Genesis 47
1 So Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, “My father and my brothers, with their flocks and herds and all that they possess, have come from the land of Canaan. They are now in the land of Goshen.” 2 And from among his brothers he took five men and presented them to Pharaoh. 3 Pharaoh said to his brothers, “What is your occupation?” And they said to Pharaoh, “Your servants are shepherds, as our fathers were.” 4 They said to Pharaoh, “We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks, for the famine is severe in the land of Canaan. And now, please let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.” 5 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Your father and your brothers have come to you. 6 The land of Egypt is before you. Settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land. Let them settle in the land of Goshen, and if you know any able men among them, put them in charge of my livestock.” 7 Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8 And Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” 9 And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” 10 And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh. 11 Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. 12 And Joseph provided his father, his brothers, and all his father’s household with food, according to the number of their dependents. 13 Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine. 14 And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house. 15 And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.” 16 And Joseph answered, “Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.” 17 So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. He supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year. 18 And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said to him, “We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent. The herds of livestock are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. 19 Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh. And give us seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.” 20 So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh’s. 21 As for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other. 22 Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land. 23 Then Joseph said to the people, “Behold, I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh. Now here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land. 24 And at the harvests you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones.” 25 And they said, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh.”2 6 So Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt, and it stands to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; the land of the priests alone did not become Pharaoh’s. 27 Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen. And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly. 28 And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years. So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years. 29 And when the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said to him, “If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh and promise to deal kindly and truly with me. Do not bury me in Egypt, 30 but let me lie with my fathers. Carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place.” He answered, “I will do as you have said.” 31 And he said, “Swear to me”; and he swore to him. Then Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed.
“If life is a race (and it is), then it is run across wet concrete.”[1]
N.D. Wilson wrote that. I think that is one of the most powerful little statements I have ever heard. What an image! Life is a race run across wet concrete. That is, it is has a purpose and a destination, but it leaves its evidences and impacts, for good or ill, behind, long after we are gone.
Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, the late Baptist minister, former President of Morehouse College, and famed civil rights leader, wrote of life:
Life is just a minute—only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon you—can’t refuse it.
Didn’t seek it—didn’t choose it.
But it’s up to you to use it.
You must suffer if you lose it.
Give an account if you abuse it.
Just a tiny, little minute,
But eternity is in it![2]
How, then, do we live this thing called life and live it well? How do we make sure that the prints we leave in the wet concrete of time solidify into something God-honoring, something good? In Genesis 46 Jacob reflects on his life and begins to look toward his death. His family is safe now in the land of Goshen under the protective umbrella of Egypt. And what we see in both Jacob and his sons helps us see and understand how life is to be lived by the people of God.
Refuse to get too comfortable in Egypt.
One thing that becomes abundantly clear in Genesis 46 is that both Jacob and his sons had a clear sense of who they were and where they belonged. They were forced, because of the famine, to leave the land of promise, but that did not mean they had to embrace Egypt as their forever home or that they had to forget their true destination. Listen to how they speak about their lives in Goshen.
1 So Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, “My father and my brothers, with their flocks and herds and all that they possess, have come from the land of Canaan. They are now in the land of Goshen.” 2 And from among his brothers he took five men and presented them to Pharaoh. 3 Pharaoh said to his brothers, “What is your occupation?” And they said to Pharaoh, “Your servants are shepherds, as our fathers were.” 4 They said to Pharaoh, “We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks, for the famine is severe in the land of Canaan. And now, please let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.” 5 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Your father and your brothers have come to you. 6 The land of Egypt is before you. Settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land. Let them settle in the land of Goshen, and if you know any able men among them, put them in charge of my livestock.”
The sons of Jacob ask Pharaoh for permission to stay in Goshen, but they are very clear that their home is in Canaan and that they are only “sojourners” in Egypt. That is, they did not see Egypt as their final destination, as their forever home. Jacob will pick up this image of being a sojourner in verse 9 when he speaks to Pharaoh.
9a-b And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years.”
What is fascinating about this is that Jacob applies the idea of sojourning to the entirety of his life: “the years of my sojourning are 130 years.” All of life, for Jacob, was a journey moving toward a final destination. Jacob’s life had ups and downs. He seems, as we will see, to see his journey as largely a difficult one…but a journey it was!
Jacob would leave his footprints in the wet concrete of time, but he would not be bound to it himself. He was moving toward something bigger, something greater.
We must not get accustomed to our time in Egypt. This can be hard to do, especially when Pharaoh gives us great blessings! Consider:
11 Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. 12 And Joseph provided his father, his brothers, and all his father’s household with food, according to the number of their dependents.
So this family was blessed in Egypt, it is true. We may have times of blessing in Egypt, but we must never forget that we are children of the promise, children created for a greater home! The New Testament is positively filled with this idea of our being sojourners on the earth. Jesus, in John 14, spoke to His disciples and to all of us of the temporal nature of our time here and of the finality of our heavenly home.
1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
Jesus is preparing “a place” for us and that place is different from this place. Egypt is not our forever home! In John 17, Jesus prays His “High Priestly Prayer” and there acknowledges the in-the-world-but-not-of-the-world status of His followers. He prays this to the Father about His disciples:
14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
We may be in Egypt, but we must not be of Egypt. In 1 Peter 2, Peter draws explicitly on the sojourner image to describe the church.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Do you see? We must refuse to get too comfortable in Egypt! We are grateful for the blessings that God grants us in the land of our sojourn, but we must never allow the blessings to eclipse the journey. You were made for more than the material fruits of a land of plenty. You were made to walk with Jesus toward the ultimate restoration of all things and a Kingdom without end!
Refuse to allow temporal powers to rob you of bold witness.
We must not be overawed by the wealth and privileges of Egypt. We must also not be silenced before the power of Egypt. You have a home beyond this home and you know an authority beyond all authorities. There is a moving scene here in which Jacob is introduced to Pharaoh by Joseph. What he does in this meeting is quite fascinating and illuminating.
7 Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8 And Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” 9 And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” 10 And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh.
Did you catch that?
- “and Jacob blessed Pharaoh” (v.7)
- “and Jacob blessed Pharaoh” (v.10)
This is, to put it mildly, a provocative thing to do! Jacob the patriarch who had to flee his home dares to bless the mighty Pharaoh…as if it is Jacob who has what Pharaoh needs and not vice versa! Ken Mathews has pointed out that Jacob blessing Pharaoh “is a departure from earlier patriarchal contacts with foreign rulers” in that “there is no other record of a direct blessing of a foreigner by a patriarch” in earlier encounters. What is more, Mathews writes, Jacob blessing Pharaoh “implies that Jacob was superior.”[3] Yes, it does. This is eyebrow-raising, to say the least!
There is more, here, though, and it has to do with Jacob’s response to Pharaoh in verse 9: “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” Robert Alter makes the fascinating observation that there is a possibility that Jacob was making a subtle point about the Hebrews’ special favor before God “in dismissing his own 130 years as ‘few’” since “[t]he idea life span for the Egyptians was 110.”[4] Do you see? For the Egyptians, 110 years was a good lifespan, but Jacob calls 130 a disappointment! He is here too communicating that there is something about the people of God that distinguishes them from the earthly powers, that the best of Egypt is in reality a disappointment to those in the Kingdom of God.
The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann observes insightfully that:
The text offers a dramatic meeting between the Lord of Egypt and the father of promise…This narrative is skillfully set so that Jacob quietly has the better part. At the beginning (v.7) and at the end (v.10), it is Jacob who blesses Pharaoh. Israel blesses Egypt. Or it could be deference to an old man. But in this context, neither is likely. The reference is surely to the powerful gift entrusted to this family which the empire needs and does not have (cf. 39:5). As Wolff has shown, the narrative affirms that every other people waits on the blessing entrusted to this family…The empire has need of Jacob and his family.[5]
And that is the point: the people of God have something that the world needs more than the world has something that the people of God need. Even when, from all perspectives, the world has all the power and wealth and prestige, Jacob dares to pronounce a blessing, as if to say, “There is a power above your power, a King above even you, Pharaoh, and we carry His authority with us.”
When we understand this, we realize that not getting too comfortable in Egypt is not merely a matter of resisting temptation but moreso a matter of understanding who we are: we are the children of the King above all kings, the Lord above all lords. We may come in need of earthly help to Egypt, but we are not beggars in our hearts. Our hearts know a wealth and provision that the makes the wealth of the world seem paltry and small.
Jacob has a witness to offer. He bears witness to the superiority of the God of Israel and he does so to the very embodiment of earthly power: Pharaoh. Jacob blesses Pharaoh!
For this reason, the church should not fawn over and sell its soul for a place at the table of earthly power. The church represents a power that the powers of the world can only dream of. We are heralds of the great King! We are ambassadors of the Lord God of heaven and earth.
Refuse to allow temporal powers to rob you of bold witness. If you alter or edit or mute your Christian witness to get that promotion or to impress that superior or to get a little bit more of Egypt’s wealth, then you have sold your birthright for a bowl of stew. Even Pharaoh stands in need of a blessing. Your earthly superiors need to see in the blessing you offer that we all stand beneath the great God who created heaven and earth!
Church, we have a blessing to offer Egypt, and His name is Jesus! It matters not if you are standing before a peasant or a power, our witness is the same: we all alike need Jesus the Lord!
Refuse to be at peace anywhere but in the promise.
The chapter ends with a powerful and moving request by Jacob to Joseph.
27 Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen. And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly. 28 And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years. So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years. 29 And when the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said to him, “If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh and promise to deal kindly and truly with me. Do not bury me in Egypt, 30 but let me lie with my fathers. Carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place.” He answered, “I will do as you have said.” 31 And he said, “Swear to me”; and he swore to him. Then Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed.
Jacob makes Joseph promise that he will not bury him Egypt when he dies, that he will take him and bury him in the tomb of his fathers in the land of promise. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Jacob does not want his final resting place to be outside of the land of promise, which is to say that he does not want his final resting place to be outside of the promise! Jacob refused to be at peace anywhere but in the promise of God! Brueggemann writes that Jacob “wants to embody his ultimate commitment to the land of promise even in his death” and that “Jacob is doggedly fixed on the land,” that “[h]e knows he is a child of the promise,” and that “he will not permit any imperial attractions in Goshen to turn his head from the promise.” “He will not,” writes Brueggemann, “be seduced into Egypt.”[6]
And church, neither should we!
“If life is a race (and it is), then it is run across wet concrete.”
N.D. Wilson’s beautiful image of footprints in wet concrete is so apt and so helpful! It reminds me of another image, though, and one with an opposite point. The late Walter Miller was a fantastic science fiction writer. He wrote a little short story called “The Hoofer” in which he depicted a space rover named Hogey Parker who had returned to earth after many months in outer space. Parker is depicted as drunk, lecherous, and, in general, a real mess. He is trying to remember where he lives and get back home. He staggers in the direction of his home and then sits down to clear his head. When he hears a baby crying (his son, as it turns out) he realizes that he is near home and tries to stand up. Unfortunately, he is unaware that he had sat down and placed his feet in wet concrete which had, in the meantime, solidified around his feet. The end of the little story is pitiful:
It was nearly a minute before he got the significance of it. It hit him where he lived, and he began jerking frantically at his encased feet and sobbing low in his throat. They’d hear him if he kept that up. He stopped and covered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. A light went on in the house, and when it went off again, the infant’s cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the station, and he cursed it. Space was a disease, and he had it.
“Help!” he cried out suddenly. “I’m stuck! Help me, help me!”
He knew he was yelling hysterically at the sky and fighting the relentless concrete that clutched his feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house again, and he heard faint sounds. The stirring-about woke the baby again, and once more the infant’s wail came on the breeze…
He stared at the red eye of Mars low in the southwest. They were running out there now, and next year he would have been on the long long run …
But there was no use thinking about it. Next year and the years after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked in the solid concrete of the footing, staring out into Big Bottomless while his son’s cry came from the house and the Hauptman menfolk came wading through the tall grass in search of someone who had cried out. His feet were stuck tight, and he wouldn’t ever get them out. He was sobbing softly when they found him.[7]
What an image! An astronaut stuck with his feet in cement. The strength of that story lies in its tragic irony: he was made to traverse the heavens but here he was stuck to the earth because of his own foolish distractions.
So it is with life! You were not meant to get stuck with your feet in the cement of Egypt! You are here, yes, and you are to be salt and light, it is true, but you must not get too accustomed to Egypt! You are a child of the promise! You were made for the home that Jesus is preparing for you!
If we stop and linger in Egypt, our feet will get stuck in a foreign place. But if we will walk faithfully, then the footprints we leave behind will be a testimony to the generations that follow us that we refused to be at peace anywhere other than in the presence of our great King! And they will notice something else: alongside the footprints we leave in the wet concrete of time there will be a line that never breaks. That line is the mark of the cross we are carrying, and that line is the mark of our ultimate discipleship.
Let us leave the mark of the cross we carry in the wet concrete of time. Let our legacy be this: that we gave ourselves to Christ with reckless abandon and followed Him with faithfulness and with unrelenting joy!
[1] Wilson, N. D.. Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent (p. 165). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
[2] David Jeremiah, Searching For Heaven on Earth ((Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004)), p.250-289.
[3] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26. The New American Commentary. Old Testament, vol. 1B (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, Publishers, 2005), p.846.
[4] Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses. The Hebrew Bible. vol. 1 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), p.186n9.
[5] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis. Interpretation. (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), p.354.
[6] Walter Brueggemann, p.355.
[7] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29170/29170-h/29170-h.htm