NOTES for Gen 47:1-31
Today's passage is devoted to the description of how Jacob settled in Egypt, where he ended his days (vv. 27-31). Meanwhile, Joseph carries out his plan to buy up estates for debts, thereby strengthening the Egyptian state (vv. 14-26). He is occupied with the urgent affairs of service, which he evidently fulfills quite conscientiously. Meanwhile his father, remembering that his kinsmen in Egypt are only sojourners, makes Joseph swear that he will not leave his remains in a foreign land when the time comes to leave it (vv. 29-31). Did Joseph know that his descendants would have to leave the country for which he had done so much? He knew, since he took seriously the oath he gave his father; otherwise, plainly, it could not have been. What, then, should Joseph have thought about his own role in strengthening Egyptian statehood? He obviously had to understand that what he had done would not serve him. The paradox of the situation was that this very strengthening of Egyptian statehood would in time play a fatal role in the fate of Jacob's descendants and make leaving Egypt inevitable from the standpoint of simple physical survival. The threat of death by hunger forced Jacob to move to Egypt; the threat of complete assimilation or destruction would later force his descendants to leave Egypt. Such a turn of events could be called a cruel joke of fate, if God's providence did not stand behind it. Saving His people from physical death, God moved them to Egypt; saving His people from spiritual death, He led them out from there. Jacob knew that this would happen; Joseph hardly did not know it. And of course both of them knew that neither would live to see those times. Yet they lived and acted as if that had no significance. Yes, that is what it was: if relationships with God stand at the center of a person's life, then everything that person does becomes part not only of history, which passes away, but also of eternity, where there is neither past nor future, but only the abiding present.