Before crossing into Egypt, Jacob stops at Beersheba and offers sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac (Genesis 46:1). He has reason to hesitate. Abraham had gone down to Egypt once and nearly lost his wife (Genesis 12:10-20), and God had told Isaac not to go there (Genesis 26:2). Jacob is weighing family history at an altar.
God answers him in visions of the night, calling 2"Jacob, Jacob." It is the double call Abraham heard on Moriah (Genesis 22:11) and Moses heard at the bush (Exodus 3:4). What was forbidden to Isaac is now commanded for Jacob, and the promise is surprising. The nation will be made outside the promised land, in the country this family has learned to distrust. God adds 4"I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes." The son Jacob mourned as dead for years will be the last face he sees.
The reunion needs no interpreting. Joseph rides out to Goshen and 29"fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while." Jacob says 30"Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive." The ache that began with a bloodied robe is answered in a moment. He will in fact live seventeen more years (Genesis 47:28), and the ache is already gone.
Joseph has thought several steps ahead. He coaches his brothers to tell Pharaoh that they are shepherds, because every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians (Genesis 46:34), so that the family will be settled apart in Goshen. The provision comes from Pharaoh's hand, and Joseph arranges for the family to keep its own identity while receiving it.
Jacob, an aged newcomer with nothing to offer, stands before the most powerful man in the world and blesses him, coming in and going out (Genesis 47:7, 10). Ordinarily the greater blesses the lesser. Jacob is carrying the promise made to Abraham, that through his family all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).
Pharaoh asks 8"How many are the days of the years of your life?" and Jacob answers 9"Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life." He calls his 130 years a sojourning and does not polish them before a king. He has been deceived by his uncle, buried a wife on the road, grieved a son he thought dead, and watched his family fracture at Shechem. The word sojourning ties him to Abraham and Isaac and to every believer who has held hardship and promise in the same two hands. His days were few and evil, and they were held inside a promise that did not let go.
The move to Egypt looks like the promise going backward. It is the promise finding its next foothold. God had told Abraham of centuries of sojourning followed by deliverance (Genesis 15:13-16), and it is beginning to unfold in a chapter that looks like an old man crying in his son's arms.
Where is there an Egypt you are afraid to enter? Go to the altar first, and listen for your name.
Prayer
Father, we have our own Egypts, places we fear because our family's history with them has been hard. Give us Jacob's honesty to name our years as they were, and Jacob's trust to go down when you say go. Thank you for reunions we thought we would never see, and for a promise that keeps finding its footing in the places we feared most. In Jesus' name, amen.