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)?
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?
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).
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.
ALL OF us have had a wilderness experience of one kind of another. For Joseph, much of it was spent in prison cells.
IF THE Bible had truly been edited to make the apostles, prophets, and patriarchs look better, chapter 38 of Genesis would have disappeared long ago.