So praise God I've found the time to write again about my scripture reading. Today it was on Genesis 46. I think just based on how it was written, it can be split into three parts: 1. God makes a promise to Jacob 2. The genealogy of Jacob's offspring and 3. The family in Egypt. Each of these parts sort of reveal to the reader how God is working through this story.
1. God assures Jacob that He will watch over them in Egypt. I think the emphasis on this part is how God calls us when it comes to following Him. In this case, Jacob was called to send everything he was given and to invest it all in this trip to Egypt. What's important to note here (which I will point out more later on) is that the sons of Jacob are already in bad standing with the Egyptians, save for Joseph. God called Jacob to settle and invest his all in bringing up a nation in enemy territory.
2. The genealogy is important because like before, it's the continuing reminder to the reader about the importance of God's promise for a messiah. Notice that Judah's family led the way to Egypt. It is this same family through which God will make His promise known and accomplish through Christ what was to be prophesied in scripture after Israel leaves Egypt. (Notice that God is working His plan for the messiah even before any record of a promise was written, before the prophet Isaiah, before David wrote the Psalms, even before there seemed any chance of Israel ever being able to return to Canaan.
3. It's important to note that Jacob's offspring are already losing favor with Egypt just because of their occupation (Genesis 46:34). There are many theories as to why this is possible. Some say it's because of xenophobia, while others point to the nature of sheep and how they weren't supposed to graze with cattle because the sheep destroy the grassland that they feed. But what's important here is again how God is working. God is raising up a people for Himself, within the walls of their enemy, which happens to be the most powerful nation in the world at the time, the only oasis in the known world because of a famine. An enemy in Egypt that is already against Israel even before they were enslaved, even while Joseph was in power.
You can even start drawing contrasts. God chose a people who compared to their neighbors the Egyptians, were dirty nomads who took care of sheep for a living. A group of people who lived in tents and pretty much lacked any real military alliances at the time. And that same group of people is exactly where God decided to come down in human form and die for the sins of mankind.
What this passage is telling us, through the entry of Israel and his children into Egypt, is that when God calls us to do His will, we should give it our all. Because that's how we show our trust and faith in Him. And remember that God calls a people to Him from the most unexpected of places. God is glorified the most through people who in the eyes of the world, have very little to no value. To God however, these people are the vehicles and the carriers of His divine sovereignty over all things. I think that in the passage, the most powerful nation wasn't the one that had all the food, all the wealth, all the luxury, the palaces, and healthy people, the one that seems to be the most blessed in terms of material wealth. The most powerful nation is the small nomadic family of shepherds because through this family, God promises salvation for men and peace brought to all nations through Jesus Christ.
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