather than grumbling in response to Joseph’s provision of a means for them to purchase food under such circumstances, even at the cost of their personal freedom. Yet the lesson for the Israelites is found in the contrasting fate of nascent Israel, provided with abundant food in Rameses by Joseph at no cost and gaining ownership of land at a time when everyone else in Egypt is losing theirs. How much more grateful should they be to the God who thus provides for all their needs—and who later, when they have lost their own freedom and are themselves slaves in Egypt, delivers them from there and promises them a land of their own in return for the light yoke of tithing their agricultural produce?
47:27–31 The final verses of Genesis 47 also deal with life and death and with Egypt and Canaan. In contrast to the desperate struggles of the Egyptians throughout the famine the Israelites prosper, gaining property (the Hb. verb ʾakhaz in the Niphal is related to the noun ʾakhuzzah in v. 11) in the land of Goshen and demonstrating that the Lord’s blessing is upon them by being fruitful and multiplying greatly, just as God promised Jacob (v. 27; cf. 1:28; 9:1; 17:6; 28:3; 35:11). Of course, that very fruitfulness will later become an issue, as a later pharaoh will feel threatened by the fertility and number of the Israelites (cf. Exodus 1).
Up to this point in Genesis the name Israel has referred primarily to Jacob. Even as recently as 46:1–2 Israel was construed with singular pronouns; when Israel went down to Egypt, it was his journey with all that he had. Now, as the death of Jacob approaches, Israel has become a collective noun: “Israel settled in the land of Egypt, . . . and they gained possession in it” (Gen. 47:27). As for Jacob, he lives for another seventeen years in Egypt, enjoying the same length of time in Joseph’s company as he did at the beginning of Joseph’s life (v. 28; cf. 37:2). The number of the years of his life, which he earlier characterized to Pharaoh as “few and evil” (47:9), stretches to 147 years, with a peaceful ending surrounded by his reconciled children.
Before Jacob dies he needs to pronounce a final set of benedictions on his children and grandchildren, blessings that will shape their destinies, for better or worse, into the distant future. Because of the significance of his words, he is now once again titled Israel (v. 29). Jacob’s final request of Joseph is so important that he makes Joseph swear an oath by putting his hand on Jacob’s thigh (v. 29; cf. 24:2–3, where Abraham charges his servant with a similarly weighty responsibility). This is a matter of steadfast love and faithfulness (47:29; khesed vaʾemet, “deal kindly and truly”), language used of a firm covenant commitment to another person and used even to describe the nature of the Lord himself (24:49; Ex. 34:6).
What Jacob asks of Joseph is no small matter: he wants Joseph to pledge to take his body back to the land of Canaan after his death, to be buried with his fathers in the family grave at Machpelah (Gen. 47:29–30). Where a person was buried was a matter of great significance in the ancient world, which is why, when Ruth pledges her loyalty to Naomi, the highest level of commitment for Ruth is not merely to take Naomi’s God as her own but also to be buried alongside Naomi (Ruth 1:16–17). To make such a decision is to be bonded to a person and his or her God not merely in life but for all eternity. So too Jacob’s desire to be buried in the family grave is not mere nostalgia or sentimentalism; it is a fundamental declaration of faith in the promises of God, an assertion that in death, as in life, the land of Canaan is his promised home—and ultimately that the Lord will take him to be with himself forever. As Kidner points out, Jacob expects to sleep with his fathers prior to Joseph’s carrying his corpse to join them physically in his last resting place in earth.
The final sentence of the chapter is not entirely clear. Jacob bows himself either on the top of his bed (hammittah), as the text is vocalized in the MT, or on the top of his staff (hammatteh), as read by the LXX, which is in turn followed by Hebrews 11:21. Jacob’s bed makes another appearance in Genesis 48:2, while Jacob’s staff would connect this scene back to his earliest days, when his staff was his sole possession (though the Hebrew word used in 32:10 is different, maqqel). In favor of the latter reading, “head” (roʾsh) is more commonly used of vertical extremities (of stones, mountains, buildings, etc.). There are also different understandings of Jacob’s bowing: Is he prostrating himself before Joseph or before the Lord, or is he simply fatigued? Since the staff is a sign of a person’s authority, bowing at its head most likely means that Jacob is submitting himself to the Lord in thanksgiving, in response to Joseph’s willingness to carry his corpse back to Canaan.