Genesis 46:1-7

THE JOURNEY TO EGYPT, Genesis 46:1-7.

“Here begins a new stage in the history of the covenant people. The chosen family is to be developed into a chosen nation. A permanent religious state, a great divinely organized commonwealth, with institutions fixed for ages, is to be evolved from the patriarchal nomadism, in order that all nations may be blessed in the seed of Abraham. The sublime revelations and spiritual experiences which distinguished the great patriarchs from all other men were not to vanish with them from the world, but were to be embodied in institutions, in a literature, in a national consciousness, which were to be immortal as the race itself. For more than two centuries Abraham and his children had walked and talked with Jehovah as they moved from one pasture to another between Sychem and Beer-sheba. Amid the hostile and idolatrous Canaanitish tribes there was no opportunity for leisurely national growth, while they were in constant danger of absorption; but in the Egyptian sojourn they had the contact with the world’s highest civilization, which gave culture, and yet the isolation and antagonism which saved their religion and their national life from extinction. Egypt’s fat soil made Israel teem with fruitful generations even under oppression; and her wisdom, art, social and religious institutions, deeply tinged the national character, and even shaped some of the religious rites of Israel. Jacob knew that this period of Egyptian sojourn was to come, for it had been predicted to Abraham, (Genesis 15:13-15,) and so he recognised now the call of Providence . The rhetoric rises in tone at the opening of this chapter, as if the writer felt the inspiration of this crisis . ” Newhall .