Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| How It is Said that Jacob Went into Egypt with Seventy-Five Souls, When Most of Those Who are Mentioned Were Born at a Later Period.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 40.—How It is Said that
Jacob Went into Egypt with Seventy-Five Souls, When Most of Those
Who are Mentioned Were Born at a Later Period.
Seventy-five men are reported to
have entered Egypt along with Jacob, counting him with his
children. In this number only two women are mentioned, one a
daughter, the other a grand-daughter. But when the thing is
carefully considered, it does not appear that Jacob’s offspring
was so numerous on the day or year when he entered Egypt. There
are also included among them the great-grandchildren of Joseph, who
could not possibly be born already. For Jacob was then 130 years
old, and his son Joseph thirty-nine and as it is plain that he took
a wife when he was thirty or more, how could he in nine years have
great-grandchildren by the children whom he had by that wife? Now
since, Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph, could not even
have children, for Jacob found them boys under nine years old when
he entered Egypt, in what way are not only their sons but their
grandsons reckoned among those seventy-five who then entered Egypt
with Jacob? For there is reckoned there Machir the son of
Manasseh, grandson of Joseph, and Machir’s son, that is, Gilead,
grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph; there, too, is he
whom Ephraim, Joseph’s other son, begot, that is, Shuthelah,
grandson of Joseph, and Shuthelah’s son Ezer, grandson of
Ephraim, and great-grand-son of Joseph, who could not possibly be
in existence when Jacob came into Egypt, and there found his
grandsons, the sons of Joseph, their grandsires, still boys under
nine years of age.967
| 967 Augustin here follows the Septuagint, which at
Gen. xlvi. 20 adds these
names to those of Manasseh and Ephraim, and at ver. 27 gives the
whole number as seventy-five.
1
Gen. l. 22, 23. | But doubtless, when the Scripture
mentions Jacob’s entrance into Egypt with seventy-five souls, it
does not mean one day, or one year, but that whole time as long as
Joseph lived, who was the cause of his entrance. For the same
Scripture speaks thus of Joseph: “And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he
and his brethren, and all his father’s house: and Joseph lived
110 years, and saw Ephraim’s children of the third
generation.”968
That is,
his great-grandson, the third from Ephraim; for the third
generation means son, grandson, great-grandson. Then it is added,
“The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born upon
Joseph’s knees.”969
And this is that grandson of
Manasseh, and great-grandson of Joseph. But the plural number is
employed according to scriptural usage; for the one daughter of
Jacob is spoken of as daughters, just as in the usage of the Latin
tongue liberi is used in the plural for children even when
there is only one. Now, when Joseph’s own happiness is
proclaimed, because he could see his great-grandchildren, it is by
no means to be thought they already existed in the thirty-ninth
year of their great-grandsire Joseph, when his father Jacob came to
him in Egypt. But those who diligently look into these things
will the less easily be mistaken, because it is written, “These
are the names of the sons of Israel who entered into Egypt along
with Jacob their father.”970
For this means that the
seventy-five are reckoned along with him, not that they were all
with him when he entered Egypt; for, as I have said, the whole
period during which Joseph, who occasioned his entrance, lived, is
held to be the time of that entrance.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
