Numbers Chapter 26

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59. For the omission of subject to "bare," see 1 Kings: 6 and 1 Chron. 7:14, whatever the difficulty connected with it; compare Ex. 6:16-20. This verse (59) is the greatest difficulty of all as to the counting 430 years of captivity.' I do not see that the 430 years of Gal. 3 is so much so, because it must, if strictly taken, refer to Israel's offering, for the covenant was kekuromenen (confirmed), i.e., some forty years after the arrival in Canaan; and the term here " begat to him in Egypt" implies, it would seem, it was one (i.e., Levi himself) who had come down, so that it might have been otherwise. Jacob was one hundred and thirty on coming into Egypt; Gen. 47:9. Joseph was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh. Jacob came down nine years (seven of plenty, two of famine) afterward. Joseph was about seven when he arrived in Canaan, seventeen when he was sold. Thus Jacob was to + 13 + 9 years from his arrival from Padan to his going down to Egypt, i.e., thirty years, i.e., ninety-eight when he left Padan, and about seventy-eight when he went there; he had remained some thirty-eight after Esau's marriage. It. is remarkable these late marriages of the first Patriarchs—Isaac was forty and had no child till he was sixty, Abraham none of promise till he was an hundred. Now Judah was about fifteen when he married and had children then. The moment of transition was the end of Jacob's life; he goes down, sixty-six souls of his family. They were to be as heavenly strangers till then, now to multiply for the earth; they could hardly have been had they so multiplied, they must have settled somewhere as Esau. Yet while at ease and princes, they were yet but a few of them and they strangers in the land, and when oppressed and ill-treated they multiplied and grew. In these were God's ways.