MOSES RETURNS to Egypt with Aaron as his mouthpiece, a concession by God to Moses’ reluctance to speak to his fellow Hebrews about the Lord’s promise of deliverance.

Despite being told by God that Pharaoh’s heart would be hardened, Moses complained when the king of Egypt not only refused to let Israel go, but increased the burden on the Israelites working to make bricks.

We also discuss the strange incident of Exodus 4:24-26, where God “sought to put [Moses] to death,” apparently because his son had not been circumcised according to the covenant between God and Abraham.

ISRAEL SPENT 430 years in Egypt. This is recorded in Exodus 12:40-41 and Galatians 3:17. How do we reconcile that with God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would return “in the fourth generation” (Gen. 15:16), or the four generations between Levi and Moses (Ex. 6:16-20)?

We address that, and Derek admits his timeline of the ancient Hebrews needs to be adjusted accordingly. For the record, he now agrees with the plain reading of the 430 years, which places Jacob and his family in Egypt in 1876 BC, which means Abraham arrived in Canaan in 2091 BC.

We also discuss Moses’ encounter with God at Mount Sinai and His revelation of the divine name, and why Moses’ birth story was not copied from that of the Akkadian king Sargon the Great.

JACOB WAS buried at the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. So, why did Joseph and his brothers take his body all the way around the other side of the Dead Sea and mourn for seven days at a threshing floor in the ruined city of Sodom?

We discuss the “physicians” of Joseph (ropheim in Hebrew) and the Rephaim of the Transjordan, explain why we believe the threshing floor of Atad was at the site of Sodom, and speculate as to why Joseph and the retinue mourned Jacob for seven days “beyond the Jordan.”

JACOB’S STORY comes to a close this week. He lived for seventeen years in Egypt, long enough to see Joseph use the foreknowledge given by God to concentrate power in the hands of the pharaoh (and the same number of years Joseph lived before he was sold into slavery by his brothers).

We discuss Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, in which we see again an elder brother passed over in favor of the younger, and the patriarch’s prophecies over his sons. Judah, the fourth son, is elevated above his brothers, and it is from Jacob’s prophecy over him that we get Christ’s epithet, “the lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rev. 5:5).

JOSEPH FINALLY reveals himself to his brothers, unable to continue his deception any longer. His brothers had returned to Egypt to buy more grain, bringing Joseph’s only full brother, Benjamin, with them as he’d ordered.

But when Judah pleaded for Joseph to allow Benjamin to return to Jacob, Joseph was overcome with emotion and told them who he was. Jacob and the entire family entourage returned to Egypt and settled in the Nile delta, a land set apart from the native Egyptians who had a strong dislike of “Asiatics,” who they called “sand-dwellers.”

We discuss the significance of Joseph’s silver cup. Did he really practice divination, or did he just say so because that’s what his brothers expected from Egyptians? We also explain why the difference in the number of Jacob’s household—70 in English Bibles, 75 in the Septuagint—is significant; the translators of the Masoretic Hebrew text deemphasized the divine council worldview because it offers scriptural support for Jesus’ claims of divinity.

ALL OF us have had a wilderness experience of one kind of another. For Joseph, much of it was spent in prison cells.

Two years after interpreting dreams for the baker and cupbearer for the king of Egypt, Joseph is summoned to make sense of a pair of disturbing dreams for the pharaoh. You know the story: God showed the king that seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh placed Joseph in charge of storing up grain for the lean years.

We discuss the reason that God allowed Joseph to endure years in a foreign land. It was more than just saving his family from famine; this was God’s long game to set Israel apart from its pagan, Semitic-speaking neighbors.

IF THE Bible had truly been edited to make the apostles, prophets, and patriarchs look better, chapter 38 of Genesis would have disappeared centuries ago.

This week, we discuss the unseemly episode of Judah’s relationship with his daughter-in-law, Tamar, by whom he fathered Perez, an ancestor of Jesus.

We also discuss the history of the period to explain the timeline between Abraham and the Exodus, which is variously described as “four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13, Acts 7:6), “the fourth generation” (Gen. 15:16), and “four hundred and thirty years” (Ex. 12:40-41, Gal. 3:16-17).

How do we reconcile the 400/430 year discrepancy, and how do we square that with four generations (Jacob > Levi > Kohath > Amram > Moses), since Levi was an adult before Jacob and his family followed Joseph to Egypt?

Here’s one answer, courtesy of Answers in Genesis (https://bit.ly/3cYPWRu): In Abraham’s day, Egypt included the Levant, modern Israel, Lebanon, and western Jordan and Syria. So, the 430 years began with Abraham was called from Harran because he was in “Egypt” almost as soon as he crossed the Euphrates. The 400 years began when Ishmael, his son by Hagar the Egyptian, mocked and persecuted Isaac.
The “fourth generation,” of course, refers to Moses, counting his great-grandfather Levi as the first generation after Jacob.

Here is our timeline, based on this logic:
Amorite kingdom of Babylon founded — 1894 BC
Abraham born — 1951 BC
Abraham arrives in Canaan — 1876 BC
Isaac born — 1851 BC
Isaac marries Rebekah — 1811 BC
Hammurabi becomes king of Babylon — 1792 BC
Jacob and Esau born — 1791 BC
Abraham dies — 1776 BC
Hyksos take over Lower Egypt — c. 1750 BC
Isaac dies — 1671 BC
Jacob arrives in Egypt — 1661 BC
Jacob dies — 1644 BC
Joseph dies — 1590 BC
Ahmose drives Hyksos out of Egypt — c. 1550 BC
Moses leads the Exodus — 1446 BC
Joshua leads the Conquest — 1406 BC

JOSEPH APPEARS to have been something of a spoiled brat. Either he had no self-awareness at all or his self-image was so inflated that he didn’t care what his brothers thought of him.

The story of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery is a reminder that even in times of trouble, God has a plan, and He brings His plans to fruition through flawed and imperfect humans.

We also discuss the history of the chiefs and kings of Edom, including the interesting reference to one “Shaul of Rehoboth on the Euphrates” who ruled Edom sometime before the rise of the kingdom in Israel. Check a map—the Euphrates is a long way from Edom! Who was this Shaul, where was Rehoboth, and did he rule a kingdom that included much of modern Jordan and Syria?

JACOB WAS not exactly an ideal father.

His reaction to the rape of his daughter Dinah by the prince of the city of Shechem is puzzling. Genesis chapter 34 shows that he didn’t say anything when learning of Dinah’s humiliation, or while his sons Simeon and Levi, two of Dinah’s six brothers by their mother Leah, plotted revenge against the city of Shechem, slaughtering the men after deceiving them into being circumcised. 

Jacob’s concern was not for Dinah or the murdered men, but for himself: “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” (Genesis 34:30, ESV)

We also discuss Jacob’s reunion with his brother Esau, the spiritual significance of the city of Shechem (and its patron god, Resheph), and the deaths of Rebekah’s nurse, Deborah, Jacob’s wife, Rachel, and his father, Isaac.

FEEDING THE dead was an integral part of the world in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived.

We’ve previously discussed Abraham’s distress at not having an heir to provide for him in the afterlife; this week, we explain why Jacob’s father-in-law, Laban, was so upset about losing his teraphim, the small idols that represented dead ancestors who had to be summoned to a meal every month with a necromancy ritual called kispum.

We also discuss Jacob’s separation from Laban, his encounter with angels along the Jabbok River, and his wrestling match with the Angel of God, another manifestation of Christ in the Old Testament.