And these are the names of the sons of Israel who had come into Egypt; with Jacob had they come, each with his household
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;
The book of Exodus opens with a list of names. Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah head that list — the first four sons of Leah, counted as the family entered Egypt.
The list is not a fresh start. It ties this book to the one before it.
The first five verses of Exodus show that it continues the book of Genesis, for they confirm what Genesis 46:8-27 records in more detail. You would expect this small group of 70 people to blend into the Egyptian nation. Instead, they kept an identity totally distinct from them.
Twelve men and seventy people are nothing beside the nation they entered. Yet God had every name written down.
It is God's register of Jacob and his house... The time was approaching when they would exchange the life of a family for that of a people. In Genesis that family had already grown into twelve families. Their growth is one of the opening facts of Exodus. Scripture reveals the interest God took in recording things that are little in man's eyes. Nature revels in what it counts great in its own eyes and before the world.
Leah gave each of these four names, and each one carries a meaning. Read in the birth order that Exodus follows, one writer heard a sequence in them.
Reuben (behold a son!); Simeon (hearing); Levi (joined); Judah (praise). This is the order of the sons of Jacob according to their birth. It tells out the gospel. In the blessing of Moses the order is: Reuben (behold a son!); Judah (praise); Levi (joined). Simeon (hearing) is left out. When the Lord comes Israel will behold Him as the Son and will break out in praise and worship and become joined to Him. No "hearing" is needed then.
The fourth name closes the group, and it came out of a hard marriage. Leah was the unloved wife, and by her fourth son her words had changed.
Never do we hear of her soul rising so high. The grief-stricken woman breaks out into praise of Jehovah. Her fourth son carries that praise in the name she gave him that day. Yes, of Judah came according to the flesh the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. How much His grace rises above our praise!
Reuben stands first here because he was born first. But the order in which these names appear varies across Scripture, and one writer notes that the arrangement here "differs from that of Numbers 2 and 3." Reading the same four names in Jacob's dying prophecy, another commentator finds the first three telling one story and the fourth another.
So the whole series would run like this: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, the moral character and failure of responsible Israel. As always, it turns out to be corruption and violence: such is man. Next, the purpose of God in Judah: he remains until Shiloh comes, to whom the gathering of the peoples belongs.
Two names hover over the list. The father is called Israel in the opening phrase, but Jacob when the arrival into Egypt is described. One writer treats the switch as deliberate.
It is striking how the book opens... Jacob means Supplanter. His other name, the one God gave him, is not given here: it would be out of place. They are indeed the "sons of Israel," but they "came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household." We also came into the land of bondage with our father Adam.
Yet the better name still stands over them in Egypt.
The beginning of the book of Exodus shows them in a servitude that was nothing like what God wanted for them. They were Pharaoh's slaves... For the moment they were the servants of Pharaoh. But God regarded them as "the sons of Israel," and He accomplishes their deliverance so that they might serve Him.
- Named. The verse lists names, not a crowd. God records what the world would count too small to write down.
- Named as sons. God calls them sons of Israel while they are Pharaoh's slaves. The title fits His purpose for them, not their circumstances.
- Named with meaning. Behold a son, hearing, joined, praise — one commentator hears the gospel in the order of Leah's four names.
- Named in order. One commentator reads Reuben, Simeon and Levi as the failure of responsible man. Judah, fourth and last here, carries God's purpose forward to Christ.
- Named for deliverance. They entered Egypt with Jacob the supplanter, as we entered bondage with Adam. The God who kept their names is the God who brings them out to serve Him.
Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;
Exodus opens with a list. Seventy people came into Egypt with Jacob, and Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin stand in the middle of that list. Why does a book about rescue begin by naming a family?
The book begins with the word "and." So this list of names is not a fresh start. It carries on a story already told.
The opening verses take us back once more to the end of Genesis. As already said, the word "now" (literally, "and") makes Exodus a continuation of the previous book. They had come into Egypt while Joseph was already there. Joseph and all his brothers had died, but their descendants multiplied fast. The Hebrew word "increased" means "swarmed."
Seventy people settled inside a much larger nation.
The first five verses of Exodus show that it continues the book of Genesis, because they confirm what Genesis 46:8-27 records in more detail. Yet these 70 people did not blend into the Egyptian nation, as you would expect them to. They kept an identity completely distinct from Egypt. Since that time, even though Israel has been scattered for centuries among other nations, God has kept a clear distinction between them and all Gentile nations.
One writer notices which of the father's two names Exodus uses here. He quotes an older translation of verse 1.
It is striking how the book opens. "Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt. Every man and his household came with Jacob." Jacob means Supplanter — the one who takes another's place. His other name, the one God gave him, does not appear here: it would be out of place. They are indeed the "children of Israel," but "every man and his household came with Jacob." We too came into the land of slavery with our father Adam.
Benjamin closes this verse, but Joseph's name never appears beside his brothers. One writer compares the order here with the order in Numbers.
The order here differs from the order in Numbers 2 and 3. […] Joseph, a picture of Christ, who receives his brothers, is completely set apart from them.
Why did God bring this family to Egypt at all?
Egypt was the nursery God provided for the chosen race while they grew from one great family — the sons and grandsons of one father — into a people ready for the inheritance meant for them. He sheltered them in mercy for a time, so that they would grow all the more under hardship when it came. Hardship was bound to come, because people are hostile to anyone who claims a relationship with the true God.
The hardship did not take God by surprise. He had spoken about it long before it happened.
The state the children of Israel are in at Exodus 1 was foretold many years before. God had said to Abraham: "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions" (Gen. 15:13-14). That is the history of the first twelve chapters of Exodus. So at chapter one we stand right at the point where God begins to carry out His ways with His people.
One writer reads the whole chapter out of this small number.
Here we see grace in its first working: the small beginning of a nation in the seventy people who came into Egypt with Jacob, set against their amazing and unstoppable increase. Even the slavery they come into had already been promised to them. What seemed most against them was in fact the working out of promise for them. The hand of power works in disguise, yet faith can see straight through the disguise.
- Continued. Exodus starts with the word "and." The list is not a new beginning. It is Genesis carried forward.
- Counted. Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin are three names out of seventy. That small group never blended into Egypt.
- Carried. They came in with Jacob, not with Israel. One writer sees a picture of how we all came into slavery with Adam.
- Contained. Egypt sheltered the family first and crushed it later. God had told Abraham about the hardship, the rescue and the great possessions that would follow.
- Compounded. Seventy names grew into a multitude. The pressure that looked like ruin was God's promise at work in disguise.
Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And all the souls that had come out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls; and Joseph was in Egypt.
Exodus opens by finishing a list begun in Genesis: eleven sons, their households, and a total of seventy, with Joseph counted apart because he had gone ahead of them all. Two questions sit in this short line: how Scripture reaches seventy, and why God records so small a number at all.
The first five verses do not tell a new story. They sum up one already told, and they set the human reason for the move beside God's reason.
The first five verses give a short statement of the names of Jacob's sons who came into Egypt with their father. They and their households, together with Joseph and his house already in Egypt, numbered seventy souls. The details, of which this is a brief summary, are found in Genesis 46. The immediate reason they went down to Egypt was the famine. But God was only carrying out His own purposes — through the famine, and through the wickedness of Jacob's sons in selling their brother to the Ishmaelites.
The number looks odd until you notice that Scripture gives more than one total. Each counts a different group. Genesis 46 lists sixty-six who travelled with Jacob, and the note about Joseph explains the rest.
Genesis 46:27 tells us that all the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy. How is it worked out? Because Joseph and his two sons who were born to him in Egypt were there already. So these, with Jacob, as stated, made up the number of seventy souls. … If we look at the beginning of Exodus 1, we again find the list spoken of as seventy. It includes Jacob's eleven sons by name, who came from his own body and went with him into Egypt. And in exact agreement with Genesis 46:27, it adds that Joseph was already in Egypt.
Stephen, retelling this history later in Scripture, counts seventy-five. Commentators explain the gap in different ways. One points to the Septuagint, the old Greek translation of the Old Testament, which adds extra descendants:
It is God's register of Jacob and his house, "seventy" souls including Jacob, and Joseph with his two sons, "sixty-six" without these. The Septuagint quoted by Stephen speaks of seventy-five, because it adds Manasseh's son Machir and grandson Gilead, and Ephraim's two sons, Shuthelah and Tahan, with Shuthelah's son Eran or Edom.
Another writer refuses to force the numbers and stops where Scripture stops:
We do not offer any definite solution of the difficulty, nor is it needful to prove exactly how the list of seventy-five was made up. If we had been told that two of his sons' wives had died, it would be made clear, but we are not told, and we must be silent.
Older translations count "souls" where modern ones count persons. One writer traces that word and shows what hangs on it:
I find the word (nephesh) "soul" used for the whole man just as it is often used now, in Genesis 12:5, Genesis 14:21, Exodus 1:5, Numbers 15:27-28, and in other places… How fitting, then, that we find in Scripture, as we do, that sin, atonement, redemption, conversion, and salvation are all connected with it — with "nephesh," the soul. For it is the man, spirit and soul and body, that has sinned. And it is the man who needs this power of God put forth in grace on his behalf.
Scripture sets this small number right before an account of explosive growth.
Here we see grace in its first workings. A nation begins small, in the seventy souls that came into Egypt with Jacob. Set that against their remarkable and unstoppable increase. God had already promised them even the bondage they come into, and what seemed most against them was the working out of promise for them. The hand of power works in disguise, yet a disguise faith can see through. It is the same story at heart, whether told of the nation of Israel or of any of the Lord's redeemed.
Scripture's care over such a small figure is itself part of the lesson.
Scripture reveals the interest God took in recording things little in man's eyes. Human nature delights in what it counts great in its own eyes and before the world.
A family of seventy is not yet a people. Egypt is where one became the other.
Egypt was the nursery God provided for the chosen race. There it grew from a great family — the sons and grandsons of one father — into a people fit for their destined inheritance. God sheltered them in mercy for a season, so that they might grow all the more under hardship when it came, as it had to.
- Seventy counted. Sixty-six travelled with Jacob. Add Jacob, Joseph and Joseph's two sons, and you reach seventy. The note about Joseph makes the totals agree.
- Seventy questioned. Stephen's seventy-five follows the Greek Old Testament. Writers explain the gap in different ways, and one refuses to settle what Scripture leaves unsaid.
- Seventy weighed. "Souls" here means whole persons. Scripture ties the soul to sin, atonement, redemption and salvation.
- Seventy multiplied. Scripture sets the tiny figure against unstoppable increase. God had promised even the coming bondage, so what looked hostile was promise at work.
- Seventy placed. Egypt was the nursery where a family grew into a nation. Shelter came first, hardship after. Famine brought them down, but God's purpose kept them there.
And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.
Exodus opens with the family of seventy who came down to Egypt. Then it closes the book on them: Joseph, his brothers, and their whole generation are gone. Did God's promises to that family die with them?
Israel entered Egypt on the best possible terms. They had royal favour and Joseph's high position. One commentator sets that comfort against what God had already told Abraham.
God had shown Abraham in a vision that his descendants would live as strangers in a land not their own, and would be in bondage and affliction for four hundred years. They would come out with great wealth, and God would judge the masters who oppressed them. Israel came down to Egypt under the prestige of its greatest governor and the warmest royal favour. They settled in the best of the land, in Goshen, so they might have expected nothing but ease and honour. But despite appearances, Egypt in the Lord's eyes meant servitude and affliction. That is just what happened once Joseph's protection was gone. The word of God stands and cannot fail, whatever the weakness of man or the pride of unbelief.
The verse reads like an ending. But the God who made the promises does not die, and the timing of what came next was never in human hands.
Faith rests on the immovable rock of God's eternal Word, not on the shifting sands of human affairs. Come what may, it stays in that place of strength. "Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation." What then? Could death affect the plans of the living God? Surely not. He only waited for the appointed moment, the due time, and then He made the most hostile forces serve the working out of His purposes.
The next verse answers the death notice with an explosion of life. One writer explains how seventy people became a nation so fast, and who else was counted with them.
Joseph and all his brothers had passed away, but their descendants multiplied rapidly. The Hebrew word "increased" means "swarmed." Only about 64 years had passed since Joseph's death. Because that is such a short time, unbelief has sneered at this description of the increase. People usually forget that a very large number of servants must have come with the 70 who entered Egypt. Abraham had 318 servants born in his house. Jacob had a still larger number. These servants had come into the covenant too, though they were not natural descendants... Yet even this does not fully explain the great increase. It was miraculous, the fulfilment of the promises given to the patriarchs. God witnessed by it that they were His people.
Israel thrived in Egypt just after burying the last man who had known the promises firsthand. That prosperity had a cause.
After the statement that "Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation" (v. 6), the story moves quickly on to their situation and condition. First, it points to their increase and their prosperity... They were the children of promise, even in Egypt, and as such God's favour was resting on them. That is why we see this picture of prosperity on earth. God never forgets His people, although they may forget Him.
The long years after Joseph's funeral were not wasted time. Egypt had a job to do in forming a family into a nation.
Egypt was the nursery God provided for the chosen race while they grew from one great family — the sons and grandsons of one father — into a people fit for the inheritance meant for them. In mercy He sheltered them for a time, so that they would grow all the more under hardship when it came. And it had to come, because people are hostile to anyone who claims a link with the true God.
Joseph died, but he was not forgotten. His coffin stayed in Egypt, and someone had to keep it.
Joseph was a man of faith, a man of vision. His bones remained in Egypt for something like three hundred years. Had God forgotten? Generations came and went. A Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph. Clearly Joseph's brothers took care of the coffin, and each generation handed the trust on to the next.
- A generation ends — Joseph, his brothers, and their whole generation die. The human protection that made Egypt comfortable is gone, and God's word to Abraham about bondage starts to come true.
- God does not end — death cannot touch the plans of the living God. He waited for the appointed moment, then made the most hostile forces serve His purposes.
- The promise outgrows the funeral — in about 64 years, seventy people "swarmed" into a nation. The increase was miraculous, and it marked them out as God's people.
- Favour they may forget — they prospered as children of promise even in Egypt. God never forgets His people, although they may forget Him.
- The coffin keeps waiting — Joseph's bones stayed in Egypt for about three hundred years. His brothers cared for the coffin, and each generation passed the trust to the next.
And the children of Israel were fruitful, and swarmed and multiplied, and became exceeding strong; and the land was full of them.
Seventy people came down to Egypt with Jacob, and their descendants grew into a vast nation — the verse piles up one verb after another to say it. Two questions follow: is this God keeping an old promise, and why does such blessing end in slavery?
Some have mocked the scale of this growth as impossible. One writer answers them, starting with the word itself.
The Hebrew word translated "increased" means "swarmed." This verse emphasises their wonderful increase both in numbers and in power. Only a short time had passed after Joseph's death, some sixty-four years, so unbelief has sneered at this description of their increase. People usually overlook that besides the seventy souls who came into Egypt, a very large number of servants must have come with them. Abraham had 318 servants born in his house. Jacob had a still larger number. The covenant took these servants in too, though they were not natural descendants: the command of circumcision covered every male born in the house or bought with money... Yet even this does not fully explain the great increase. It was miraculous, the fulfilment of the promises given to the patriarchs. God witnessed by it that they were His people.
This growth was no accident of history. It matched words God had spoken to Abraham long before.
The descendants of Abraham, to whom the promises of God were made, were in Egypt... They were like the sand on the seashore for multitude. This was the vine God brought out of Egypt (Psalm 80:8).
The growth happened in a foreign land that would soon turn hostile. One writer sees that place as chosen on purpose.
Egypt was the providential nursery for the chosen race. There they grew from one great family — the sons and grandsons of a single father — into a people fit for the inheritance God had destined for them. In mercy He sheltered them for a season, so that they might grow all the more under hardship when it came. And it had to come, because men resent anyone who claims a link with the true God.
Numbers were not the only thing that set this people apart. One writer points to what did not change.
You would expect this small number of seventy persons to blend into the Egyptian nation. Instead they kept an identity totally distinct from them. Israel has been scattered among other nations for centuries since. Yet God has preserved a clear distinction between them and all other nations, even giving them their land back in 1948.
One writer takes Egypt here as a picture of something wider. He reads their prosperity as a sign of God's favour.
In Scripture Egypt is a picture of the world, and so Israel in Egypt becomes a picture of man's natural condition... First comes their increase, and indeed their prosperity... They were the children of promise, even though in Egypt, and God's favour rested on them as such. So we see this picture of earthly prosperity. God never forgets His people, although they may forget Him.
This blessing ends in slavery. One writer says that turn was no accident.
Here we see grace at its first work. A nation begins small, in the seventy souls who came into Egypt with Jacob, and then grows in a marvellous way that nothing could stop. God had already promised them even the bondage they come into, and what seemed most against them was really the working out of promise for them. The hand of power works in disguise, yet in a way faith can see through. It is essentially the same story, whether told of the nation of Israel or of any of the Lord's redeemed.
Another writer shows where that promise was given, and what it means for every dark turn in the story.
Long before this, God had said to Abram that his offspring would be strangers in a land that was not theirs, that they would serve that nation and be afflicted four hundred years, that He would judge that nation, and that afterwards they would come out with great possessions. This is the history of the first twelve chapters of Exodus. Whatever men do, even in wickedness and open rebellion, God makes it serve the purposes of His own grace and love.
- Promise — the increase was not luck. Commentators call it miraculous: "the fulfilment of the promises given to the patriarchs," and God's own witness that these were His people.
- Place — Egypt was the "providential nursery." There one family grew into a people, sheltered for a season before the hardship that would make them stronger.
- Preservation — they lived inside a greater culture and kept "an identity totally distinct." One writer traces that distinction through the centuries of Israel's scattering.
- Presence — prosperity came while they were still in Egypt, before any rescue: "God never forgets His people, although they may forget Him."
- Pressure — the growth led to the slavery, and God had foretold that too. "What seemed most against them was really the working out of promise for them" — and the same holds for any of the Lord's redeemed.