Genesis/Bereshith to Exodus/Shemoth

[Translation:  EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.]

At the conclusion of Genesis 50, Joseph, his brothers and an Egyptian entourage journeyed from Egypt to Canaan to bury Jacob in the cave of the Machpelah field . . . then they returned to Egypt.  The brothers then realized that with their father gone, Joseph might still have leftover bitterness in his heart toward them so they humbled themselves again and offered to be his slaves.

 These brothers never seem to learn their lesson, still underestimating the character of Joseph in spite of everything Joseph had already done for them!

What a consistently righteous man this by now matured and wise Joseph turned out to be, evidenced in his response: 

19 But Yosef said to them: 

 Do not be afraid! For am I in place of God?

 20 Now you, you planned ill against me, 

 (but) God planned-it-over for good,

 in order to do (as is) this very day- 

 to keep many people alive.

 21 So now, do not be afraid! 

 I myself will sustain you and your little-ones! 

 And he comforted them and spoke to their hearts.

He lived 110 years, and saw 3 generations through Ephraim and Manasseh, then reminds his brothers:  

24 Yosef said to his brothers: 

 I am dying,

 but God will take account, yes, account of you, 

 he will bring you up from this land 

 to the land about which he swore

 to Avraham, to Yitzhak, and to Yaakov.

Then expresses his own desire for his bones to be brought out of Egypt . . . whenever that would happen.  Did he think, just like Jacob, that he might have a funeral entourage back to the Land of Canaan? If anyone deserved it, certainly Joseph did!   

Genesis 50:26:  

26 And Yosef died, a hundred and ten years old. 

 They embalmed him and they put him in a coffin 

 in Egypt.

Did that Egyptian practice of embalming the dead see his remains through four centuries that would change the fortunes of the Jacobites/Israelites? 

Exodus/Shemoth 1:1-7 records the passing of the entire generation of 70 who went to Egypt: 

1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel coming to Egypt, 

with Yaakov, each-man and his household they came:

2 Re’uven, Shim’on, Levi and Yehuda,

3 Yissakhar, Zevulun and Binyamin,

4 Dan and Naftali, Gad and Asher.

5 So all the persons, those issuing from Yaakov’s loins, were seventy persons,

-Yosef was (already) in Egypt.

6 Now Yosef died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.

7 Yet the Children of Israel bore fruit, they swarmed, they became many, they grew mighty (in number)-exceedingly, yes, exceedingly;

the land filled up with them.

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who had not known Yosef.

9 He said to his people: 

Here, (this) people, the Children of Israel, is many-more and mightier (in number) than we!

10 Come-now, let us use-our-wits against it, 

lest it become many-more, 

and then, if war should occur,

it too be added to our enemies 

and make war upon us 

or go up away from the land!

11 So they set gang-captains over it, to afflict it with their burdens. 

It built storage-cities for Pharaoh-Pitom and Ra’amses.

12 But as they afflicted it, so did it become many, so did it burst forth. 

And they felt dread before the Children of Israel.

13 So they, Egypt, made the Children of Israel subservient with crushing-labor;

14 they embittered their lives with hard servitude in loam and in bricks and with all kinds of servitude in the field- 

all their service in which they made them subservient with crushing-labor.

Nagging questions:

• With the transition of Israelites from welcome aliens living separately in the land of Goshen from the Egyptian population, to a multiplying people beginning to outnumber the population of Egypt, and with their changing status now as unwelcome immigrants taking up land space and resources, could they have impacted the culture and religion of Egypt with the belief of their patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the God who spoke to their forefathers?  
• Did they even have some kind of organized system of beliefs that they might have inherited from the last patriarch from whom they all descended? 
• Did Jacob impart his faith in the God he personally experienced to his progeny?
• Did this multiplying population have any idea about the promises God made to Abraham, repeated to Isaac, as well as to Jacob?  
• Did any of the 12 sons know enough to pass on to their individual descendants?
• What did the Hebrew slaves know about the God of Abraham?  If they knew or did not know, would they have eventually been drawn to the gods of Egypt since evidently, the God they heard about seemed to have forgotten them?
• How much of Egypt’s polytheistic religion become ingrained in their consciousness?  Did they worship Egypt’s gods?

The text does not elaborate. 

NSB@S6K

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 [As if here is not enough work to do in sharing three commentaries, would you believe we’re adding one more:  Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah.. For starters, here’s a short introduction to the Book of Exodus:

The book of Exodus tells the story of the birth of a nation in slavery and ends with the nation’s establishment of its own center, leaders, and symbols in freedom.  Genesis involves a continuous narrowing of attention from the universe to the earth to humanity to a particular family; Exodus begins to broaden the circumference of attention again as the family grows into a nation.  Whereas Genesis sets the rest of the books of the Bible in context, Exodus does not set them in context so much as introduce fundamental components that will function centrally in almost all the coming books of the Bible.  Exodus introduces the nation of Israel.  It introduces prophecy.  It introduces law.  Arguably most important of all, it introduces the theme of YHWH’s becoming known to the world.