On the way to Egypt, Jacob stops at Beersheba to sacrifice, and God speaks to him in the night one last time: don’t be afraid to go down; I will go down with you, and I will surely bring you up again. The reunion with Joseph is seventeen years overdue and lasts a few seconds before the old man says he is ready to die. Settled in Goshen, he is brought before Pharaoh — and the shepherd blesses the king, and sums up his own hundred and thirty years as “few and evil.”
A study in Genesis 46-47 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
Fear Not To Go Down Into Egypt
“And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again.”
Genesis 46:2-4
Jacob stops at Beersheba — the well where Abraham and Isaac both met God — and offers sacrifice before leaving the land of promise. It is a real question whether he should go at all: God once told Isaac plainly not to go down to Egypt in a famine (Genesis 26:2). So God settles it. Fear not. Leaving Canaan is not abandoning the covenant this time; it is where the nation will be made. And the promise has a return clause: I will also surely bring thee up again — fulfilled at the Exodus, and, for Jacob himself, in a coffin carried back to Machpelah.
His answer to the voice is “Here am I” — the same words Abraham gave on Moriah and Joseph gave the day he was sent to his brothers. Three generations, one reply.
“The assurance, ‘Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation,’ was significant. The promise had been given to Abraham of a posterity numberless as the stars, but as yet the chosen people had increased but slowly.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 232
Joseph Shall Put His Hand Upon Thine Eyes
“I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.”
Genesis 46:4
God adds one small, personal thing. The son Jacob thought was torn by beasts will be the one to close his father’s eyes at the end. For a man who has spent decades certain he would “go down into the grave unto my son mourning,” it is a precise reversal — Joseph will bury Jacob, not the other way around.
Now Let Me Die, Since I Have Seen Thy Face
“And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.”
Genesis 46:29-30
The second-most-powerful man in the world drives his own chariot out to meet a caravan of shepherds, and then just holds his father and cries “a good while.” Jacob’s response is not relief — it is completion. Now let me die. The one grief he never got over (Genesis 35) has been answered, and he can put the burden down.
Every Shepherd Is An Abomination
“That ye shall say, Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now, both we, and also our fathers: that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.”
Genesis 46:34
Joseph coaches his brothers to tell Pharaoh plainly that they are herdsmen — the one job that will keep them at arm’s length in Goshen rather than absorbed into Egyptian life at court. The contempt the Egyptians have for shepherds is turned into a wall of protection. A people that stays separate can still be a people when the famine ends; a people that blends in disappears.
“And the antipathy they must encounter in Egypt on account of their occupation — for every shepherd was ‘an abomination unto the Egyptians’ — would enable them to remain a distinct and separate people and would thus serve to shut them out from participation in the idolatry of Egypt.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 232
Jacob Blessed Pharaoh
“And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh… And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh.”
Genesis 47:7, 10
The scene is bracketed twice by the same phrase: Jacob blessed Pharaoh. An old nomad with nothing, standing in the richest court on earth, and it is he who does the blessing — because the covenant runs the other way from worldly rank. God had told Abraham the promise was so that “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Here it is, in a throne room, going from the lesser man to the greater one.
“The patriarch was a stranger in royal courts; but amid the sublime scenes of nature he had communed with a mightier Monarch; and now, in conscious superiority, he raised his hands and blessed Pharaoh.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 233
The Days Of My Pilgrimage
“And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”
Genesis 47:9
Pharaoh asks how old he is, and Jacob answers with a verdict on the whole thing. Pilgrimage — not residence — twice in one sentence: he never stopped being a stranger passing through. “Few and evil” sounds like bitterness, and there was plenty to be bitter about: the flight from Esau, the years under Laban, Dinah, the death of Rachel, twenty-two years believing Joseph dead. But he says it as a man who has been carried, not crushed. Seventeen quiet years in Goshen still lie ahead of him, and Israel “grew, and multiplied exceedingly” — the great nation starting to become one, on schedule.
“But seventeen years were yet to be granted him in the peaceful retirement of Goshen. These years were in happy contrast to those that had preceded them.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 233
