Exodus 1:7

"And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them."

This verse summarizes the developments of some four centuries, thus recording the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the effect that their posterity would become a mighty nation, innumerable as the stars of heaven and numberless as the sands of the seashore. Some scholars like to quibble about whether or not such a population increase within the space of four hundred years could actually have happened. God says that it did happen, and that settles the question. For those who need help with such a question, it is pointed out by demographic specialists that without artificial checks against it, populations tend to double every twenty-five years. Rawlinson applied this law as follows:

"Even supposing the "seventy" with their "households" to have numbered no more than 500 persons when they went down into Egypt, the people, unless artificially checked, would have exceeded two millions at the expiration of three centuries - that is to say, 130 years before the Exodus!"[4]

The specific meaning of this verse goes far beyond what might easily have occurred in the natural growth of populations. Note the five-fold statement:

"... were fruitful,

... increased abundantly,

... and multiplied,

... and waxed exceeding mighty;

... and the land was filled with them."

Thus, it was the infinite power and resources of the Almighty God Himself that providentially aided Israel in becoming a mighty nation. Nothing could have been great or powerful enough to have thwarted the purpose of the Eternal. This was the same Power that intervened at the Red Sea, at Jericho, and down long centuries afterward on Calvary.

These first seven verses enter into the narrative here in the form of a parenthesis, condensing the history of more than four centuries into this short paragraph. What a necessary prelude to the events about to be related! Genesis closed with the status of Israel having been established as that of a relatively small minority newly immigrated from Canaan and permitted to dwell in the wild and uninhabited grass lands of Goshen (the Nile Delta), and by reason of the deserved popularity of Joseph, whose authority in Egypt at that time was practically unlimited, enjoying the protection of the most powerful government on earth. Exodus begins with all of the basic elements of the picture drastically altered. Israel was no longer small, but mighty; they were no longer free, but had been reduced to slavery; their slavery placed them in the forced-labor armies of an ambitious and powerful Pharaoh. Another king "who knew not Joseph" had come to power; the same mighty world-power that at first had shielded and protected them was at this time their bitter enemy; and the terrors of genocide clearly threatened them! All such changes lay within the confines of this little paragraph. However, one thing had not changed, and that was the eternal purpose of God who had determined that in "the seed" of Abraham all the families of mankind would be blessed. All of the complicated and synchronized details of thousands of years of human history were being controlled and directed from heaven, making sure that "in the fullness of time" Elijah II (John the Baptist) would point out the Messiah and identify him as "The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," and that God Himself would declare it from heaven in broad open daylight upon the banks of the Jordan, that, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."