NOTES for Gen 47:1-31
Today's passage is devoted to describing how Jacob settled in Egypt, where he spent his final days (vv. 27-31). Meanwhile Joseph carries out his plan to buy estates for debts, thereby strengthening the Egyptian state (vv. 14-26). He is occupied with the pressing affairs of service, which he evidently carries out 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 must have known, if he took seriously the oath he had given his father; otherwise, evidently, it could not have been. What, then, was Joseph to think about his own role in strengthening Egyptian statehood? It is clear that he could not fail 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 due time play a fateful role in the destiny of Jacob's descendants and would make departure from 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 extermination 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 of it.
Jacob knew that this would happen; Joseph can hardly have been unaware of it. And, of course, both of them knew that neither one nor the other would live to see those times. And still they lived and acted as if this had no significance. Yes, perhaps that was exactly so: for 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.