NOTES for Gen 46:1-34
The Joseph story has essentially ended: the brothers are together again. Only the concluding chapters remain, revealing a few additional meanings. Today, then, the focus of our attention is again the story of the father of the twelve brothers, Jacob. Joseph has already revealed to his brothers that their adventures were only the fulfillment of God's plan to preserve them during the famine, but now this plan is being woven into Jacob's life, turning from the "private" Sacred History of his family into a link in the events that serve to fulfill the promise given to his ancestor Abraham. The most important thing in Jacob's life, his God, will be with him in a foreign land. His children will be with him too, the thread of hope connecting the present with the future Promise. If at the beginning of Joseph's story we saw how his relationship with God grows against the background of the "great" History of Israel, now another mystery stands before us: "great" history is made up of the small lives of people, even people as legendary as Jacob, with their own longings and hope.