Genesis 46:1: He stops at the border to ask whether he is allowed to leave
Read it →"So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac." Beersheba is the last well before the desert and the last town before the road to Egypt stops being a road through anywhere. He has come down from the Hebron ridge, about twenty-five miles, and instead of going on he stops and builds an altar, and the text says why he chose this particular patch of ground: the God of his father Isaac. This is where Isaac was living when God told him, in the plainest sentence in Genesis 26, do not go down to Egypt. So the old man halts at his father's altar on the edge of his father's prohibition and asks. He is a hundred and thirty and he has been told his son is alive, and he still will not cross the line until somebody says he may. It is the most careful thing Jacob ever does. The answer comes that night, and it is four sentences long. I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again. And Joseph's hand shall close your eyes. Every clause of it is a load-bearing wall. The nation is made down there, not here. The bringing up again is the Exodus, promised four hundred years early to a frightened old man in a tent. And the last clause is not policy at all, it is kindness: you will die with your son in the room. So the map draws the road ahead as a ghost — a course named and not yet taken, the way this atlas drew Rebekah's whispered road to Haran and the road Isaac was forbidden. Beersheba is where he is, in the gold this walk keeps for the wells of the Negev. Egypt is at the far end in its own red. Tomorrow the same line is drawn again in a colour that means he went.
Regions on this map
The last well before the desert, and his father's ground. Isaac was living here when he was told not to go down to Egypt, and Jacob stops at the same altar to ask whether the rule still stands.
Seven wells, or the well of the oath, depending which etymology Genesis is using that chapter; 815 of its votes sit on Tel Be'er Sheva. Abraham planted a tamarisk here and Isaac dug here and was living here when he was forbidden Egypt. It is the southern edge of settled Canaan — the last place with water before the road becomes desert — which makes it the right place to stop and ask.
Today: Tel Be'er Sheva, Israel
Drawn as a course and not a journey, because at this verse he has not moved. The answer comes in the night and contains the Exodus, promised four hundred years early, and one clause that is not policy at all: Joseph's hand shall close your eyes.
Named in this verse only through the vision it is offered for: the sacrifices are made at Beersheba and the answer is about Egypt. Pinned at the single representative point its 500 votes resolve to, at the head of the delta. Jacob is a hundred and thirty. He is told to go, told that the nation will be made down there, and told he will be brought up again — a promise kept four centuries later by somebody who has not been born yet.
Today: Heliopolis, at the head of the Nile delta (representative point)
Genesis 46:1 in full
- Genesis 46:1So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to , and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.