Genesis 46 KJV
Jacob Goes to Egypt
Genesis Chapter 46: Jacob Goes to Egypt
The theophany at Beersheba frames the descent to Egypt as a deliberate reversal of earlier patriarchal refusals to settle there, with God explicitly invoking the command 'fear not' that echoes Abraham's covenantal encounters while promising Jacob's transformation into a 'great nation' precisely in a foreign land.
1nd Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.
2 And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I.
3 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:
4 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.
5 And Jacob rose up from Beersheba: and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him.
6 And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him:
7 His sons, and his sonsโ sons with him, his daughters, and his sonsโ daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt.
8 And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacobโs firstborn.
9 And the sons of Reuben; Hanoch, and Phallu, and Hezron, and Carmi.
10 And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman.
11 And the sons of Levi; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
12 And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul.
13 And the sons of Issachar; Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and Shimron.
14 And the sons of Zebulun; Sered, and Elon, and Jahleel.
15 These be the sons of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob in Padanaram, with his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three.
16 And the sons of Gad; Ziphion, and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Areli.
17 And the sons of Asher; Jimnah, and Ishuah, and Isui, and Beriah, and Serah their sister: and the sons of Beriah; Heber, and Malchiel.
18 These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter, and these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls.
19 The sons of Rachel Jacobโs wife; Joseph, and Benjamin.
20 And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him.
21 And the sons of Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard.
22 These are the sons of Rachel, which were born to Jacob: all the souls were fourteen.
23 And the sons of Dan; Hushim.
24 And the sons of Naphtali; Jahzeel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shillem.
25 These are the sons of Bilhah, which Laban gave unto Rachel his daughter, and she bare these unto Jacob: all the souls were seven.
26 All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacobโs sonsโ wives, all the souls were threescore and six;
27 And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.
28 And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen.
29 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.
30 And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.
31 And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his fatherโs house, I will go up, and shew Pharaoh, and say unto him, My brethren, and my fatherโs house, which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me;
32 And the men are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have.
33 And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation?
34 That ye shall say, Thy servantsโ 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.
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Did You Know?
The theophany at Beersheba frames the descent to Egypt as a deliberate reversal of earlier patriarchal refusals to settle there, with God explicitly invoking the command 'fear not' that echoes Abraham's covenantal encounters while promising Jacob's transformation into a 'great nation' precisely in a foreign land.
Judah's dispatch ahead to Joseph to 'direct' the way into Goshen constitutes the first narrative instance of his intermediary leadership, subtly positioning the tribe that will later receive the scepter over its brothers as the one orchestrating Israel's settlement.
The genealogy's inclusion of Serah daughter of Asher, alongside only a handful of other named women, stands out as an anomaly that later Jewish interpretive traditions exploited to associate her with miraculous longevity or even the identification of the 'maid' who confirmed Joseph's identity.
Joseph's instruction that his brothers declare their occupation as shepherds exploits Egyptian cultural disdain for that profession to secure isolation in Goshen, thereby preserving Israel's ethnic and cultic distinctiveness while fulfilling the land-promise trajectory begun in Genesis 15.
Jacob's demand to be buried with his fathers, voiced immediately upon reunion, functions as an embodied confession that the Egyptian sojourn remains temporary, anchoring the entire migration within the irreversible patriarchal commitment to Canaanite burial and thus to the land covenant.