Then after the genealogies of the chapter, we have the meeting between Jacob and Joseph. Not this only; for some of Joseph’s brethren are presented to Pharaoh; and Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh; and Jacob blessed Pharaoh (Gen. 47).
It was a fine sight spiritually (the more so, because unconsciously, without a definite thought, I presume, on his own part) that “the less is blessed of the greater.” But so it is. A poor pilgrim blesses the monarch of the mightiest realm of that day; but the greatest of earth is little in comparison with the blessed of God.
Jacob now is not merely blessed, but a blesser. He knows God well enough to be assured that nothing Pharaoh has could really enrich him, and that there is very much which God could give, on which Jacob could count from God even for Pharaoh.
This table enumerates 32 of Leah, 16 of Zilpah, 11 of Rachel, 7 of Bilhah 66.
But the head also goes with his house; and so with the larger list of Leah’s children we see Jacob counted (verse 8), which is confirmed by the fact of 33 attributed to Leah, whereas no more than 32 literally are named, reckoning Dinah, and excluding Er and Onan who died in Canaan as we are expressly told.
Objectors have failed to take into account the peculiarity in the mention of Hezron and Hamul in verse 12. It is merely said (and said only in their case) that the sons of Pharez “were” Hezron and Hamul, not that they were born in Canaan, where those had died for whom they were substitutes; next, that the Hebrew of verse 26 does not go so far as to say with the Authorized Version, “came with Jacob into Egypt,” but of; that is, belonging to, Jacob.
It should be borne in mind that there is no reason, but rather the contrary from scriptural usage for construing בַּעֵת תַתִוא “at that time,” of an isolated point of time, but rather of a general period, consisting as here of a number of events, the last and not the first of which might synchronize with the event recorded just before. It seems clear that Stephen (Acts 7:14) cites the LXX. where 75 are given, as the Greek version (Gen. 46:20) adds five sons and grandsons of Manasseh and Ephraim. Is it not monstrous for a man professing Christianity and ostensibly in the position of bishop, to neglect elements so necessary to a judgment of the question, and to pronounce the Biblical account “certainly incredible,” mainly on the assumption that Pharez’s sons were born in Canaan, which is nowhere said, but rather room left for the inference that it was not so in the exceptional form of Genesis 46:12? Yet after citing this verse We are told, “It appears to me certain (!) that the writer here means to say that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan.”
Is skepticism only certain that its own dreams are true, and that scripture is false? There was a natural and weighty motive for selecting two grandsons of Judah, though no other of Jacob’s great-grandsons are mentioned in the list. For they only were substitutional, as the very verse in which they occur implies.
And it was of the deeper interest too, as one of them – (Hezron) stands in the direct line of the Messiah, which was, as it appears to me, one chief reason for introducing the details of Judah’s history and its shame in Genesis 38 It is vain to quote Numbers 3:17 to set aside the peculiar force of the allusion to the sons of Pharez in Genesis 46:12, with which there is no real analogy.)