Great Moments in Bible History
Number 50
The Big Move
Moving is never easy, but some moves are a lot harder than others. For several reasons, the move to Egypt of Jacob’s family was a difficult one. In the first place, he had a big family, and they were all moving together. Genesis 46 lists 70 people, not counting the wives of his children and grandchildren. Secondly, at the age of 130 Jacob was not physically able to walk that far. Fortunately, Pharaoh had sent wagons to carry him and others in his family who were too young or old to make the journey on foot. But the last reason was the most serious. Did God want him to make the move?
Decades before Jacob was born, God had appeared to his grandfather Abraham and commanded him to move to Canaan. He promised him that his children would inherit that land once the original inhabitants grew too sinful for God to put up with them anymore (Genesis 15:16). After moving to Canaan, Abraham had faced a similar situation to the one Jacob was in. A severe famine had struck. Without asking God’s permission, Abraham had left Canaan and travelled to Egypt. Because of his lack of faith, he had lied about his wife and got himself into a big mess which God graciously rescued him from (Genesis 12:10-20). Jacob did not want to repeat that sin. In Jacob’s case it certainly appeared that God wanted him to move to Egypt. His long-lost favorite son Joseph was ruling over the land. Pharaoh had invited the family to move there to escape the famine. But he really needed to hear from God about it.
Jacob packed up the family and began the move, but he stopped at Beersheba, the town at the southern edge of Canaan (beyond that is just desert). At Beersheba he offered sacrifices to God, no doubt hoping to hear what God wanted him to do. For the first time in many years God spoke to him. In a night vision He told him, “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” (Genesis 46:3-4). That solved Jacob’s problem for him. He could move to Egypt with a clear conscience, knowing that it was actually part of God’s plan.
God’s vision to Jacob added an important fact that had not been revealed before. Jacob’s family would grow into a nation, not in the land of Canaan, but in Egypt. Almost two centuries earlier God had told Abraham about his descendants' stay in Egypt (though He did not tell him the name of the nation). “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” (Genesis 15:13-14). In Jacob’s day they would go down as honored guests, but God knew they would end up slaves. That part of the story will be told in the next book—Exodus. In Jacob’s lifetime (and in the lifetime of all 70 who moved with him to Egypt) they will be treated as honored guests. And Jacob could look forward to seeing his long-lost son in Egypt.
A Tearful Reunion
Twenty-two years is a long time. That was how long Jacob had believed that his son Joseph was dead. For over half that time Joseph himself was either a slave or in prison. Now at last they would get to see each other again. “Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father in Goshen” (Genesis 46:29). I can imagine how Joseph would have put on his best clothes and made sure his chariot was spotless. “He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.” They had both been through a lot of pain, but it was finally over. God had graciously brought them together again.
Jacob said to Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.”
God’s Plans Go Deep
In our last issue we saw how Joseph was able to forgive his brothers because he understood that what happened to him was ultimately from God. “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). Joseph understood that if his brothers hadn’t sold him into slavery, he would never have become second in command over Egypt. And if that hadn’t happened, there would have been no one to save his family from the devastating famine. He finally understood that over 20 years before the famine even started, God was preparing to rescue Jacob’s family from it. That was why He allowed Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery.
But God’s plans went deeper than what Joseph realized. God actually sent the famine because He wanted Jacob’s family to move to Egypt. This is one of the main purposes of the Joseph story in Genesis. As God explained to Jacob, “There I will make you into a great nation” (Genesis 46:3). This naturally raises the question in our minds, why couldn’t God make Jacob’s family into a nation right where they were, in Canaan?
Canaan was a dangerous place spiritually. When Abraham’s nephew Lot moved to Sodom, it destroyed his family spiritually (Genesis 19). Later, Jacob’s brother Esau married wives from the local people, and they were a big grief to his parents (Genesis 26:34-35). Even Jacob’s own family was being affected by the Canaanites. His son Judah married a Canaanite wife and married his son to Tamar, another Canaanite woman. Genesis 38 tells the story of Judah’s sinful behavior as he associated with the Canaanites. He was becoming like them and his sons were becoming even worse. If God left that family in Canaan, in a few generations they would lose their unique identity as the family of God and would become just as bad as the Canaanites around them. God was moving them to Egypt to save them from that sinful society.
But this raises yet another question. Egypt wasn’t as bad spiritually as Canaan, but it was bad enough. Egyptians worshipped multiple gods just like all the other nations of the ancient world. How could God keep His people separate in Egypt? Most families that move to a new country rapidly become like everyone else in that country. In our own country today, there are a lot of immigrant families that still talk in their native language. But by the third generation those families will be indistinguishable from the rest of Americans. Since we know that Jacob’s family is going to live in Egypt for 400 years, what are the chances that they will end up as anything other than a bunch of Egyptians by the end of that time?
Joseph was aware of that problem as soon as his family arrived, and he had a plan to help avoid the disaster of assimilation into Egyptian society. He knew that his family were shepherds. He also knew that Egyptians despised shepherds (Genesis 46:34). He told his brothers, “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” (verses 33-34). The area of Goshen was on the northeast edge of Egypt, as far away as Joseph could put his family and still have them in the country. That situation would leave them mostly to themselves, rather than living in the midst of Egyptian society. But in the longer term, God had an even more effective plan to keep them separate. He had foretold it to Abraham almost two centuries earlier. He was going to arrange things so that the Egyptians made slaves of Jacob’s family (Genesis 15:13).
The story of Israel being forced into slavery is told in the next book of the Bible, the book of Exodus. For the present, Jacob’s families were honored guests, but were allowed to live by themselves at the edge of Egypt.
Can Christians Be Assimilated?
When we think of the danger of Jacob’s family being assimilated into Egyptian society, the question naturally arises, how can Christians today keep from becoming just like the society around us? We saw earlier that intermarriage was a huge problem for Jacob’s family. It remains a big problem for Christians today. When Paul wrote about a widow remarrying, he said, “She is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). In other words, she must marry a Christian. Indeed, every Christian needs to follow that principle. When Christians marry non-Christians, there is a big danger that they will get pulled into the world of the non-Christian just like Jacob’s family was being pulled into Canaanite society. While we live in the world, we must not be of the world (John 17:15-16).
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible.