Genesis/Bereshith 46 – "Now I can die, since I have seen your face, that you are still alive!"

13 And he said to Avram: You must know, yes,

know that your seed will be sojourners in a land not theirs; 

they will put them in servitude and afflict them for four hundred years.

1 Yisrael traveled with all that was his 

and came to Be’er-sheva, 

and he slaughtered slaughter-offerings to the God of his father Yitzhak.

came to Beer-sheba. From Hebron, to offer sacrifice where God had appeared to Abraham.  Jacob desired God’s sanction, prior to his leaving the land of Promise.

his father Isaac. Who had built the altar and fixed his home at Beer-sheba.

[RA] And Israel journeyed onward.  The choice of the verb is a little surprising, as one might have expected something like “he arose and set out” or “he went forth.”  It seems likely that this particular verb, with its etymological background of pulling up tent pegs and moving from one encampment to another, is intended to signal that the beginning of the sojourn in Egypt is to be construed as a resumption of the nomadic existence that characterized the lives of Abraham and Isaac.  Thus the clan of Jacob does not head down to Egypt as a permanent place of emigration but as a way station in its continued wanderings.

2 And God said to Yisrael in visions of the night,

he said: 

Yaakov! Yaakov! 

He said: 

Here I am.

in the visions of the night.  In a dream.

[EF] Yaakov! Yaakov! Doubled as in 22;11 and other moments of dramatic revelations in the Bible (e.g., Ex. 3-4).

[RA] Jacob, Jacob. . . Here I am.  This is an exact verbal parallel, as Amos Funkenstein has observed to me, to the exchange between God and Abraham at the beginning of the story of the binding of Isaac.  Perhaps there is a suggestion that the sojourn in Egypt is also an ordeal, with an ultimately happy ending.

3 Now he said:

I am El/God, 

the God of your father.

Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, 

for a great nation will I make of you there.

fear not to go down.  Isaac had intended to migrate to Egypt, but God had forbidden it.  Now permission is granted to Jacob.  ‘It was a sleepless night in which God brought the peace of certainty to the aged man whose being had been stirred to its foundations.  We should feel with the Patriarch that we are at the turning-point of his story, which we today may well call a turning-point in the history of mankind.  It was in Egypt that Israel’s greatest religious genius was to arise’ (Procksch).

[RA] Fear not . . . for a great nation I will make you.  Both the language and the action of this whole scene are framed as an emphatic recapitulation of the earlier Patriarchal Tales now that they are coming to an end as the last of the patriarchs with his offspring leaves Canaan for the long stay in Egypt.  Jacob, traveling south from Hebron, stops at Beersheba, where his father built an altar, and offers sacrifice just as both Isaac and Abraham did.  God appears to him and speaks to him, as He did to Abraham and Isaac.  The language of the dream-vision strongly echoes the language of the covenantal promises to Jacob’s father and grandfather.

4 I myself 

will go down with you to Egypt, 

and I myself 

will bring you up, yes, up again. 

And Yosef will lay his hand on your eyes.

I will go down with thee.  God’s words here imply His promise to protect Jacob in Egypt and to achieve the Divine will concerning him and his offspring (cf. XXVIII,15).

bring thee up again.  i.e. thy descendants.  Some commentators explain the phrase as referring to the burial of Jacob, L,13 9Rashi and Kimchi).

put his and upon thine eyes.  At thy death; it is customary that the living do this to the dead (Ibn Ezra).

[EF] lay his hand on your eyes: I.e., be present at your death.

[RA]  I myself will go down with you.  The first-person pronoun is emphatic because God uses the pronoun ‘anokhi, which is not strictly necessary, followed as it is by the imperfect tense of the verb conjugated in the first-person singular.  The reassurance God offers—which is already the kernel of a theological concept that will play an important role in national consciousness both in the Babylonian exile and after the defeat by the romans in 70 C.E.—is necessary because in the polytheistic view the theater of activity of a deity was typically imagined to be limited to the territorial borders of the deity’s worshippers.  By contract, this God seolemnly promises to go down with His people to Egypt and to bring them back up.

Joseph shall lay his hand on your eyes.  The reference is to closing the eyes at the moment of death.

5 Yaakov departed from Be’er-sheva. 

Yisrael’s sons carried Yaakov their father, their little-ones and their wives in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent for carrying him,

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Pharaoh had sent to carry him.  This is repeated with a view of showing how Pharaoh had invited the family of Jacob to come to Egypt.

[RA] and the sons of Israel conveyed Jacob their father.  The repeated stress, in the previous chapter and in this one, on “conveying” or carrying Jacob, together with the women and children, reminds us that he is very old and infirm, no longer an active participant in the journey.

6 and they took their acquired-livestock and their property that they had gained in the land of Canaan 

and came to Egypt, 

Yaakov and all his seed with him,

7 his sons and the sons of his sons with him, his daughters and the daughters of his sons; 

all his seed he brought with him to Egypt.

his daughters. Includes the daughters-i-law.

all his seed. i.e. his great-grandchildren.

[RA]  His sons, and the sons of his sons.  This last verse of the narrative report of the departure for Egypt becomes an apt transition to the genealogy, purposefully inserted at this point from what scholarly consensus deems a different literary source.

8 Now these are the names of the Sons of Israel who came to Egypt: 

Yaakov and his sons: 

Yaakov’s firstborn was Re’uven.

8-27.  The list of Jacob’s descendants who came into Egypt.  Compare the lists in Num. XXVI and I Chron. II-VIII, which show slight variations in the forms of the names.

[EF] Now these are the names . . .”  This phrase opens the book of Exodus, making that book a resumption of the Genesis narrative.

[RA]8-27.  Once again, the genealogical list is used to effect closure at the end of a large narrative unit.  The tales of the patriarchs in the land of Canaan are now concluded, and as Jacob and his clan journey southward for the sojourn in Egypt, we are given an inventory of his offspring, a large family already exhibiting in embryo the configuration of the future tribes of Israel.

9 Re’uven’s sons: Hanokh, Pallu, Hetzron, and Carmi.

10 Shim’on’s sons: Yemuel, Yamin, Ohad, Yakhin, and Tzohar, and Sha’ul the son of the Canaanite-woman.

Jachin. For this name in Solomon’s Temple, see I Kings, VII,21.

a Canaanitish woman. Luzzatto explains that she was the daughter of dinah, and because of her father, Shechem, she is called a ‘Canaanite woman’.

11 Levi’s sons: Gershon, Kehat, and Merari.

12 Yehuda’s sons: Er, Onan, Shela, Peretz, and Zerah, 

but Er and Onan had died in the land of Canaan.

And Peretz’s sons were Hetzron and Hamul.

13 Yissakhar’s sons: Tola, Puvva, Yov, and Shimron.

14 Zevulun’s sons: Sered, Elon, and Yahl’el.

15 These are the sons of Lea, whom she bore to Yaakov in the country of Aram, and also Dina his daughter; 

all the persons among his sons and daughters were thirty-three.

thirty and three.  This number included Jacob, see v. 8.  The actual number of the descendants of Jacob in v. 9-14 is thirty-two.  The Rabbis add Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born exactly at the time of the entrance into Egypt.

16 Gad’s sons: Tzifyon and Haggi, Shuni and Etzbon, Eri, Arodi, and Ar’eli.

17 Asher’s sons: Yimna, Yishva, Yishvi, and Beri’a, and Serah their sister. 

And Beri’a’s sons: Hever and Malkiel.

18 These are the sons of Zilpa, whom Lavan had given to Lea his daughter,

she bore these to Yaakov: sixteen persons.

19 The sons of Rahel, Yaakov’s wife: Yosef and Binyamin.

20 To Yosef there were born in the land of Egypt-whom Asenat, daughter of Poti Fera, priest of

On, bore to him: Menashe and Efrayim.

21 Binyamin’s sons: Bela, Bekher and Ashbel, Gera and Naaman, Ahi and Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, and Ard.

Naaman.  Is here one of the sons of Benjamin, but in Num. XXVI,40, the same name occurs as that of a grandson.  Ibn Ezra suggests that the same name is applied to two different persons.  The supposed difficulty of Benjamin having sons and grandsons when coming to Egypt, and at the same time being referred to as ‘a little one’ (XLIV,20), is to be explained by comparing Jacob’s age with that of Benjamin, his youngest son.

22 These are the sons of Rahel, who were born to Yaakov, 

all the persons were fourteen.

23 Dan’s sons: Hushim.

[RA] The sons of Dan, Hushim. Only one son is mentioned, but this need not reflect a contradiction in the text as “the sons of” may be a fixed formula for each new item in the list.

24 Naftali’s sons: Yahtze’el, Guni, Yetzer, and Shillem.

25 These are the sons of Bilha, whom Lavan had given to Rahel his daughter, 

she bore these to Yaakov: all the persons were seven.

26 All the persons who came with Yaakov to Egypt, those going out from his loins, aside from the wives of Yaakov’s sons: 

threescore and six.  The descendants of Leah numbered 33, of Zilpa 16, of Rachel 14, and of Bilhah 7.  The sum of these figures gives a total of 70; but if Jacob, Joseph, and his two sons be excluded, the result is 66.

27 Now Yosef’s sons, who had been born to him in Egypt: the persons were two. 

(Thus) all the persons of Yaakov’s household who came to Egypt were seventy.

28 Now Yehuda he had sent on ahead of him, to Yosef, 

to give directions ahead of him to Goshen. 

to show the way.  For Joseph to direct Judah to the place where Jacob should dwell.  The Midrash explains the Heb. phrase literally, ‘to establish a house of teahcing.’ Such has remained the first care of Jews whenever migrating to a new land—to provide for the religious teaching of their children.

[EF] seventy: Once again, the “perfect” number.

[RA] All the persons of the household of Jacob coming to Egypt were seventy. The traditional commentators resort to interpretive acrobatics in order to make the list come out to exactly seventy—debating as to whether Jacob himself should be included in the count, whether Joseph and his two sons are part of the sum, and so forth.  In fact, the insistence on seventy at the end of the list vividly illustrates the biblical use of numbers as symbolic approximations rather than as arithmetically precise measures.  Seventy is a fullness, a large round number, ten times sacred seven, and its use here indicates that Jacob, once a solitary fugitive, has grown to a grand family, the nucleus of a nation.

29 Yosef had his chariot harnessed and went up to meet Yisrael his father, to Goshen. 

When he caught sight of him 

he flung himself upon his neck 

and wept upon his neck continually.

a good while. i.e. at first neither of them can speak, being overpowered by emotion.

[RA] And Joseph harnessed his chariot.  The specification of the vehicle is another strategic reminder of the Egyptian accoutrements Joseph employs as a matter of course, even as he hurries to meet his father, who comes from a world where there are neither chariots nor wagons.  Realistically, “harnessed,” as Abraham ibn Ezra and many others have noted, would mean, “he gave orders to harness.”  Nevertheless, there is thematic point in the sense of immediacy conveyed by the transitive verb with Joseph as subject, and Rashi registers this point, even if his reading is too literal, when he says:  “He himself harnessed the horses to the chariot in order to make haste in honor of his father.”

and appeared before him. This is a slightly odd phrase, since it is more typically used fo the appearance of God before a human.  Perhaps the sight of the long-lost Joseph, in Egyptian royal raiment, riding in his chariot, is a kind of epiphany for Jacob.  In any case, “appearing before” accords with Jacob’s own emphasis on seeing Joseph’s face.

and fell on his neck, and he wept on his neck a long while. The absence of reciprocal weeping on the part of Jacob can scarcely be attributed to ellipsis or inadvertent narrative omission, for in the identically worded report of Joseph’s falling on Benjamin’s neck and weeping,  we are told, “and Benjamin wept on his neck” (45;14).  We are invited to imagine, then, a sobbing Joseph who embraces his father while the old man stands dry-eyed, perhaps even rigid, too overcome with feeling to know how to respond, or to be able to respond spontaneously, until finally he speaks, once more invoking his own death, but now with a sense of contentment:  “I may die now, after seeing your face, for you are still alive.”

30 Yisrael said to Yosef: 

Now I can die, 

now let me die. Having once more seen Joseph, there was nothing more for him to live for.  He had attained the highest joy in life.

31 Yosef said to his brothers and to his father’s household:

I will go up, so that I may tell Pharaoh and say to him: 

My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me.

32 The men are shepherds of flocks, 

indeed, they have always been livestock men, 

and their sheep and their oxen, all that is theirs, they have brought along.

[RA] handlers of livestock. The Hebrew phrase, ‘anshei miqneh, which occurs only here and in verse 34, literally means “men of livestock.”  It is perhaps influenced by the designation of the brothers as “the men” at the beginning of this verse.

[EF] What is it that you do: What is your occupation?

34 Then say: Your servants have always been livestock men, from our youth until now, so we, so our fathers- 

in order that you may settle in the region of Goshen. 

every shepherd.  The Hyksos, or alien Shepherd-kings, thus seem to have acquired the native Egyptian dislike of foreigners in general and herdsmen in particular.

[EF] every shepherd . . . is an abomination to the Egyptians: Speiser understands this as a reference to the Hyksos “shepherd kings,” who as foreigners ruled Egypt in the mid-Second Millennium (until they were driven out).

[RA] that you may dwell in the land of Goshen.  For every shepherd is abhorrent to Egypt.  This claim is puzzling because there is an indication in the next chapter that Pharaoh had his own flocks (see 47:6b), and there is no extrabiblical evidence that shepherding was a taboo profession among the Egyptians, as the categorical language of the last sentence here appears to suggest.  The least convoluted explanation is that the Egyptians who were by and large sedentary agriculturists and who had large urban centers, considered the seminomadic herdsmen from the north as inferiors (an attitude actually reflected in Egyptian sources) and so preferred to keep them segregated in the pasture region of the Nile Delta not far from the Sinai border.