Genesis 46:28: Judah sent ahead, and a chariot coming the other way

"He had sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph to show the way before him in Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen." Of all the brothers it is Judah who is sent ahead. It is the same Judah who suggested selling Joseph instead of killing him, and who stood surety for Benjamin, and who offered to take Benjamin's place as a slave in the speech that finally broke Joseph in half. He has become the one you send when something has to be got right, and the tribe that ends up with the kingship starts being that tribe somewhere in these chapters. Goshen is in the eastern delta, on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile — flat, well-watered, good grazing, and the part of Egypt nearest to Canaan. It is chosen for two reasons the text gives openly. It is the best pasture in the country, and it is far enough from the Egyptians that a family of shepherds can live in it without friction, because every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians. They are put somewhere fertile and somewhere apart, which is a kindness and a quarantine at once, and four hundred years later it is where the plagues do not fall. The sources are firmer about where it is than you might expect: six hundred and thirty-one votes land the land of Goshen at Qantir in the eastern delta, the site of the Ramesside capital, and the map pins it there as a representative point for a district rather than a claim about a single town. What happens on this ground in the next verse is the reunion the book has been holding back for twenty-two years. Joseph prepares his chariot and drives up to meet his father, and falls on his neck and weeps on his neck a good while, and Israel says now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive. The map can only draw the road. The verse after it is the arrival the road was for.