Genesis 46 — I Will Go Down with You

Today’s Passage: Genesis 46

Now the old man goes down to Egypt, and I would have you feel how great a thing that was for him. All his long life the promise of God had been tied to one particular ground, the land of Canaan, given to Abraham and to Isaac and to him, and now, in his old age, famine drives him to leave it and travel down into a foreign country to live under a foreign king. That is no small step for a man who has spent his whole life holding onto a promise about this land, and so it is no wonder that when he reaches Beersheba, the last outpost of the promised land on the road south, he stops and offers sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac before he goes one step further. And there, in the night, God meets him and speaks the very word he needs to hear, that he need not be afraid to go down, for God Himself will go down with him and will surely bring his descendants back up again. The chapter then carries the whole household down the road, and pauses to write out the seventy souls who made the journey, the small seed of a family that will one day fill a nation. And it ends in the land of Goshen, where the son long thought dead comes out to meet his father, falls upon his neck, and weeps a long time, and the old man says he can die content now that he has seen Joseph’s face. Read it slowly, and let the word spoken at Beersheba steady you as it steadied Jacob.

As you read, hold this: At the edge of the promised land God tells Jacob not to fear the road to Egypt, for He goes down with him and will surely bring his people back up again.

Genesis 46:1-4 (BSB)

¹ So Israel set out with all that he had, and when he came to Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. ² And that night God spoke to Israel in a vision: “Jacob, Jacob!” He said. “Here I am,” replied Jacob. ³ “I am God,” He said, “the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. ⁴ I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will surely bring you back. And Joseph’s own hands will close your eyes.”

Watch the old man at Beersheba, and learn from him. He does not rush down the road to see the son he has been longing for. He stops at the border of the promised land and offers sacrifices, bringing the whole weight of this decision before God before he takes another step, and God meets him there in the night. Hear how the vision opens, with his name spoken twice, “Jacob, Jacob,” the way you would call gently to someone you love, and Jacob answers as his fathers answered before him, “here I am.” Then comes the word he needs above every other. Do not be afraid (יָרֵא) yare, pronounced yah-RAY. Strong's H3372, to fear, revere, stand in awe. This is the common Hebrew word for fear, the fright that grips a man at the edge of something larger than himself, and here it names exactly what an old father felt as he stood at the border of the only land the promise had ever been tied to, about to leave it behind for a foreign country and a foreign throne. God does not scold the fear. He answers it. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt,” He says, and then He gives the reasons that take the fear away, not by promising an easy road but by promising His own presence on it. It is worth noticing that this is the very word God so often speaks to His people at the hardest thresholds of their lives, do not fear, do not be afraid, and He almost never speaks it alone. He speaks it and then tells them why, and the why is always some form of the same thing, that He will be with them. Jacob’s fear was real, and the leaving was real, but the word spoken over both was stronger than either, because behind it stood the God who was going down the road with him. to go down to Egypt. Underneath his fear of leaving Canaan lay a real question, whether it was right to go at all, and God settles it with three great pledges laid one upon another. First, He will make a great nation of them there, so the years in Egypt are no detour from the promise but the very soil in which it will grow. Second, and tenderest of all, “I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will surely bring you back (עָלָה) alah, pronounced aw-LAW. Strong's H5927, to go up, ascend, climb. When God promises, “I will surely bring you back,” the word underneath is to go up, the ordinary verb for climbing a hill or ascending to a higher place, and here it is doubled for emphasis, going up I will bring you up, a Hebrew way of saying it beyond all doubt. There is a beautiful geography hidden in the word. Egypt lay low, down the road and down the river, and the land of promise sat up in the hills, so to return to Canaan was always to go up. But the word reaches far past this one family and this one lifetime. Generations later, when God brought this same people out of Egypt in the great Exodus, the Scriptures would keep reaching for this very verb, that God brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt. The seed goes down here in fear and in famine, seventy souls in wagons, and folded into God’s promise on that first night is the pledge that reaches all the way to the parted sea and the wilderness road, that He will surely bring them up again. God does not only send His people down into the low places. He is the God who brings them up out of them. ,” so that the God of the land is not left behind at the border but travels the whole road down and pledges the whole road home. And third, a quiet and personal comfort for an old man afraid of dying far from his people, that Joseph’s own hands will close his eyes, meaning his beloved son will be with him to the very end. The promise does not stay in Canaan. It goes down to Egypt in the company of the God who made it.

Genesis 46:5-7 (BSB)

⁵ Then Jacob departed from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel took their father Jacob in the wagons Pharaoh had sent to carry him, along with their children and wives. ⁶ They also took the livestock and possessions they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and Jacob and all his offspring went to Egypt. ⁷ Jacob took with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons, and his daughters and granddaughters—all his offspring.

Now, with the word from God settled in his heart, Jacob rises and goes, and the whole family moves as one. Picture the caravan: the aged father lifted into the Egyptian wagons that Pharaoh had sent up the long desert road, the sons walking alongside, the wives and the little ones, the flocks and herds and all the goods they had gathered over the years in Canaan, everything they owned bound up and carried south. The text is careful to gather them all in, sons and grandsons, daughters and granddaughters, all his offspring, as if to say that no one was left behind, that the entire household of promise went down together into Egypt. There is a quiet dignity in these verses. A man who had wrestled with God and limped ever after, who had grieved a son for twenty-two years and buried the wife he loved on the road, now goes down to Egypt in his old age with his whole family around him, carried by wagons a foreign king sent out of love for his son. The fear is behind him. The going has begun.

Genesis 46:8-15 (BSB)

⁸ Now these are the names of the sons of Israel (Jacob and his descendants) who went to Egypt: Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn. ⁹ The sons of Reuben: Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi. ¹⁰ The sons of Simeon: Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman. ¹¹ The sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. ¹² The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. The sons of Perez: Hezron and Hamul. ¹³ The sons of Issachar: Tola, Puvah, Job, and Shimron. ¹⁴ The sons of Zebulun: Sered, Elon, and Jahleel. ¹⁵ These are the sons of Leah born to Jacob in Paddan-aram, in addition to his daughter Dinah. The total number of sons and daughters was thirty-three.

Here the story pauses to write down the names of everyone who went down into Egypt, and I would not have you hurry past the list as though it were only bookkeeping. This is the family register of the people of God at the moment they leave the promised land, and the Bible sets it down with care because every one of these names is a life that mattered to God. This first block gathers the children of Leah, the sons and grandsons who came through her, thirty-three in all counted with her daughter Dinah. You will notice the honesty of it, for the record does not tidy up the family’s griefs. It names Er and Onan and then says plainly that they died in the land of Canaan, and it names Shaul and marks him the son of a Canaanite woman. These were real people with real sorrows and failings, and God did not erase them from the roll. The point of the whole list is quietly enormous. This is the seed, no more than a single extended household, and out of exactly these named and ordinary people God will grow the great nation He had just promised. Count the names, and you are counting the beginning of Israel.

Genesis 46:16-27 (BSB)

¹⁶ The sons of Gad: Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, and Areli. ¹⁷ The children of Asher: Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, Beriah, and their sister Serah. The sons of Beriah: Heber and Malchiel. ¹⁸ These are the sons of Jacob born to Zilpah—whom Laban gave to his daughter Leah—sixteen in all. ¹⁹ The sons of Jacob’s wife Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. ²⁰ Manasseh and Ephraim were born to Joseph in the land of Egypt by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. ²¹ The sons of Benjamin: Bela, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, and Ard. ²² These are the sons of Rachel born to Jacob—fourteen in all. ²³ The son of Dan: Hushim. ²⁴ The sons of Naphtali: Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, and Shillem. ²⁵ These are the sons of Jacob born to Bilhah, whom Laban gave to his daughter Rachel—seven in all. ²⁶ All those belonging to Jacob who came to Egypt—his direct descendants, besides the wives of Jacob’s sons—numbered sixty-six persons. ²⁷ And with the two sons who had been born to Joseph in Egypt, the members of Jacob’s family who went to Egypt were seventy in all.

The register runs on through the rest of the household, the sons of Zilpah and the sons of Rachel and the sons of Bilhah, each little group counted and totaled, until the whole is gathered up into one round number at the end: seventy souls. That is the number to carry away from this long list. Seventy persons went down into Egypt, a single family small enough to name one by one in a few short verses, and this is the seed God has just promised to make into a great nation. Notice the tender care taken over Rachel’s line, remembering that Joseph was already in Egypt and that two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, had been born to him there, so that even the ones born in the foreign land are counted into the family of promise. There is something worth pausing over in the smallness of the number. Seventy is a household, not a nation, a company you could seat around a few tables, and yet the whole future of God’s people in the world rests inside it. Keep your eye on that seventy, for the next book of the Bible will open by remembering this very moment, and by telling how the seventy who went down became a multitude too great to count.

Genesis 46:28-30 (BSB)

²⁸ Now Jacob had sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph to get directions to Goshen. When Jacob’s family arrived in the land of Goshen, ²⁹ Joseph prepared his chariot and went there to meet his father Israel. Joseph presented himself to him, embraced him, and wept profusely. ³⁰ Then Israel said to Joseph, “Finally I can die, now that I have seen your face and know that you are still alive!”

Here at last is the reunion the whole long story has been reaching toward, and it is worth slowing down to feel every part of it. Jacob sends Judah ahead to Joseph to learn the way to Goshen, and then Joseph does not wait in his palace for his father to be brought before him. He harnesses his own chariot and rides out to meet the old man on the road, and when he comes to him he falls upon his neck and weeps a long time, holding on and not letting go. Think of all that is inside those tears, twenty-two years of grief on both sides pouring out at once, a father who had given his son up for dead and a son who had wondered whether he would ever see his father’s face again, now clinging to each other in the dust of Goshen. And hear what the old man says through it, so simple and so full: “Finally I can die, now that I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.” He is not asking to die out of despair. He is saying that his one last longing has been granted, that the sorrow which had bent his whole life is lifted, and that whatever comes now, he is content. God kept the small and personal promise He made at Beersheba, that Joseph’s own hands would be there at the end, and here is the son, alive and weeping on his father’s neck.

Genesis 46:31-34 (BSB)

³¹ Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and inform Pharaoh: ‘My brothers and my father’s household from the land of Canaan have come to me. ³² The men are shepherds; they raise livestock, and they have brought their flocks and herds and all that they own.’ ³³ When Pharaoh summons you and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ ³⁴ you are to say, ‘Your servants have raised livestock ever since our youth—both we and our fathers.’ Then you will be allowed to settle in the land of Goshen, since all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians.”

Even in the joy of the reunion Joseph is thinking ahead, wisely and kindly, to how his family will be settled and kept safe in this new land. He will go up and tell Pharaoh that his people have come, and he coaches his brothers on exactly what to say when the king asks their occupation, that they are shepherds who raise livestock, as their fathers did before them. And here Joseph turns to good account a thing that might have seemed a problem, for the Egyptians held shepherds in contempt and would not want them close. That very contempt, Joseph sees, will win his family the land of Goshen, a good stretch of pasture set apart from the heart of Egypt, where they can live together as a people, keep their flocks, and remain distinct rather than being swallowed up among the Egyptians. There is a quiet providence in it. The thing that made the Hebrews unwelcome in the centers of Egypt is the very thing that gives them a land of their own on its edge, room to grow into the nation God had promised, held together and kept apart until the day He would bring them up again.