Genesis Chapter 46

God assures Jacob at Beer-sheba, seventy members of his house enter Egypt, and Joseph meets his father in Goshen.

Genesis 46:1-7

God’s Word at Beer-sheba and the Departure

Genesis 46:8-15

The Sons of Leah

Genesis 46:16-25

The Sons of Zilpah, Rachel, and Bilhah

Genesis 46:26-27

Threescore and Ten

Genesis 46:28-34

Reunion in Goshen and Counsel for Pharaoh

Genesis 46:1

“And Israel took his journey with all that he had.” The narrator uses the covenant name as the household moves, for the old man leaving Canaan is the father of a people. The journey most likely began at Hebron, where Jacob had lived since returning to his father (35:27; 37:14), and ran south some twenty-five miles to Beer-sheba. The same verb of breaking camp marked Abram’s first wanderings in the land (12:9), and like Abram, Jacob is now heading toward Egypt in a famine.

Beer-sheba stood at the southern edge of settled Canaan, so that later Israel spoke of the whole country as stretching “from Dan even to Beer-sheba” (Judges 20:1). It was a place of family worship. Abraham planted a tamarisk there and called on the name of the LORD (21:33), and Isaac built an altar there after God appeared to him by night (26:23-25). From this spot Jacob had fled to Haran decades earlier (28:10). His journeys out of the land begin and end at the same threshold.

The word for “sacrifices” describes offerings in which the worshipper shared a meal before God, the kind Jacob offered when he made peace with Laban (31:54). Gratitude for Joseph’s life was surely part of it. Yet Jacob also had reason to pause. Abraham’s descent into Egypt had ended in shame (12:10-20), and God had told Isaac, in a famine like this one, “Go not down into Egypt” (26:2). Jacob had resolved to go out of a father’s longing (45:28). Before he crossed the border he brought that resolve to “the God of his father Isaac,” the God who had once kept Isaac in the land.

The order is instructive. Jacob did not wait to be certain before setting out, yet he would not leave the land of promise without asking the One who gave it. A believer who has made a decision still does well to stop at the altar and place the plan in God’s hands.

Study Links

Cross References

Genesis 21:33Genesis 26:2Genesis 26:23-25Genesis 28:10

Word / Phrase Notes

זְבָחִים (zevachim) — sacrifices

The noun comes from the verb zavach, “to slaughter for sacrifice,” and usually denotes an offering in which part of the animal was eaten by the worshippers in fellowship with God. Genesis uses the verb only here and at Jacob’s covenant meal with Laban. Under the later law the same word names the peace offering, a sacrifice of thanksgiving and communion.

Genesis 31:54

בְּאֵר שָׁבַע (Beʾer Shavaʿ) — Beer-sheba

The name means “well of the oath” or “well of seven,” recalling the seven ewe lambs Abraham gave Abimelech when they swore an oath over the well. Isaac renewed the name when his servants dug again in the same place. The site marked the southern limit of Israel’s land.

Genesis 21:31Genesis 26:33