Genesis 46:24

It is God's register of Jacob and his house: "seventy" souls counting Jacob, and Joseph with his two sons; "sixty-six" without them… The time was near when they would exchange the life of a family for the life of a people. In Genesis that family had already grown into twelve families… Scripture shows the interest God took in recording things that are small in man's eyes. Man's nature delights in what it counts great in its own eyes and before the world.

The listing of the family is a moving sight at this point in the story of Jacob's house. No human being can boast. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Yet God takes pleasure in recording their names. He does it early and late in the Old Testament, and at last in the final book of the New Testament — but with variations that teach us something. For the Bible is not only God's word; it is a deeply moral book.

If we truly want to avoid serious mistakes and understand Scripture rightly, we must read the family lists by their own aim, not by modern ideas. On their face they plainly hold difficulties. No forger or compiler would have left them there; he would have taken great care to avoid them. The writer, on the other hand, knew details that we may not. He simply says what he knows to be true, without stopping to clear the difficulties up.

At the start of this chapter the names of the sons of Jacob, called Israel, are listed — and not in order. The aim, I think, is to present them all to us, with no distinction, as objects of God's purposes in grace.

Judah's offspring, and Benjamin's too, were inserted here as the heads of future families. We see this confirmed by the list in Numbers 26, which names the separate families of the tribes of Israel when Moses and Eleazar were told to count the whole assembly… So the huge increase during the stay in Egypt stood out all the more, despite the cruel and murderous oppression that marked its later part.

Bilhah also had a second son, and Rachel named him Naphtali, meaning "my wrestling," because of her wrestling with her sister Leah. All this struggle pictures the struggle of Romans 7. Trying to put down the evil passions of our hearts by our own effort only stirs them up.

Now it was only "the way of the sea," as if swallowed up in its waters. Naphtali, the struggler, sat struggling no more, in darkness that was truly the "shadow of death." But this does not stop the Saviour of sinners. There in the darkness was the very place for light to spring up. Now a Dweller had come to Zebulun, One in whom God Himself could dwell with man. And to Naphtali had come more than a struggler — a glorious Conqueror, the woman's Seed.