Genesis 46:8-27

Israel’s household’s move to Egypt 46:8-27

This section contains a list of the individuals in Jacob’s family about the time he moved to Egypt. As in chapter 31, when he left Paddan-aram, this move was also difficult for Jacob. Moses recorded a total of 70 persons (Genesis 46:27; cf. Exodus 1:5). The 66 referred to in Genesis 46:26 excluded Jacob, Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh, or perhaps Er and Onan (Genesis 46:12) and Ephraim and Manasseh. Stephen said there were 75, but he must have added Joseph’s three grandsons and two great-grandsons (Acts 7:14). These five were born later, as were some or all of Benjamin’s 10 sons (Genesis 46:21), in all probability.

". . . according to a view which we frequently meet with in the Old Testament, though strange to our modes of thought, [they] came into Egypt in lumbus patrum [i.e., in the loins of their father]." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 1:371.]

"It [Genesis 46:8] means: shortly after the children of Israel had come to Egypt there were to be found those seventy fathers from whom were derived the seventy clans that were the prevailing clans throughout Israel’s early history." [Note: Leupold, 2:1115.]

This was the humble beginning of the great nation of Israel.

"It can hardly go without notice that the number of nations in Genesis 10 is also ’seventy.’ Just as the ’seventy nations’ represent all the descendants of Adam, so now the ’seventy sons’ represent all the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-the children of Israel. Here in narrative form is a demonstration of the theme in Deuteronomy 32:8 that God apportioned the boundaries of the nations (Genesis 10) according to the number of the children of Israel. Thus the writer has gone to great lengths to portray the new nation of Israel as a new humanity and Abraham as a second Adam. The blessing that is to come through Abraham and his seed is a restoration of the original blessing of Adam, a blessing which was lost in the Fall." [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., p. 225.]