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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Genesis 46:1 - 46:1
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“So Israel took his journey (from Hebron, Gen 37:14) with all who belonged to him, and came to Beersheba.” There, on the border of Canaan, where Abraham and Isaac had called upon the name of the Lord (Gen 21:33; Gen 26:25), he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac, ut sibi firmum et ratum esse testetur faedus, quod Deus ipse cum Patribus pepigerat (Calvin). Even though Jacob might see the ways of God in the wonderful course of his son Joseph, and discern in the friendly invitation of Joseph and Pharaoh, combined with the famine prevailing in Canaan, a divine direction to go into Egypt; yet this departure from the land of promise, in which his fathers had lived as pilgrims, was a step which necessarily excited serious thoughts in his mind as to his own future and that of his family, and led him to commend himself and his followers to the care of the faithful covenant God, whether in so doing he thought of the revelation which Abram had received (Gen 15:13-16), or not.
Gen 46:2-4
Here God appeared to him in a vision of the night (מַרְאֹת, an intensive plural), and gave him, as once before on his flight from Canaan (Gen 28:12.), the comforting promise, “I am הָאֵל (the Mighty One), the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt (מֵרְדָה for מֵרֶדֶת, as in Exo 2:4 דֵּעָה for דַּעַת, cf. Ges. §69, 3, Anm. 1); for I will there make thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt, and I - bring thee up again also will I, and Joseph shall close thine eyes.” גַּם־עָלֹה an inf. abs. appended emphatically (as in Gen 31:15); according to Ges. inf. Kal.
Gen 46:5-7
Strengthened by this promise, Jacob went into Egypt with children and children's children, his sons driving their aged father together with their wives and children in the carriages sent by Pharaoh, and taking their flocks with all the possessions that they had acquired in Canaan.
(Note: Such a scene as this, with the emigrants taking their goods laden upon asses, and even two children in panniers upon an ass's back, may be seen depicted upon a tomb at Beni Hassan, which might represent the immigration of Israel, although it cannot be directly connected with it. (See the particulars in Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses.))