The Problem

Several Biblical texts refer to a 400-430-year time frame ending with Israel’s departure from Egypt:

“And God said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years’” (Gen. 15:13, NASB).

 “Now the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.  And it came about at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt” (Ex. 12:40,41).

 “‘But God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years’” (Acts 7:6).

 “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.  He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ.  What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise” (Gal. 3:16,17).

 [A fifth text (Acts 13:17-20) has Paul referring to a 450-year period, but since its beginning and ending points are somewhat unclear, it would unnecessarily complicate this study to include it.]

 Stephen’s reference to 400 years in the third text (Acts 7:6) may be dropped from consideration, since it is obviously his quotation of the first text (Gen. 15:13) and adds no new information.  The Genesis text is relevant, but its consideration will be deferred in the interest of juxtaposing the second (Ex. 12:40,41) and fourth (Gal. 3:16,17) texts in order to observe the apparent conflict between them.

 Whereas both Moses and Paul, according to the reading of the New American Standard Bible (et. al.), cite Israel’s departure from Egypt as the end of this 430-year period, they clearly seem to differ as to its beginning.  [It does not change the fact that Moses and Paul agree as to the end of this period, though Paul actually cites the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, instead of the Exodus, as its end, since the giving of the Law occurred only a few months after the Exodus (Ex. 19:1ff)].  Moses seems to make the entrance of the Israelites into Egypt its beginning, while Paul seems to place it at the giving of God’s promise(s) to Abraham.  Thus, is this 430-year period confined to the time during which the Israelites lived in Egypt, or does it go much farther back to the time when God gave the promise to Abraham?  A very simplified version of the question asks how long the Israelites lived in Egypt.  If it was 430 years (Ex. 12:40,41), then this seems to put Moses in conflict with Paul, who actually interposes the 430 years between God’s promise to Abraham and the departure of the Israelites from Egypt (Gal. 3:16,17).

 The Scriptures provide enough information to allow a determination of how many years transpired between God’s issuance of the promises to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3,7) and the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt.  This calculation begins with the fact that Abraham was 75 years old when God issued the promises to him and he entered Canaan (Gen. 12:4).  When Abraham was 100 years old, or 25 years later, Isaac was born (Gen. 21:5).  Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob was born (Gen. 25:26).  Adding these two numbers together (25 + 60) yields 85 years between God’s promise to Abraham and the birth of Jacob.  Since Jacob was 130 years old when he entered Egypt with his family (Gen. 47:9), this yields a sum of 215 years (25 + 60 + 130 = 215) between the time God issued the promises to Abraham and the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt.  If these 215 years are added to the 430 which Moses seems to give as the length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt (Ex. 12:40,41), then it appears that Paul should have given 645 years (215 + 430 = 645) as the length of time intervening God’s issuance of the promise to Abraham and the Israelites’ departure from Egypt.  Instead, he says that the time between those two events was only 430 years.  By these calculations, Moses and Paul appear to disagree with one another by an intolerable discrepancy of 215 years!

 Yet, it is actually evident that, despite what Moses appears to say (Ex. 12:40,41), the Israelites could not have lived in Egypt as long as 430 years.  To verify this, the reader may consult the death ages of Moses’ father and grandfather who lived in Egypt.  Kohath, the son of Levi, had already been born by the time the Israelites entered Egypt, for he is counted among them at that time (Gen. 46:6,11,27).  The Scriptures do not reveal how old Kohath was when he entered Egypt, but they do reveal how old he was when he died:  133 years (Ex. 6:18).  They also do not reveal how old Kohath was when his son, Amram, was born, but they do reveal how old Amram was when he died:  137 years (vs. 20).  Furthermore, while the Scriptures do not reveal how old Amram was when his son, Moses, was born, they do reveal how old Moses was when the Israelites left Egypt:  80 years (7:7).  To determine the maximum length of time the Israelites could have been in Egypt, the assumption may be made, as unlikely as it is, that the Israelites entered Egypt in the first year of Kohath’s life and that Amram and Moses were born in the year of their fathers’ deaths.  These assumptions allow the ages given for Kohath and Amram at their deaths and for Moses at the time the Israelites left Egypt simply to be added up. Thus, by this computation, the Israelites could have lived in Egypt no more than 350 years (133 + 137 + 80 = 350).  This falls 80 years short of the 430 years Moses seems to say that the Israelites lived in Egypt (Ex. 12:40,41).

Inadequate Solutions

 Those who feel compelled to seek a solution to the apparent conflict between Moses (Ex. 12:40,41) and Paul (Gal. 3:16,17) by preserving an interpretation which puts the Israelites in Egypt for 430 years offer a couple of solutions:

First, they might propose that Paul’s reference to the promise to Abraham is actually its reiteration to Jacob at the time he entered Egypt (Gen. 46:1-4).  This has the appeal of eliminating from consideration the 215 additional years between the first promise to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3,7) and the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt.  However, contrary to this supposition is the fact that Paul bases his argument specifically on the words, “and to your seed,” which are found in the first issuance of the promise to Abraham upon his entry into Canaan but are nowhere mentioned in any reiteration of the promises to Jacob as he is about to enter Egypt (Gen. 12:7; 46:1ff).  Nevertheless, whatever else might be said for, or against, this proposal, it remains its fatal flaw that it does absolutely nothing to resolve the problem of the 80-year shortfall uncovered by adding together the ages of Moses, his father (Amram), and grandfather (Kohath).  Hence, the validity of this proposal has a prior dependence on a favorable reconciliation between the ages of Moses and his immediate ancestors with a 430-year time frame for the Israelites in Egypt.

Therefore, second, the explanation that Moses’ genealogy is condensed has been offered.  Though it is true that the Biblical “father-son” relationship was not always a direct one and genealogies were sometimes abbreviated [as, for example, in Luke’s additions (cf. Lk. 3:36; Gen. 10:24; Lk. 3:33; Ruth 4:19, NASB) and Matthew’s omission of Jehoiakim (cf. Matt. 1:11; 2 Kgs. 24:6)], this proposal suffers from at least three major difficulties:

First, all five of the citations of Moses’ lineage (Ex. 6:16-20; Num. 3:19-27; 26:58,59; 1 Chr. 6:2,3,18; 23:12,13) are very consistent in giving the generations as Kohath, Amram, and Moses.  There are absolutely no variations.  Condensations cited in all other genealogies are known from the very fact that their versions differ.  This is not true here.  Thus, it remains, from this standpoint, an assumption to claim that Moses’ genealogy is condensed.

Exacerbating this problem is that, if there are any omissions in Moses’ genealogy, they must come between Kohath and Moses.  There cannot be any omissions between Jacob and Levi or between Levi and Kohath, for all three are individually numbered among the Israelites who entered Egypt (Gen. 46:8-27).  However, Amram is identified as the son of Kohath no less than six times (Ex. 6:18; Num. 3:19; 26:58; 1 Chr. 6:2,18; 23:12), and Moses is identified as the son of Amram no less than four times (Ex. 6:20; Num. 26:59; 1 Chr. 6:3; 23:13).  Again, not even one time is there another name introduced between these generations.  The claim that the genealogy of Moses must be a condensed version is an assumption driven solely by the desire to accommodate the conclusion that the Israelites must have lived in Egypt 430 years.

Second, Jochebed ties together tightly the generations in Moses’ immediate family tree as the daughter, sister, wife, and mother of Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses, respectively (Ex. 6:20; Num. 26:59).  If there were omissions in Moses’ lineage, such that Amram was not his immediate father or Kohath not the immediate father of Amram, or that two different Amram’s are under consideration, then this proposal also calls into question the Biblical assertion of Jochebed’s relationship with these men, so that she might not actually be Levi’s daughter, Kohath’s sister, or Moses’ mother.  It ought to be obvious that this proposal is much too tenuous, tendentious, strained, and artificial to be acceptable on any account.

Strengthening the relationships given in Moses’ family tree as immediate and uncondensed is the fact that Uzziel is cited as the “uncle” of Aaron, the brother of Moses and son of Amram, and Mishael and Elzaphan are cited as the sons of Uzziel (Lev. 10:4).  This agrees perfectly with Moses’ genealogy in Exodus, where Uzziel is cited as the brother of Moses and Aaron’s father, Amram, and Mishael and Elzaphan are also cited as the sons of Uzziel (6:18,22).

Third, this explanation does not account for the fact that God explicitly told Abraham that his descendants would return to the land of Canaan in the fourth generation:  “‘Then in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete’” (Gen. 15:16).  These four generations may be counted as:  Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (Ex. 6:16-20).  To propose that there are more than these four generations between Levi and Moses makes God’s statement that the Israelites would return to Canaan in the fourth generation contradictory and meaningless.

There is an exact parallel to this in God’s statement to Jehu that his sons to the fourth generation would sit upon the throne of Israel:  “And the LORD said to Jehu, ‘Because you have done well in executing what is right in My eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in My heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel’” (2 Kgs. 10:30).  Beginning with Jehu’s son, who succeeded him on the throne of Israel, these four generations may be counted as:  Jehoahaz (vs. 35), Jehoash (13:25), Jeroboam (14:6), and Zechariah (14:29).  After Shallum killed Zechariah and made himself king over Israel in his place, thus ending Jehu’s dynasty (15:8-11), the Scripture says:  “This is the word of the LORD which He spoke to Jehu, saying, ‘Your sons to the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.’ And so it was” (15:12).  There is every reason to believe that, in both places (Gen. 15:16; 2 Kgs. 10:30), when God says “the fourth generation,” He means precisely that.

An Acceptable Solution

Abandoning as futile the effort to obtain a resolution to the apparent conflict between Moses (Ex. 12:40,41) and Paul (Gal. 3:16,17) by modifying the latter’s statement to something less than its evident meaning forces a search for a resolution in Moses’ statement.  Indeed, an effort in this direction offers such a promise of a satisfactory resolution that one need look no farther than another version; namely, the King James Version.  This is to say that the problem was created in the first place by a misunderstanding and inaccurate rendering of two keys texts (Gen. 15:13; Ex. 12:40,41) in later versions.  This is so true that the apparent conflict between Moses and Paul evaporates with a careful reading of the King James Version:

“And he said unto Abram, ‘Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years’” (Gen. 15:13, KJV).

It should be noted here that the King James Version does not offer the same difficulty which might occur to readers of other versions (e.g., NASB), as its assertion regarding the 400 years is made, not about the length of time the Israelites would be enslaved, or even live, in Egypt, but about the length of time they would be afflicted (by the Egyptians).

“Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years” (Ex. 12:40, KJV)

Again, it should be noted that, in the King James Version, this statement is an assertion, not about how long the Israelites lived in Egypt, but about the length of their “sojourning.”  This may be appreciated simply by reading the text of the KJV without the modifying phrase, “who dwelt in Egypt”:  “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel was four hundred and thirty years.”

That this is not a purely artificial and self-interested rendering may be confirmed by a reading of the NASB’s footnotes.  In the Genesis (15:13) text, the NASB offers in the place of the KJV’s “… and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them …”:  “Lit., ‘and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them.’”

Likewise, in its footnote for the Exodus (12:40) text, the NASB offers in the place of the KJV’s “… of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt …”:  “Or, ‘of the sons of Israel who dwelt.’”  The text of the KJV and the footnote of the NASB in both of these passages is essentially the same [though it should be added that the NASB’s rather capricious rendering of the Hebrew mōshab (“sojourning”) by “time” also contributes to the problem].  By offering these literal or alternate renderings in a footnote, the NASB partially redeems itself and offers the critical observation that the apparent conflict between Moses and Paul owes itself to nothing much more than modern English punctuation.

More Than Mere Semantics

However, further clarity and satisfaction on this point may be obtained by observing critical distinctions between the two words in two pairs:  (1) “enslavement” and “affliction,” and (2) “sojourning” and “living/dwelling.”  It is critical to note that, though the words in each pair are synonymous, they are not identical, at least not in their application here.  Indeed, to fail to make a distinction between them, not only expresses a pointless redundancy, but also leads to a critical misunderstanding and misinterpretation.  As seen, even translators find themselves misguided by this failure.

Though people might very well be “afflicted” by being “enslaved,” it is also quite possible that they could be “afflicted” without being “enslaved.”  This distinction offers a critical foothold in the effort to understand what Moses is saying in the Genesis (15:13) text, particularly with regard to the length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt.  Moses asserts there, not that the Israelites were to live or be enslaved in Egypt 400 years, but that they were to be afflicted 400 years.  This is to say that the dwelling or enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt, and their affliction by the Egyptians, were not coterminous. 

Before proceeding to an explanation and defense of this point, it should be noted that, unless one is willing to concede this point, he magnifies the difficulty of reconciling Moses and Paul.  This is because, not only could the Israelites not have lived in Egypt more than 350 years at the most, as previously revealed, but they were enslaved there for even significantly less time.  Joseph, who was 39 years old at the time the Israelites entered Egypt (cf. Gen. 41:29,30,46; 45:6), died at 110 years of age (50:22,26).  Thus, he lived 71 years beyond the time of the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt.  Also, the Egyptians did not enslave the Israelites until sometime after the death of Joseph (Ex. 1:6-14).  The significance of these facts, therefore, is that at least 71 years must be subtracted from the 400 years which some translate or interpret Moses as having said that the Israelites would be enslaved in Egypt (Gen. 15:13, NASB).  This yields a maximum of 329 years that the Israelites could have been enslaved in Egypt.  This shortfall is too much for the 400 years to be reckoned as a rounding off, since 329 years obviously rounds to 300 years, not 400.

Since 329 years falls short of 400 years by 71 years, and since 350 years falls short of 430 years by 80 years, in neither text, respectively (Gen. 15:13; Ex. 12:40), can Moses be referring to the length of time the Israelites were enslaved, or lived, in Egypt.  Therefore, the time references must be applied to something else.  In the case of the Genesis text (15:13), the only possibility left is the Israelites’ affliction, or oppression, by the Egyptians.

This conclusion infers, of course, that the oppression of the Israelites by the Egyptians began long before they were enslaved by the Egyptians, or even before they entered Egypt, and stretches back almost to the time when Abraham entered Canaan.  Indeed, beginning with Abraham’s entry into the land of Canaan, it is possible to trace a long history of oppression of Abraham and his descendants by the Egyptians.

When Abraham entered Egypt to seek refuge from a famine in Canaan, he so feared that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take his wife that she agreed with him to portray herself as his sister.  Indeed, Pharaoh took her into his house and would have apparently made her his wife if God had not intervened (Gen. 12:10-20).  It can hardly be denied that it is oppression to have one’s wife taken to become another man’s wife under threat of being murdered for her.

Hagar the Egyptian despised the barren Sarai after becoming pregnant by her husband.  Being able to bear Abraham the child Sarai was unable to bear him apparently led her to think of herself as supplanting Sarai (Gen. 16:1-4,5,9).

Yet, the affliction proper of the Israelites by the Egyptians began when Ishmael mocked his half-brother, Isaac, at the celebration of Isaac’s weaning (Gen. 21:8-10).  [In fact, shaving off 25 years from Paul’s 430 years (Gal. 3:16,17) to allow for the time between God’s promises to Abraham and the birth of Isaac (Gen. 12:4; 21:5), and then about another 5 years until Isaac was weaned (Gen. 21:8), leaves 400 years, which accords perfectly with God’s statement to Abraham (Gen. 15:13).]  Sarah correctly saw Ishmael’s mockery of Isaac as representative of the threat which he posed to her offspring and demanded that he be cast out and disinherited.  That it is not too much to say that Ishmael’s mockery may be reckoned as a kind of oppression is confirmed by the fact that Paul says Ishmael “persecuted” Isaac (Gal. 4:29).  Moreover, that Ishmael’s mockery counts as Egyptian oppression of the (early) Israelites is demonstrable by the observation that Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, was an Egyptian, thus making Ishmael half-Egyptian and, legally and practically, even more so, since he was disinherited by Abraham and expelled with his mother.

However, the foregoing observation is strengthened by the fact that Hagar had Ishmael married to an Egyptian, thus making his offspring three-quarters Egyptian (Gen. 21:21).  Therefore, it is of no consequence to this point whether the translation that Ishmael and his descendants “settled in defiance of his [brothers],” or that they settled “in the presence of his brethren” is adopted (Gen. 25:18, cf. NASB, KJV, et. al.).  This is because either translation comes to the same conclusoin, since God had prophesied that there would be hostility between the Ishmaelites and everyone around them, including the Israelites (Gen. 16:12).  There may, therefore, have been long, though unrecorded, conflict which involved oppression of the Israelites by the (Egypto-)Ishmaelites.

The oppression of the Israelites by the (Egypto-)Ishmaelites was continued and epitomized by the fact that the latter played a role in selling Joseph as a slave to the Egyptians (Gen. 37:25-28,36; 39:1).  The commerce between the Ishmaelites and the Egyptians was probably representative of the greater kinship they felt between themselves than any the Ishmaelites might have felt toward the Israelites.

The abuse of the Israelites at the hands of the Egyptians was perpetuated by the wife of Joseph’s Egyptian master, when she falsely accused him of making sexual advances toward her, resulting in his two-year imprisonment (Gen. 39:7ff; 41:1).

Even during Joseph’s rulership in Egypt, the Israelites were so despised by the Egyptians that they would not eat with them and ostracized them to the land of Goshen (Gen. 43:32; 46:34).

Later, the oppression of the Israelites by the Egyptians culminated in their national enslavement (Ex. 1:8ff).

It is also critical to differentiate between the second pair of words:  “sojourning” (mōshab) and “dwell/live” (yashab) in Moses’ reference to 430 years (Ex. 12:40,41).  “Sojourning” refers to a certain kind of “dwelling” or “living.”  A “sojourner” is one who lives (temporarily) in a place which does not belong to him and which, therefore, is not his home.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their earliest descendants were never more than “sojourners” in Canaan, though they lived there 215 years before their relocation to Egypt.  Thus, the Israelites’ “sojourning” includes, not only the time when they lived in Egypt, but also the time when they, or their ancestors, lived in Canaan.  This is because, during all those years when they lived in Canaan, they lived in a land which was not theirs.  This includes the time all the way back to Abraham’s entrance into Canaan.

This might seem remarkable to those who do not appreciate the key feature of the life of a sojourner, which remained the status of Abraham and his descendants until the time they entered, and left, Egypt.  Yet, also expressive of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s status as sojourners in Canaan was that they lived in tents (Heb. 11:8) and moved from place to place within Canaan.  Though they seem to have centered their lives at Hebron, or Mamre (Gen. 13:18; 35:27; 37:14), they also lived in other places, such as Gerar (Gen 20:1; 26:1,6,17) or Shechem (Gen. 33:18).

Further confirmatory of the fact that Abraham and his descendants remained sojourners until the Israelites conquered Canaan is that they never owned any land there.  Stephen stressed this when he said, “And [God] gave [Abraham] no inheritance in [Canaan], not even a foot of ground …” (Acts 7:5). Thus, not even in Abraham’s lifetime did any land in Canaan belong to him.  [The cave and field of Machpelah, which might be thought to be an exception to this, are not, since they were only a burial plot, not living space (Gen. 23:9; 49:29,30; 50:13).]

This is so true that the Scriptures repeatedly refer to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as “sojourners” in Canaan, no matter how long they lived there (Gen. 17:8; 20:1; 21:23,34; 26:3; 35:27; 36:7; 37:1).  When Isaac blessed Jacob upon the latter’s departure from Canaan, he referred to it as the land of Jacob’s “sojourning” (28:4).  That the Israelites were conscious of the fact that Egypt was to be only a temporary refuge and that Canaan was ultimately to be the home of their people is indicated by their reference, upon entering Egypt, to having come only to “sojourn” there (47:4).  Furthermore, when God finally came to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and give them the land of Canaan (Ex. 3:8,17), He said that it had been the land in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had “sojourned” (6:4).  That Abraham himself was remarkably sensitive to his sojourner status in Canaan, even after 62 years of living there (cf. Gen. 12:4; 17:17; 23:1), is reflected in the reference to himself as a “sojourner” there, saying to the sons of Heth when he purchased Machpelah, “I am a stranger and a sojourner among you …” (vss. 3,4).  As a final cap to these observations, it should be noted that the writer of Hebrews says that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob “… sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country …” (11:9) and that “all these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance …” (vs. 13).

Thus, coming to a full recognition and appreciation of the fact that the “sojourning” of the Israelites, includes not only their time in Egypt, but extends all the way back to the time when Abraham first entered the land of Canaan resolves the apparent difficulty, exacerbated by the more modern but less careful English translations, between the 430-year references of Moses (Ex. 12:40,41, KJV) and Paul (Gal. 3:16,17).  It was altogether appropriate that Moses would cite the total number of years of the Israelites’ sojourning at the very time when God was leading them out of Egypt to give them the land of Canaan, thus bringing that long sojourning to an end.  This does not escape the reader who carefully interprets one Exodus text (12:40) in the light of another (6:4-8) several chapters earlier but in the same general context:  “And I also established My covenant with [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned.  … And I have remembered My covenant.  … I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. … And I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession; I am the LORD.’”  Indeed, it would have amounted to a crucial oversight of reckoning in one of the basic themes of Genesis and Exodus for Moses not to have counted the additional 215 years which intervened God’s promise to Abraham and the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt as part of their “sojourning.”

Conclusion

Therefore, the 430-year sojourning of the Israelites (Ex. 12:40,41; Gal. 3:16,17) is to be halved into two precisely 215-year periods, with the first half being spent in Canaan and the second half being spent in Egypt.  How long the Israelites were enslaved during the second half in Egypt can only be narrowed to sometime between the death of Joseph, 71 years after the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt, and the birth of Moses, 80 years before they left Egypt (cf. Ex. 1:6ff; 7:7).  In terms of the 430-year period of their sojourning, this means that their enslavement occurred sometime between 144 and 80 years before the Exodus.

Thus, what begins as an examination of a troublesome and seemingly irresolvable conflict between Moses and Paul, such as might have been expected of a purely human effort, turns out to be, instead, yet another magnificent example of the meticulous accuracy of Scripture.  An uninspired Paul might have been expected to cite 645 years (Gal. 3:16,17), instead of 430 years, to avoid a conflict with Moses (Ex. 12:40,41).  Therefore, studies such as this can be critical to building faith in the reliability of the Bible as God’s word.  Indeed, it is impossible to account for such accuracy apart from the conclusion that the Scriptures are really the word of God.  The Bible is divinely inspired, right down to its numbers.

Appendix

To consider the objections to the proposition that the Israelites lived in Egypt only 215 years, instead of 430, is to enter the realm of speculations, inferences, assumptions, and possibilities.  (This is not to say that some assumptions are not necessary with a 215-year view, but the 430-year view requires much more reliance, and that of a more tenuous nature, on assumptions.)  These objections to a 215-year sojourn essentially come down to numbers:  “Could the Israelites have multiplied from about 70-75 persons upon their relocation to Egypt (Gen. 46:27; Acts 7:14) to perhaps 2,000,000 persons (Ex. 12:37) upon their departure from Egypt in just 215 years, especially given only four generations from Levi to Moses (Ex. 6:16-20)?”

Some consider it virtually impossible for the Israelites, and especially the Levites, to have been so prolific in so short a span of time.  Therefore, they favor doubling the time the Israelites sojourned in Egypt to 430 years in order to give them plenty of time to multiply to such numbers. 

Of course, they must find a way to harmonize the Scriptures with this extension in time.  One way to do this is to begin counting Paul’s 430 years (Gal. 3:16,17) with the reiteration of the promise to Jacob (Gen. 46:1ff) instead of the original issuance of the promise to Abraham (Gen. 12:1ff).  Regardless of whether this is unreasonable, there are other difficulties which prove to be much more challenging, if not insuperable, to proponents of the 430-year sojourn.

There are three major factors to consider in determining whether the Israelites in Egypt could have multiplied from 70-75 persons to a population of 2,000,000 people [a projection from the fact that there were 600,000 adult males among them when they left Egypt (Ex. 12:37)] in just 215 years:  (1) the number of generations intervening the Israelites’ entrance into Egypt and the Exodus, (2) the number of sons in each generation, and (3) the age of marriage and fatherhood.

The Number of Generations

The long-sojourn (i.e., 430-year) advocates find it absolutely necessary to resort to some especially tenuous assumptions in order to defend their theory.  These assumptions essentially involve increasing the number of generations between those Israelites who entered Egypt and those who left it.  They do this by claiming that the Israelite population increase demands it.

The problem for them here is that they run directly into a rock wall of immovable and insurmountable Scriptural affirmations.  The claim that Biblical genealogies contain omissions is made too glibly.  This is not to deny that some genealogies contain omissions (e.g., Matt. 1:11; cf. 2 Kgs. 23:34; 24:6), but they are not as frequent and consequential as some might claim them to be.  A careful study of Biblical genealogies, particularly those of the Israelites during their sojourn in Egypt, generally shows them to be reliably consistent.  This should not be surprising.  The very purpose of genealogies is to prove ancestry by tracing generational steps back to a certain forebear.  Therefore, frequent multi-generational gaps in genealogies would defeat their purpose.  (For example, of how much value to a breeder would an animal’s pedigree be if its bloodline contained major omissions?)  Hence, genealogies should be assumed to be complete, unless there is explicit evidence that they are not, and this is all the more true in those instances when multiple genealogies of the same persons correspond perfectly to one another.

To emphasize this point further, when omissions in genealogies do occur, they are known to contain them for the very reason that the genealogies do not agree either with one another or with other Scriptural information.  Otherwise, it can be nothing more than an assumption to claim that there are gaps in a genealogy.  This is the great weakness in the claims of the long-sojourn advocates.  They cannot point to inconsistencies in multiple genealogies of the same persons.  Therefore, their claims are not based on anything the text of Scripture explicitly says.  Instead, their claims are inferred from their belief that there are too few generations in the genealogies of the Israelites, as they are given, to allow for such a vast increase in population in just 215 years.  While this consideration might not be the only one which drives them to advocate a 430-year sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, it may well be the primary one.

However, if any gaps exist, they are in the logic of those who claim that because some gaps are ascertainable in some Biblical genealogies, then this justifies assuming, not only without any textual evidence, but also against all textual evidence, that there are also gaps in the genealogies of the Israelites in Egypt.

Now, turning to the Israelite genealogies of the Egyptian sojourn, what evidence do they provide as to whether they contain omissions?  What is found is that no less than five times (Ex. 6:16-20; Num. 3:19-27; 26:58,59; 1 Chr. 6:2,3,18; 23:12,13) the Scriptures cite four generations from Levi to Moses.  Among these, there is not a single deviation which would support the supposition that some generations were simply skipped.  Furthermore, they conform perfectly to the fact that God told Abraham that his descendants would come out of the land of their oppression in the fourth generation (Gen. 15:13,16).  Thus, in addition to failing to offer affirmative evidence for their claim, the long-sojourn advocates must neutralize evidence which is dispositive to it.  In attempting the latter, they only make their claim seem more incredible.

First, in order to nullify the threat which “the fourth generation” represents to their claim, they attempt a redefinition of “generation” by offering “a century” as its meaning, despite the fact that the Scriptures consistently count a “generation” as “a reproductive degree or step in a line of biological descent.”  This definition not only conforms to this case (Gen. 15:16; Ex. 6:16-20) but also to others in Scripture (cf. 2 Kgs. 10:30 – 15:12; Job 42:16; Matt. 1:1-17).

Of course, “generation” is sometimes defined as “a group of people living at the same time” and is suggestive of a certain time frame (cf. Matt. 16:4; 24:34).  Thus, people speak of “the greatest generation,” the “baby-boomer generation,” or “generation X.”  Yet, since the interval between parents’ own birth, and that of their children, may vary widely, it is difficult to put a definite numerical value on the length of a “generation.”  Perhaps the closest the Bible comes to giving a numerical value to “generation” is 40 years (cf. Num. 32:13).  Thus, if the long-sojourn advocates even take note of the “fourth generation” and try to counter it by offering that a “generation” equals 100 years, not only is such a claim a clearly tendentious and self-interested one (cf. Gen. 15:13), but there is little, if any, Biblical evidence which they can offer for it.

The long-sojourn advocates also do little, if anything, with the fact that the death ages of Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses are given (Ex. 6:16-20; Deut. 34:7).  This information is unique.  In only one other case is the death age of one of Jacob’s sons given (Gen. 50:22).  In no other case are the death ages of a son (Levi), grandson (Kohath), great-grandson (Amram), and great-great-grandson (Moses) in a single line of descent given.  The prominence of this Levitical line in God’s plan obviously accounts for this information.  Yet, it relegates this, and other such, information to a useless status if, due to the supposed omission of multiple generations, it cannot be considered for the purpose of gaining some conception of the lapse of time.

Yet, so insistent are the long-sojourn advocates that the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt be expanded to 430 years by taking into account a supposed compression of the Levitical genealogical information that some go so far as to assert that the Amram’s in three sets of two consecutive verses (Num. 26:58,59; 1 Chr. 6:2,3; 23:12,13), and in one reference separated by only one verse (Ex. 6:18-20), must be two different people.  Of course, it is not unusual for a descendant to be given the name of his father or ancestor, but to compel this to be done in this context without the reader first having been given any reason to suspect that this is the case would require evidence of an incontrovertible nature.

Other long-sojourn advocates tweak this assertion by simply offering that Amram and Jochebed were not the direct progenitors of Moses and Aaron but only (distant) ancestors, and this despite the fact that Amram four times (Ex. 6:20; Num. 26:59; 1 Chr. 6:3; 23:13) and Jochebed twice (Ex. 6:20; Num. 26:59) are named the parents of Moses and Aaron.  Yet, one might wonder why it was important to Moses to give the names of his distant and unremarkable ancestors but remain consistently mum as to the names of his parents who courageously hid him as an infant (Ex. 2:1ff; Heb. 11:23), especially in a context which, otherwise and admittedly, cites direct parent-child relationships.  [Consistent with this, Moses proceeds to give the names of Aaron’s immediate sons and grandson (Ex. 6:23,25; cf. Lev. 10:1,2,12; Num. 25:7ff).]  There are rare instances of this claim elsewhere (e.g., Gen. 46:15,18,22,25), but there the intervening generations are named, thus showing that the phenomenon is really just a summary expression obviously crafted to indulge the interests of brevity.

So, what is the evidence supporting this condensation of genealogies by a supposedly implicit omission of generations?  It is essentially an extrapolation from longer contemporary genealogies.  In other words, if there are other lines of descent which contain more generations during the time of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, then this is taken as evidence that the Levitical line also had them but omitted naming them.  [Of course, this raises the question as to why it was important to provide more, if not all, names in the generations of other lines of descent but not important to do so for the line of descent which would undoubtedly have been considered the most important by virtue of being that of the exclusive Levitical priesthood (cf. Ezra 2:62).]

In the first place, the long-sojourn advocates are trading in “unknowables” to make this claim, since very few lines of descent can be traced from a tribal father (i.e., one of the 12 sons of Jacob) all the way down to a descendant known to have lived at the time of the Exodus.  This missing information is critical to their claim that the Israelites regularly omitted generations from their genealogies between the entrance into Egypt and the Exodus.

In reality, only a very small sliver of genealogical information about the Israelites is provided in Scripture.  If the Israelites who left Egypt numbered in the millions, this means that, even if thousands of their names were given, those names would represent only a very small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of adult male Israelites who left.

Yet, all that the short-sojourn advocates need in order to answer a basic objection of the long-sojourn advocates to a short-sojourn are reasonable possibilities.  The genealogical information which is provided in the Scriptures amply provides them.  This is to say that both long-sojourn, and short-sojourn, advocates would agree that the genealogical information which is provided for the Israelites during their sojourn in Egypt offers a credible basis for believing that more than four generations of Israelites typically intervened their entrance into Egypt and the Exodus.

Now, it might be anticipated that assuming the possibility of additional generations where none are given in Scripture might be decried by the long-sojourn advocates as doing what short-sojourn advocates deny them when they assume the omission of additional generations from Levi’s genealogy, for instance.  Yet, there are two important differences.  First, long-sojourn advocates make the mistake of assuming additional generations, not where they could be, but where they could not be.  The Bible is a veritable “black hole” for all but a very small part of Israelite lineages, and particularly that during the Egyptian sojourn.  If the Scriptures provide enough information to infer a reasonable possibility of more than four generations between the entry of the Israelites into Egypt and their departure, it is permissible to make such an assumption, as long as it is not an unwarranted assumption which does violence to the Scriptures.  However, this is precisely the problem for long-sojourn advocates who try to squeeze additional generations into the genealogy between Levi and Moses.  The Scriptures do not allow it, and neither is it necessary.

Second, long-sojourn advocates assume additional generations for the purpose of supporting a prior assumption:  that the Israelite sojourn in Egypt was 430 years long, rather than 215 years long.  Yet, a 430-year sojourn is the very proposition they are seeking to establish.  Therefore, it is an unproven assumption, and a problematical one at that.  The Scriptures might allow the making of reasonable assumptions, but this does not prove the prior assumption of a 430-year sojourn for the Israelites in Egypt.  This is simply because additional generations for the Israelites do not require the conclusion that they must have sojourned in Egypt 430 years, as long as it can be shown that additional generations could also be accommodated by a 215-year sojourn.  Instead, the long-sojourn advocates involve themselves in circular reasoning, which might best be conveyed in the following imaginary conversation:

Long-sojourn advocate:  “The Israelites sojourned in Egypt for 430 years.”

Short-sojourn advocate:  “How do you know that?”

LSA:  “Because there are omissions in the genealogy of Levi.”

SSA:  “How do you know that?”

LSA:  “Because the four generations of the genealogy of Levi given for the Israelite sojourn in Egypt cannot be stretched over 430 years.”

However, a supreme irony in all of this is that the “missing” generations are not necessarily missing.  There are direct textual affirmations that more than four generations emerged among the Israelites during their Egyptian sojourn.  This is to say that the prophecy that the Israelites would leave the land of their oppression “in the fourth generation” (Gen. 15:16) only means that “the fourth generation” after their entry into Egypt would still be living and active, if not dominant, at the time of the Exodus, not that no more generations would have emerged after it during their time in Egypt.

This observation relieves a primary difficulty in conceiving of the Israelites as having grown from a population of about 70 to perhaps one of about 2,000,000 in just 215 years of four generations.  In fact, there was a wider numerical range of generations, and apparently typically more than four, among family lines over this 215-year period.  It should be expected that, since different family lines produce new generations at different rates, within the same time frame some had more, or less, than others.

This raises the question:  “Which four generations are to be counted for the purpose of confirming the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to bring his descendants out of the land of their oppression in the fourth generation?” (Gen. 15:16).  After all, there were already four generations represented among the Israelites who descended into Egypt (Gen. 46:8ff).  Judah and Asher were grandfathers and had a living father, Jacob.  Also, Kohath, the son of Levi, had been born by the time the Israelites entered Egypt, but, beginning with him, five generations can be counted through Amram, Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas, who seems to have been born before the Israelites departed from Egypt (Ex. 6:25).  The same phenomenon is encountered in counting the generations in other family lines.  In a nation which grew to 2,000,000 or more people, whether within 215 years or 430, it should not be expected that the youngest individuals of any family line among them were always the fourth degree, or generation, of descent from their ancestors who originally settled in Egypt.

The question as to how to count these four generations of prophecy seems best answered by counting the generations beginning with that of those who led the Israelites into Egypt and ending with that of those who led them out.  In fact, this seems to be the very reason why the Exodus narrative focuses on the genealogies of the first three of Jacob’s sons but ends abruptly with the Levitical line, that of Moses and Aaron, to which it also gives inordinately extensive attention (Ex. 6:13-27).  This text begins and ends with the observation that Moses and Aaron were the ones whom God commanded to bring the Israelites out of Egypt (vss. 13,26,27; cf. Mic. 6:4).

In a 215-year sojourn for the Israelites in Egypt, an 80-year-old Moses at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 7:7) would have been born in year 135 of the sojourn, which was beyond the time of the death of his grandfather, Kohath (cf. Gen. 46:11; Ex.  6:18).  It is impossible to determine how old Amram, the son of Kohath, was when his son, Moses, was born, but since Moses was 80 years old at the time of the Exodus, if Amram was even still alive at the time of the Exodus, he and members of his generation, the third generation, would surely have been in their dotage and approaching death.  There is no indication that Amram or his brothers, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel (Ex. 6:18) were alive, much less active, at the time of the Exodus.  However, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, who were in their eighties at the time of the Exodus and in their prime by the standards of the time, were active leaders in the Exodus.  They and Korah (Ex. 6:21), Dathan, and Abiram (Num. 16:1; 26:5-9), who challenged Moses for leadership of the Israelites (Num. 16), and Mishael and Elzaphan, whom Moses ordered to remove the bodies of his nephews, Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10:1-4; cf. Ex. 6:18-22), were all members of the fourth generation.  Thus, the expression, “in the fourth generation” (Gen. 16:15), properly describes Moses’ generation, whose members were the leading, dominant generation at the time of the Exodus.

At the other end, the leaders with whom the counting of generations should begin, by virtue of their having brought the Israelites into Egypt, are Jacob’s twelve sons.  [Jacob was an old man (Gen. 47:9,28), having only seventeen years of his 147-year-life yet to live, and his sons were responsible for bringing him into Egypt (Gen. 45:13,19).]  Furthermore, that the counting of these four generations should begin with Jacob’s sons, rather than Jacob himself, seems confirmed by the fact that it actually does begin with Jacob’s sons in the Levitical genealogy of the Exodus narrative (Ex. 6:14ff).  By this reckoning, then, four generations of Israelites may be counted between their entry into Egypt and their exit from it:  Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (or Aaron).  This explains the intense focus on the delineation of these four generations in the heart of the Exodus narrative (Ex. 6:16-20).  It demonstrates the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 15:16).

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the actual question which serves as the occasion for this study is whether the Israelites lived in Egypt just 215 years (instead of 430), not how many generations they produced while in Egypt.  The number of Egypt-born generations is relevant only because the long-sojourn advocates claim that more generations than the Bible records were needed to produce at least 2,000,000 Israelites who supposedly took part in the Exodus and that, furthermore, 215 years would not allow for what is thought to have been the required number of generations.

However, it need not be thought that the 215 years when the Israelites were in Egypt saw the production of no more than four generations.  Beginning with the tribal fathers and counting to the youngest generation of Israelites to leave Egypt, one finds that, where such information is available, there were typically, if not always, more.

The veracity of this assertion can be demonstrated by beginning to count generations from figures who were known to have had a part in the Exodus all the way back to their respective tribal fathers, who entered Egypt.  Thus, the ancestry of Dathan (Num. 16:1ff) can be traced back through Eliab and Pallu to Reuben (Num. 26:5-9) in just four generations.  At the other extreme, the ancestry of Joshua can be traced back through Nun, Elishama, Ammihud, Ladan, Tahan, Telah, Reseph, and Ephraim to Joseph in ten generations (Gen. 41:50-52; 1 Chr. 7:22-27).  [Yet, helping to close the gap between Dathan and Joshua is the fact that Dathan, it seems, was old enough at the time of the Exodus to have children and grandchildren (Num. 16:27), and Ephraim was no more than seven years old (Gen. 41:34-36,50-52; 45:6) at the time of the Israelites’ entry into Egypt, and Joshua, at the Exodus, is described as “a young man” (Ex. 33:11).]

Furthermore, the ancestry of Phinehas (Num. 25:7ff) can be traced back through Eleazar, Aaron, Amram, and Kohath to Levi (Ex. 6:16-25) in six generations.  The ancestry of Zelophehad (Num. 27:1-3) can be traced back through Hepher, Gilead, Machir, and Manasseh to Joseph (Num. 26:28-33; 27:1) in six generations.  It is possible to walk back multiple family lines of Judah from the Exodus.  Thus, the ancestry of Bezalel, the tabernacle craftsman (Ex. 31:1ff), can be traced back through Uri, Hur, Caleb, Hezron, and Perez to Judah (Ex. 31:2; Num. 26:20,21;1 Chr. 2:18-20) in seven generations.  The ancestry of Nahshon (Num. 1:7; 2:3) can be traced back through Amminadab, Ram, Hezron and Perez to Judah (Ruth 4:18-20) in six generations.  The ancestry of Achan (Josh. 7:1ff) can be traced back through Carmi, Zabdi, and Zerah to Judah (Josh. 7:1,16-18; 1 Chr. 2:7) in five generations.  Among these seven family lines, this yields a total of 44 generations, or an average of 6.285 generations per line.  If the two exceptional family lines of Reuben and Joseph, comparatively short and lengthy, respectively, are eliminated, this leaves for the remaining ones an exact average of six generations apiece.

Of course, the usefulness of this information is limited by the fact that the Scriptures do not provide enough information to determine whether these seven family lines are truly representative of the Israelite nation as a whole during the time of their sojourn in Egypt.  To more fully appreciate this, it might be helpful to compare the genealogical tables in Genesis (46:8-27) and First Chronicles (chs. 2-8).  Such a comparison offers a better picture of how Israelite genealogies developed, or might have developed, during the Egyptian sojourn, since the Genesis table provides a genealogical record of the Israelites at the time they went into Egypt while the First Chronicles tables provide a genealogical record for the time beyond that point.  (Of course, Moses also lived after the Exodus, but the genealogical information he provides is not nearly as extensive as that of First Chronicles.)

The genealogical information in First Chronicles essentially incorporates that given in Genesis (46:8-27), though there are some major, and potentially very consequential, differences between the two.  First, while the genealogical information in Genesis is complete, that in First Chronicles is not.  Indeed, it is very, very sketchy, and this is extremely significant, since it does not answer questions about what was happening, in terms of reproductive rates, in the vast majority of family lines among the Israelites during their Egyptian sojourn.  There are only “snapshots” here and there of what could have been happening.

For instance, it is only First Chronicles which provides a full genealogical line for Joshua all the way back to his tribal father, Joseph, and shows that there were ten generations involved.  Other family lines of other tribes contained anywhere from four to seven generations.  Which ones were the “norm” and which ones were the “exception”?  Was it typical of Israelite family lines for the Egyptian sojourn to contain ten generations or something closer to four?  There is no way to know the answers to these questions.

Darkening the picture even more is the fact that, for some reason, the tribes of Zebulun, Gad, and Dan are left out altogether from the genealogies given in First Chronicles.  Therefore, it cannot be known whether Zebulun, Gad, and Dan, like their brother, Levi, in the case of his daughter Jochebed, (Num. 26:59), had additional children after they began living in Egypt.

In order to give some sense of how faulty projections and assumptions based on such skimpy information could be, it is enlightening to compare the numbers of the Israelites, tribe by tribe, at the time of their descent into Egypt and then at the time of the Exodus.  The figures below are taken from Genesis (46:8-27) and Numbers (ch. 1; 3:39).  The tribes are ranked in descending order:

No. of Male Descendants* at Entry into Egypt    No. at the Exodus

Benjamin:           10                                                                           Judah:  74,600

Gad:                        7                                                                            Joseph*:              72,700

Asher:                     6                                                                            Dan:                       62,700

Simeon:                 6                                                                            Simeon:               59,300

Judah:                     5                                                                            Zebulun:              57,400

Issachar:                4                                                                            Issachar:              54,400

Reuben:                 4                                                                            Naphtali:              53,400

Naphtali:                4                                                                            Reuben:               46,500

Levi:                         3                                                                            Gad:                      45,650

Zebulun:                3                                                                            Asher:                   41,500

Joseph:                  2                                                                            Benjamin:           35,400

Dan:                         1                                                                            Levi*:                    22,000

 

[*Note:  The figure given for the tribe of Joseph is a combination of those given in Numbers for the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim.  Also, the figures for the tribe of Levi include all male descendants from one month old, while those from the other tribes include only those males from twenty years old.]

This chart encapsulates and expresses the difficulties involved in trying to project the numbers of a population at the end of a period from what they are at its beginning.  To summarize the results of this comparison, they may be divided into three categories of high, moderate, and low correspondence.

                High:                      Simeon, Naphtali, Reuben, and Issachar

                Moderate:          Judah and Levi

                Low:                      Benjamin, Dan, Gad, Joseph Asher, and Zebulun

From this categorization of the results, it may be noted that only a third of the tribes exhibit high correspondence (i.e., their population ranking at the Exodus reflects what it was at the entry into Egypt) and, yet, half of the tribes exhibit low correspondence.  In particular, the tribes in this last category essentially flipped their ranking positions during the Egyptian sojourn.  Dan and Benjamin are particularly noteworthy in this respect.  Though Dan had only one descendant at the time of his descent into Egypt, he had the third highest number of descendants among the tribes of Israel at the Exodus.  On the other hand, Benjamin, who had ten descendants when he descended into Egypt, had the second-lowest number of descendants at the Exodus.

All of this is simply to say that what the relative population numbers for the tribes of Israel at the Exodus were is not what one might have projected them to be based on what they were at the time of their entry into Egypt.  Much was happening, in terms of rates of reproduction, which one obviously could not have expected among the populations of the twelve tribes of Israel during their Egyptian sojourn.  The foregoing exercise stresses the impossibility of assuming or predicting reproductive rates among the Israelites of the Egyptian sojourn and that long-sojourn advocates who make claims about such matters as if they were practically certain of them do so without adequate evidence to warrant such certainty.

Long-sojourn advocates might wish to turn these observations on short-sojourn advocates to claim that neither should the latter be allowed to make assumptions.  It is true that specific and firm assumptions should not be made where there is not enough information to support them.  Yet, this really describes what long-sojourn advocates do, not what the short-sojourn advocates do.  It is only necessary for the latter, by considering the sampling of information which is available about the number of Israelite generations produced during the Egyptian sojourn, to demonstrate the possibilities, and this, only to counter the claims of impossibilities by the long-sojourn advocates.

For this, the sampling of Scriptural information available on this matter is very valuable and, to that extent, is supportive of the short-sojourn.  It shows that six-seven generations among the family lines of the Israelites during their sojourn in Egypt cannot be regarded as usual and that as many as ten generations, if not common, was possible.

The Number of Sons

Long-sojourn advocates might also attempt to discredit the short-sojourn by arguing that the latter would require an unrealistically high average number of male births in too short a time to accommodate the growth of a nation having 600,000 adult males (Ex. 12:37).  Here, again, the evidence of the possibilities is overlooked by the long-sojourn advocates.

Examples such as that of Abraham, who had only one son apiece by Hagar and Sarah, and Isaac, who had only two sons, might lure Bible students into thinking that such small-size families, with few sons, was the norm.  Indeed, by the time of Jacob’s relocation to Egypt with his family, Reuben had had four sons, Simeon six, Judah five, Issachar four, Zebulun three, Gad seven, Asher four, Joseph two, Dan one, Naphtali four, and Benjamin ten (Gen. 46:8-27).  This is a total of 53 sons among the twelve brothers, or an average of almost 4.5 apiece.

These numbers might seem to discourage a short-sojourn view, but it cannot be stressed enough that a major problem in drawing information from the genealogies is the extreme sketchiness of that information.  For example, even Levi’s lineage, despite being perhaps the most extensive in Scripture, is not carried out fully more than two generations.  This is to say that, for Levi’s lineage, a full accounting of the number of sons is given only for him and his three sons.  Hence, among his three sons, Gershon had two sons (Ex. 6:17), Kohath four (vs. 18), and Merari two (vs. 19).  The number and names of Gershon’s grandsons by his two sons are not given.  However, Mahli, one of Merari’s two sons, had two sons, one of whom, Eleazar, had no sons (1 Chr. 23:21,22).  Mushi, Merari’s other son, had three sons (vs. 23; 24:30).  Among Kohath’s four sons, Amram had two (Ex. 6:20), Izhar three (Ex. 6:21), Hebron four (1 Chr. 23:19), and Uzziel perhaps as many as five (Ex. 6:22; 1 Chr. 23:20; 24:24,25).  Of the two sons of Amram, Moses had two sons (1 Chr. 23:15) and Aaron four sons (Ex. 6:23).  To Korah, one of Izhar’s three sons (1 Chr. 6:22), is attributed three sons (Ex. 6:24).  This is a total of 36 sons, or an average of three apiece among the twelve men who had sons.  Indeed, the descendants of Merari, one of the three sons of Levi, experienced something of a reproductive bottleneck at the level of the fourth generation, the same generation of which Moses and Aaron were members.  This fourth generation of the descendants of Merari is represented by only six men, one of whom had no sons (1 Chr.23:21,23; 24:26-30).  Thus, five men of the descendants of Merari, a son of Levi, had to expand to 6,200 males by the time of the Exodus (Num. 3:33,34).

As daunting as this might sound for a 215-year sojourn, numbers like this can be achieved either simply by adjusting the number of generations between an ancestor and the Exodus, or by adjusting the average number of sons for each male, or both.  For instance, it is known that there were other generations which intervened Merari’s six grandsons and the Exodus, when he had 6,200 descendants, for the leader of the Merarites at the time of the census at Mount Sinai following the Exodus was Zuriel the son of Abihail (Num. 3:35).  This is the only mention of either Zuriel or this Abihail.  Thus, they represent two additional generations in the family line of Merari.  Of course, this is not to argue that the descendants of Merari could have expanded from six males to 6,000 with just two additional generations, but it does argue that no family line during the 215-year period of the Egyptian sojourn has to be restricted to no more than four, or even six, generations.  Indeed, it has already been shown that Joseph’s descendants through Ephraim during this period produced ten generations, ending with that of Joshua the son of Nun (1 Chr. 7:20-27).

By this means, the feasibility of a family expanding from six males to 6,200 by the tenth generation of its founding father can be demonstrated with the Merarites.  If five of the six sons, who were the fourth generation from their forefather Levi, had an average of six sons apiece, then the fifth generation would consist of 30 males.  If the number of males in each successive generation were thus increased by a factor of six from the males of the previous generation, then the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations would total 180, 1,080, and 6,480 males, respectively.  By this process, there would be an excess of 280 Merarite males for the census at Mount Sinai (Num. 3:33,34), with two generations to spare by the standard of the ten-generation lineage of Joseph through Joshua. 

This same procedure can be used to achieve any of the required family, tribal, or national numbers of the census at Mount Sinai (Num. 1 – 4).  Some might complain that this is simply “playing at numbers” to achieve predetermined results.  In a sense, this is true, since the actual numbers cannot be known.  Yet, again, what is quite valuable and truthful about this mathematical exercise is that it demonstrates that reasonable possibilities are available to support a 215-year sojourn.  Unless long-sojourn advocates can definitely say that these numbers are impossible, or even unrealistic, then their objection falls flat.  Thus, the only onus of the short-sojourn advocates is to produce evidence to demonstrate the reasonable possibilities which exist to support their contention.

Furthermore, two critical points peculiar to the numbers for the tribe of Levi must be borne in mind.  First, even though the (early) lineage of Levi is probably the most extensive in Scripture and seems to be too small to offer much promise of achieving in 215 years the population of 22,000 assigned to the tribe of Levi in the Mount Sinai census (Num. 3:39), this tribe’s reproductive task was the least demanding, since it was the smallest of all the tribes by at least 10,000 males, coming in behind the tribe of Manasseh (Num. 1:35), the runner-up to this distinction.

Second, whereas the census arrived at the populations for all of the other tribes by counting their males from twenty years old and up (Num. 1:2,3), the males of the tribe of Levi were counted from one month old and up (Num. 3:15).  This twenty-year difference has the effect of adding another generation to the tribe of Levi for purposes of the census.  For instance, this gives Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron (Ex. 6:25), and those of his generation, plenty of time, not only to marry and have children, but also to have their numbers given for the tribe of Levi at the Mount Sinai census.

Of course, some might object that these calculations as to how the families and tribes of Israel might have arrived at their census populations by the time of the Exodus do not take into account the death rate.  Some Israelite males died during their sojourn in Egypt.  Also, some surely died prematurely due to disease, injury, or violence (cf. 1 Chr. 7:21,22), though there is no way, of course, of determining how many Israelite males died in this way during this time.  Yet, it need not be thought that this had anything more than a very minimal effect on their numbers.

On this point, the most significant cause of loss would have been their enslavement or Pharaoh’s decree to cast the Israelite males into the Nile River (Ex. 1:8-22), especially as both measures were designed to restrain their numerical growth but which, according to God’s providence, seems only to have increased it (Ex. 1:8-12).  God had promised Jacob that he would make of his descendants a great nation in Egypt (Gen. 46:3).  There is every reason to believe, then, that just as this promise provided that God would stimulate their reproductive rate, it also inhibited their death rate.

The attritional effect by which death of old age naturally restrains population growth might also be suggested as an obstacle to achieving such population figures in a 215-year sojourn.  However, this is a very minor difficulty, since the death rate, even if it eliminated the first three generations of males from the final count, would hardly put a dent in the total numbers at the time of the Exodus.  One reason for this is that Israelite males of that time tended to enjoy great longevity by modern standards.  For example, in one line of direct generational descent, that of Jacob through Moses, Jacob lived to be 147 (Gen. 47:28), Levi 137 (Exo. 6:16), Kohath 133 (vs. 18), Amram 137 (vs. 20), and Moses 120 (Deut. 34:7).  None of these males of five successive generations lived less than 120 years.  Thus, brevity of life span does not seem to have been a factor in suppressing early Israelite population growth over a 215-year period.

However, to appreciate this more fully, it might be assumed, for purposes of argument, that all the males in the first three Levite generations of a 215-year Egyptian sojourn died before the Exodus.  This means only the males from the fourth, or Moses’, generation forward would be counted in the Mount Sinai census.  All the Levite males who would have thus died could be named and counted:  Levi, Gershon, Kohath, Merari, Libni, Shimei, Amram, Izhar, Hebron, Uzziel, Mahli, and Mushi (Ex. 6:16-19).  As long as they had their sons before they died (and these all did), their deaths would subtract no more than a mere twelve from what would otherwise have been the final total of Levite males in the census at Mount Sinai.  The same could probably be said for the deaths of the first several generations of males in any Israelite family line, since a population does not start to achieve exponential figures until at least the fifth or sixth generation.

The power of the Israelite population to maintain its numbers, despite its death rate, once they reach a certain level is demonstrated by the nation of Israel as it wandered in the wilderness.  Even though the Israelites lost about 600,000 men during this time, they were practically all replaced as they died over those forty years, as can be seen from a comparison of the figures from the censuses taken at Mount Sinai and then in the plains of Moab (cf. Num. 1:45,46; 26:51).

However, to show that there could have been a sufficient number of generations available within a given time frame to produce a certain population is pointless unless it can be shown that each generation might have produced a certain average number of children, and not just children, but male children (for it was generally only males who were counted in genealogies and censuses).  Determining an answer to this question for the Israelites in Egypt is an even more daunting challenge, for the data on which to base such an answer is even slimmer than that regarding the number of generations they produced during this time.

Nevertheless, the information which can be gleaned from the genealogical information in the Pentateuch and First Chronicles reveals two facts which are highly important in answering key questions which are at the center of this study.  First, the Israelites were capable of explosive, even exponential, growth in a relatively short period of time.  Second, births among the Israelites were top-heavy with male children.  Both of these points lie in direct contradiction to the assertions of the long-sojourn advocates, who claim that it was practically impossible for the Israelites to have achieved a population of 600,000 adult males (Ex. 12:37) during a 215-year sojourn in Egypt.

Now, it might be alleged that the average of 4-6 sons per Israelite male which might be needed to achieve the population figures recorded for the Israelites in the Mount Sinai census is simply unrealistic and far-fetched, especially in the light of the relevant information which the Scriptures do provide in answer to this question.  Several responses defensive of the 215-year Egyptian sojourn may be made to this claim.  First, the assumption of an average of 4-6 sons per Israelite male should not be thought any more contrived and unwarranted than the alternative assumptions required by a 430-year sojourn.  These latter assumptions have already been considered.  They are simply Scripturally untenable.  Therefore, when the only two assumptions available are one which the Scriptures allow and one which the Scriptures (virtually) disallow, the former cannot be considered contrived.  To put this in the form of a question, if assumptions must be made, why should they not be assumptions which the Scriptures do support rather than those which they do not?

Second, God can make the “unrealistic” real.  This is simply to call attention to the role which God must have had in providentially orchestrating the fulfillment of His plans by means which might otherwise have been considered unlikely.  Since Biblical nations came from males and God had promised to make nations of Abraham (Gen. 22:17), Ishmael (Gen. 17:20; 25:12-16), Isaac (Gen. 25:23), Esau (Gen. 36:9-14), and Jacob (Gen. 46:3), it should be noted that there was an inordinately high ratio of males among their children.  No daughters are attributed to Abraham.  All eight of his named children, including Ishmael and Isaac, by his three wives were males (Gen. 25:1ff).  Isaac had only two children, but both were sons.  Esau has eight sons named in Scripture, and Ishmael has twelve.  Jacob had thirteen children by four wives, but only one of the thirteen was a daughter, Dinah (Gen. 46:8-25).

However, the discrepancy of males to females becomes much more extreme when one considers that, of the 54 grandchildren whom Jacob had at the time of his entry into Egypt, only one of them, Serah (Gen. 46:17), was a female.  He also had four great-grandchildren at this same time; they were all males.

This information might be summarized in order to create an appropriately emphatic impression of the historical dominance of males in Abraham’s lineages.  Among the 71 descendants which Jacob had at the time of his descent into Egypt, there were only two females among them!  If one were to add to this number the ten children of Abraham and Isaac, the ratio of males to females among them until Jacob’s descent into Egypt would increase to 81 to 2, or 40.5 sons to every daughter!  This is the ratio of male-to-female children one encounters when he considers the Messianic line and family over six generations (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Perez, Hezron) up to the time of Jacob’s descent into Egypt.  The correspondence between Abraham’s son, Ishmael, and his grandson, Jacob, in this matter is impressive:  both had twelve sons and one daughter.  Since there is only one daughter named among the twenty children of Ishmael [Mahalath (Gen. 28:9)] and Esau, if one were to add their children to this number, the ratio of sons to daughters would be 101 to 3, or about 34 to 1!  Indeed, beginning with the children of Abraham and proceeding through the children of his son, Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob, one must go through 20 sons before getting to a daughter, Dinah (Gen. 30:21).

None of these numbers involves assumptions.  They are what the Scriptures explicitly give.  [Reference is made to Esau’s “daughters” (Gen. 36:6), but it is unclear whether they are actually his daughters or daughters-in-law or granddaughters (cf. Gen. 37:35).]  They are hardly explicable as the outworking of natural odds in the production of the percentages of males or females born to humans, which always remains roughly 50/50.  Now, if God saw fit to produce such an extravagant dominance of males among the Israelites born during the 215-year period before they went down into Egypt, where He made them a great nation, why it should be thought an unwarranted contrivance to consider that He might have seen fit to produce among them a much less extravagant dominance of males in the process of actually making them a great nation in the next 215 years of their history?

Moreover, in more general Israelite history, startling instances of male dominance among children are known.  In addition to Jacob having twelve sons and his grandson, Benjamin, having ten (Gen. 46:10), Benjamin’s two sons, Bela had nine (1 Chr. 8:3-5), and Becher had ten (1 Chr. 7:8), and Benjamin’s grandson, Bilhan, had seven (1 Chr. 7:10).  So, the numbers of sons which the four generations of Jacob, Benjamin, Becher, and Bilhan had were 12, 10, 10, and 7 sons, respectively.

Also, Shimei, a Simeonite who might have been born by the time of the Exodus, had 16 sons and 6 daughters (1 Chr. 4:27).  Nor should it be forgotten that, later, among the judges, Gideon had 71 sons (Judg. 8:30,31), Ibzan had 30 sons and 30 daughters (12:8,9), and Abdon had 40 sons and 30 grandsons (vss. 13,14).

Now, it might be said that these instances are mentioned for the very reason that they are exceptional.  Yet, they may well be brought into consideration at this point for that very reason.  What is being asked of those who contemplate an increase of the Israelite population from 75 to millions in 215 years is a belief in a God capable of doing exceptional things when He needs to do exceptional things, and the examples imbue with a sense of reality the idea that God caused the male dominance among Israelite children necessary to explain the kind of population increase the Scriptures assign to the Israelites during a 215-year Egyptian sojourn.

Of course, the dominance of males among the children born to Israelites would have required the vast majority of them to marry non-Israelite women.  Yet, this would not have been usual.  For instance, all, or almost all, of the 69 males among Jacob’s descendants who entered Egypt would have had to marry outside their family.  Thus, both Judah and Simeon are specifically said to have married Canaanite women (Gen. 38:1,2; 46:10).  Assuming that the ethnic identities distinguish two different women, Moses’ first wife was a Midianite (Ex. 2:15-21) and his second a Cushite (Num. 12:1).  After the wilderness wanderings, the Israelites were allowed to keep the virgin Midianite women taken in battle as wives (Num. 31:14-18).  Foreign women, such as Rahab and Ruth, who became part of Jesus’ genealogy (Matt. 1:5), were assimilated among the Israelites (Josh. 6:25; Ruth 1:16).  In fact, the Law of Moses made provisions for Israelite males to marry foreign women taken captive in battle (Deut. 21:10-14).  It was only under the Law of Moses that the Israelites were forbidden to marry the native women of Canaan under ordinary circumstances (Deut. 7:1-3).  Thus, while it seems to have eventually become customary for Israelite men to marry women from within their families, if they were available (Ex. 6:20,23), there was nothing to prevent them from marrying foreign, or even Egyptian, women early on.

Also, while it seems to have become the general practice that women were identified with their husbands’ nations or families (Num. 36; Ruth 1:16), Israelite women who married foreigners might have been an exception.  The Israelites would have allowed the Shechemites to intermarry and become “one people” with them only on the condition that they be circumcised, or submit to assimilation (Gen. 34:16,22).  Sheshan, Judah’s descendant, who might have lived about the time of the Exodus, gave his daughter, Jerah, in marriage to an Egyptian, and the descendants of this union were apparently considered Israelites (1 Chr. 2:34ff).  Also, Caleb one of the better-known leaders among the Israelites, was a half-Kenizzite through his father, Jephunneh (Num. 32:12; cf. Gen. 15:19).  It is possible, therefore, that any intermarriage of Israelite women with foreigners, instead of being a loss to the Israelite population, might have produced a gain, if these sons-in-law and their children were retained among the Israelites.

Another phenomenon which might have accelerated the Israelite population growth in Egypt was the fact that, in some cases, their men had multiple wives, whether simultaneously or sequentially.  Thus, a certain Hezron, who apparently lived about the time of the Exodus, had a son by his second wife, whom he married after the death of his first wife, who had also borne him sons (1 Chr. 2:9,21).  Furthermore, Hezron’s son, Caleb, had three wives (vss. 18-20), and another son of Hezron, Jerahmeel, had two wives (vss. 25,26).  Each of these three men increased the total number of sons among their children by marrying again.

Early Marriage and Fatherhood

In contemplating the possibilities here, it is helpful, first of all, to establish a chronological sense of early Israelite history.  Jacob lived in Paddan-aram, or Haran (Gen. 27:43; 28:1,2), for twenty years (Gen. 31:38,41).  Since he worked for his father-in-law, Laban, for his first wife, Leah, for the first seven of those twenty years, Jacob married Leah with only thirteen of those years left (Gen. 29:13-30).  Thus, Jacob went into Paddan-aram alone and, after just thirteen years of marriage, departed with a family of seventeen persons (himself, four wives, and twelve children, including his daughter, Dinah).  Furthermore, given a year to account for human gestation and recovery from childbirth before another pregnancy, a year apiece must be further deducted from his last thirteen years in Paddan-aram for each of his first four sons by Leah (Gen. 39:31-35).  This means that Jacob’s first four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, could have been no more than, and probably were, 12, 11, 10, and 9 years of age, respectively, when Jacob left Paddan-aram.  (Since Jacob ultimately had four wives, the rest of his eight children who were born to him in Paddan-aram, including his daughter, Dinah, could have come from mothers whose pregnancies overlapped.)

Jacob’s son, Joseph, who was the last of his children to have been born in Paddan-aram, perhaps in the year that his father left there, was 39 years old when Jacob entered Egypt with his family.  [This is determinable by the fact that Joseph was 30 when he was presented to Pharaoh at the commencement of the seven years of abundance which Joseph prophesied for Egypt (Gen. 41:46).  Also, by the time Jacob arrived in Egypt from Canaan, the seven years of abundance had expired and Egypt had experienced two years of famine (Gen. 41:29,30; 45:6,11).]

Some rather interesting and informative conclusions can be drawn from these facts.  If it may be assumed that Joseph, who was born in Paddan-aram, was born in the year of his father’s departure from there and of his return to Canaan, this means that the longest that Jacob and any of his family could have lived in Canaan before relocating themselves to Egypt was 39 years.  Furthermore, if it may also be assumed that Benjamin, the last of Jacob’s children, was born to him within a year of his father’s return to Canaan, this means that all of Jacob’s children, from Reuben the oldest to Benjamin the youngest, must have ranged from 51 to 38 years of age.  (Since Joseph and Benjamin were born of the same mother, Rachel, then, if Joseph was 39 years old at the time of his family’s entry into Egypt, this means that Benjamin could have been no older than 38.)  Everything which happened in Jacob’s family in Canaan must have happened within the course of no more than 39 years.  Hence, the fact that Jacob and his family arrived in Canaan as seventeen persons and arrived in Egypt as 75 (Acts 7:14) represents more than a four-fold increase in family size in less than 40 years.  To summarize this information for purposes of emphasis, Jacob went from one person to 17 in 13 years and then from 17 to 75 persons in the next 39 years.

[Incidental information which can also be drawn from these facts but which might prove useful in forming a helpful chronological perspective is that, since Jacob was 130 years old when he entered Egypt (Gen. 47:9), deducting 59 years for the immediately intervening time he spent in Canaan and Paddan-aram means that he must have been about 71 years old at the time he arrived in Paddan-aram, 78 when he married Leah and Rachel, and 79 when he had his first child, Reuben.  On the other hand, if Jacob’s third son, Levi, was about 10 years old when he relocated with his family from Paddan-aram to Canaan, he must have been about 49 years old when he relocated with his family from Canaan to Egypt.  Since he was 137 years old when he died (Ex. 6:16), this would mean that he lived the last 88 years of his life in Egypt.  Since Joseph lived 71 years after his family’s entrance into Egypt (Gen. 50:26), this means that Levi outlived Joseph by about 17 years.  Furthermore, since the enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians began after Joseph’s death (Ex. 1:8ff), this also means that Levi could have lived to see the enslavement of his people by the Egyptians.  This, along with the fact that he lived the last 88 years of his life in Egypt, more than twice as long as he had lived in any other place, vis-ŕ-vis the fact that his father lived only the last 17 years of his life in Egypt, serve to support the claim that Levi and his brothers’ generation should be counted as the first of those four (cf. Gen. 15:16) to live in Egypt (cf. Gen. 15:16).]

The case of Judah is particularly instructive, if not startling, in this context.  If Judah could not have been more than 9 years old when he arrived in Canaan, then he could not have been more than 48 years old when he arrived in Egypt.  Yet, over the course of those 48 years, he had become a grandfather and, indeed, was old enough to have effectively become a great-grandfather.  This is because his own sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah, who were born in Canaan, had matured to the point that they were able to marry and have children.  However, because Judah had refused to give his youngest son to his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar, as a husband, she secretly arranged to become pregnant by him and, as a result, bore him the twin sons, Perez and Zerah, who, chronologically-speaking and according to the original plan, should have been his grandsons by one of his three older sons.  Furthermore, by the time Jacob’s family entered Egypt, Perez had himself become a father of two sons (Gen. 46:12).  Hence, three successive generations of men — Judah, Er, and Perez — had, within the course of the 48 years of Judah’s life, matured to the point that they were able to marry and produce children (Gen. 38).  This means that, when Judah, Er, and Perez were able to marry and produce children, they were, on average, just 16 years old!  Belying the idea that this must have been an aberration is the fact that this was true, not just of one man, but also of his son and (effectively) his grandson.

Jacob’s only other son who had grandsons upon the Israelite’s entry into Egypt was Asher (Gen. 46:17).  Since Leah gave her handmaid, Zilpah, Asher’s mother, to Jacob as a wife only after the birth of her first four children, when she saw that she had stopped conceiving (Gen. 29:35; 30:9-13), and Asher was Zilpah’s second child, Asher could have been no more than seven years old, at the most, when he left Paddan-aram with his family.  This means that he could have been no more than 46 years old at the time he entered Egypt.  Yet, Asher’s son, Beriah, was also a father of two sons, at that time.  This establishes that the maximum average age of Asher and his son, Beriah, at the time they became fathers was only 23.

It might also come as a surprise that Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob’s children, and who could have been no older than 38 at the time of his family’s entry into Egypt, had ten sons by that time (Gen. 46:21).  It is possible that he might have had multiple wives.  Otherwise, to have had this many sons by the time he was 38, his wife would have had to bear him a son at the rate of one every year, if she had her first son by him when he was just 28.  However, as seen, the fact that fatherhood could have come to a young man at that time while he was still in his teens allows the births of Benjamin’s ten sons to be spread out over 20-25 years (an arrangement, no doubt, much preferred by his wife).

Since Terah had his first son when he was seventy (Gen. 11:26), Abraham when he was 86 (Gen. 16:16), Isaac when he was 60 (Gen. 25:26), and Jacob when he was about 79, it is easy for the Bible student to think that such ages were the normal ages for men of that time to have their first children.  However, countering this thinking is the fact that, in Abraham’s genealogy in the generations immediately preceding his birth, Nahor had his son, Terah, when he was 29 (Gen. 11:24), Serug had a son when he was 30 (vs. 22), Reu when he was 32 (vs. 20), Peleg when he was 30 (vs. 18), Eber when he was 34 (vs. 16), Shelah when he was 30 (vs. 14), and Arpachshad when he was 35 (vs. 12).  If these were not these men’s first children, then they must have been even younger when their first children were born.  So, the relatively advanced ages of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the births of their first children are the ones which are seemingly contrary to the trend at the time.  Furthermore, the only reason that Abraham and Isaac were as advanced in age as they were when their first children were born is because their wives had been barren (Gen. 12:30; 25:21).  In any event, there is really no reason to think that Jacob’s sons and their descendants could not have been in their twenties or even their teens when they began having children.

This might come as sobering news to those who have thought that at least 40 must have been the normal age for an Israelite male living during the Egyptian sojourn to have had his first child and that, therefore, a 215-year Egyptian sojourn would not have provided enough time for the production of enough Israelite generations to raise the Israelite population into the millions.  In fact, it has been argued that the average of 21.5 years which results from dividing 215 years by the ten generations in the Egyptian sojourn of Joseph’s lineage through Ephraim is so young for the birth of a man’s first son that it renders the claim of a 215-year sojourn incredible.

In response to this it may be said that, first, in the light of the foregoing evidence, the idea that ten consecutive generations of men among the Israelites of this time would have their first child by the age of 22 is not at all incredible.  Second, Joseph’s genealogy through Ephraim of ten Egyptian sojourn generations is uniquely long in comparison with the evidence which is available for the length of other such lineages and, therefore, an aberration.  Third, the long-sojourn advocates have no explanation as to why the genealogy of Levi through Moses and Aaron would be condensed to four generations but the genealogy of Ephraim through Joshua would be expanded, perhaps fully, to ten generations.  Joshua’s genealogy, which contains some extremely obscure names, is surely not so much more crucial than that of Moses or Aaron, the father of Israel’s Levitical priesthood, that it needed to be given in full while Moses and Aaron’s genealogy could afford to be cut by several generations.  Indeed, the best explanation for the varying numbers of generations in each genealogy of the Egyptian sojourn is that, as should be expected over a 215-year period, Israelite generations simply emerged at different rates in different family lines.

Conclusion

Given the evidence regarding the number of generations, the number of sons, and the age of marriage and fatherhood among the Israelites during their Egyptian sojourn, there is no reason to assume that the length of their sojourn must be stretched from 215 years to 430 in order to accommodate population growth by the time of the Exodus.  Also, a 215-year sojourn seems confirmed by the enormous difficulties confronting the proposal of a 430-year Egyptian sojourn.

Bibliography:

A Commentary:  Critical, Experimental, and Practical, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, Volume I, pp. 318, 319.

Commentary on the Old Testament, Keil-Delitzsch, Volume I, pp. 469-471; Volume II, pp. 28-30.

Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason L. Archer, pp. 111, 112.

Hard Sayings of the Bible, Kaiser, Davids, F. F. Bruce, and Brauch, pp. 140-142.

 

Other Articles by Gary Eubanks

These Things Became Our Examples
The Pharisee Shield
Review of Radical Restoration Chapter 1
 Talking Code
If You Remain Silent - Intolerance of Controversy
Fathers, Divorce and Brethren
The Sunday Supper
Negative About Positivism

 

• Caffin, B.C. (1950), II Peter – Pulpit Commentary, H.D.M. Spence and Joseph Exell, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).

For Past Auburn Beacons go to: www.aubeacon.com/Bulletins.htm

Anyone can join the mailing list for the Auburn Beacon! Send your request to: larryrouse@aubeacon.com