9 And Jacob saith unto Pharaoh, `The days of the years of my sojournings `are' an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not reached the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their sojournings.'
who do not know the thing of the morrow; for what is your life? for it is a vapour that is appearing for a little, and then is vanishing;
Songs have been to me Thy statutes, In the house of my sojournings.
Hear my prayer, O Jehovah, And `to' my cry give ear, Unto my tear be not silent, For a sojourner I `am' with Thee, A settler like all my fathers.
Lo, handbreadths Thou hast made my days, And mine age `is' as nothing before Thee, Only, all vanity `is' every man set up. Selah.
And the days of Isaac are a hundred and eighty years,
Beloved, I call upon `you', as strangers and sojourners, to keep from the fleshly desires, that war against the soul,
for we have not here an abiding city, but the coming one we seek;
by faith he did sojourn in the land of the promise as a strange country, in tabernacles having dwelt with Isaac and Jacob, fellow-heirs of the same promise, for he was looking for the city having the foundations, whose artificer and constructor `is' God. By faith also Sarah herself did receive power to conceive seed, and she bare after the time of life, seeing she did judge Him faithful who did promise; wherefore, also from one were begotten -- and that of one who had become dead -- as the stars of the heaven in multitude, and as sand that `is' by the sea-shore -- the innumerable. In faith died all these, not having received the promises, but from afar having seen them, and having been persuaded, and having saluted `them', and having confessed that strangers and sojourners they are upon the earth, for those saying such things make manifest that they seek a country; and if, indeed, they had been mindful of that from which they came forth, they might have had an opportunity to return, but now they long for a better, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for He did prepare for them a city.
Thou turnest man unto a bruised thing, And sayest, Turn back, ye sons of men. For a thousand years in Thine eyes `are' as yesterday, For it passeth on, yea, a watch by night. Thou hast inundated them, they are asleep, In the morning as grass he changeth. In the morning it flourisheth, and hath changed, At evening it is cut down, and hath withered. For we were consumed in Thine anger, And in Thy fury we have been troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, Our hidden things at the light of Thy face, For all our days pined away in Thy wrath, We consumed our years as a meditation. Days of our years, in them `are' seventy years, And if, by reason of might, eighty years, Yet `is' their enlargement labour and vanity, For it hath been cut off hastily, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of Thine anger? And according to Thy fear -- Thy wrath? To number our days aright let `us' know, And we bring the heart to wisdom.
Remember, I pray Thee, what `is' life-time? Wherefore in vain hast Thou created All the sons of men? Who `is' the man that liveth, and doth not see death? He delivereth his soul from the hand of Sheol. Selah.
For, ask I pray thee of a former generation, And prepare to a search of their fathers, (For of yesterday we `are', and we know not, For a shadow `are' our days on earth.)
for sojourners we `are' before Thee, and settlers, like all our fathers; as a shadow `are' our days on the land, and there is none abiding.
and Barzillai `is' very aged, a son of eighty years, and he hath sustained the king in his abiding in Mahanaim, for he `is' a very great man; and the king saith unto Barzillai, `Pass thou over with me, and I have sustained thee with me in Jerusalem.' And Barzillai saith unto the king, `How many `are' the days of the years of my life, that I go up with the king to Jerusalem? A son of eighty years I `am' to-day; do I know between good and evil? doth thy servant taste that which I am eating, and that which I drink? do I hearken any more to the voice of singers and songstresses? and why is thy servant any more for a burden unto my lord the king?
And it cometh to pass, after these things, that Joshua son of Nun, servant of Jehovah, dieth, a son of a hundred and ten years,
And Moses `is' a son of a hundred and twenty years when he dieth; his eye hath not become dim, nor hath his moisture fled.
and also I have established My covenant with them, to give to them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings, wherein they have sojourned;
And Joseph dieth, a son of an hundred and ten years, and they embalm him, and he is put into a coffin in Egypt.
And these `are' the days of the years of the life of Abraham, which he lived, a hundred and seventy and five years; and Abraham expireth, and dieth in a good old age, aged and satisfied, and is gathered unto his people.
And Nahor liveth nine and twenty years, and begetteth Terah. And Nahor liveth after his begetting Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begetteth sons and daughters.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Genesis 47
Commentary on Genesis 47 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 47
Ge 47:1-31. Joseph's Presentation at Court.
1. Joseph … told Pharaoh, My father and my brethren—Joseph furnishes a beautiful example of a man who could bear equally well the extremes of prosperity and adversity. High as he was, he did not forget that he had a superior. Dearly as he loved his father and anxiously as he desired to provide for the whole family, he would not go into the arrangements he had planned for their stay in Goshen until he had obtained the sanction of his royal master.
2. he took some of his brethren—probably the five eldest brothers: seniority being the least invidious principle of selection.
4. For to sojourn … are we come—The royal conversation took the course which Joseph had anticipated (Ge 46:33), and they answered according to previous instructions—manifesting, however, in their determination to return to Canaan, a faith and piety which affords a hopeful symptom of their having become all, or most of them, religious men.
7. Joseph brought in Jacob his father—There is a pathetic and most affecting interest attending this interview with royalty; and when, with all the simplicity and dignified solemnity of a man of God, Jacob signalized his entrance by imploring the divine blessing on the royal head, it may easily be imagined what a striking impression the scene would produce (compare Heb 7:7).
8. Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?—The question was put from the deep and impressive interest which the appearance of the old patriarch had created in the minds of Pharaoh and his court. In the low-lying land of Egypt and from the artificial habits of its society, the age of man was far shorter among the inhabitants of that country than it had yet become in the pure bracing climate and among the simple mountaineers of Canaan. The Hebrews, at least, still attained a protracted longevity.
9. The days of the years of my pilgrimage, &c.—Though a hundred thirty years, he reckons by days (compare Ps 90:12), which he calls few, as they appeared in retrospect, and evil, because his life had been one almost unbroken series of trouble. The answer is remarkable, considering the comparative darkness of the patriarchal age (compare 2Ti 1:10).
11. Joseph placed his father and his brethren … in the best of the land—best pasture land in lower Egypt. Goshen, "the land of verdure," lay along the Pelusiac or eastern branch of the Nile. It included a part of the district of Heliopolis, or "On," the capital, and on the east stretched out a considerable length into the desert. The ground included within these boundaries was a rich and fertile extent of natural meadow, and admirably adapted for the purposes of the Hebrew shepherds (compare Ge 49:24; Ps 34:10; 78:72).
13-15. there was no bread in all the land—This probably refers to the second year of the famine (Ge 45:6) when any little stores of individuals or families were exhausted and when the people had become universally dependent on the government. At first they obtained supplies for payment. Before long money failed.
16. And Joseph said, Give your cattle—"This was the wisest course that could be adopted for the preservation both of the people and the cattle, which, being bought by Joseph, was supported at the royal expense, and very likely returned to the people at the end of the famine, to enable them to resume their agricultural labors."
21. as for the people, he removed them to cities—obviously for the convenience of the country people, who were doing nothing, to the cities where the corn stores were situated.
22. Only the land of the priests bought he not—These lands were inalienable, being endowments by which the temples were supported. The priests for themselves received an annual allowance of provision from the state, and it would evidently have been the height of cruelty to withhold that allowance when their lands were incapable of being tilled.
23-28. Joseph said, Behold, &c.—The lands being sold to the government (Ge 47:19, 20), seed would be distributed for the first crop after the famine; and the people would occupy them as tenants-at-will on the payment of a produce rent, almost the same rule as obtains in Egypt in the present day.
29-31. the time drew nigh that Israel must die—One only of his dying arrangements is recorded; but that one reveals his whole character. It was the disposal of his remains, which were to be carried to Canaan, not from a mere romantic attachment to his native soil, nor, like his modern descendants, from a superstitious feeling for the soil of the Holy Land, but from faith in the promises. His address to Joseph—"if now I have found grace in thy sight," that is, as the vizier of Egypt—his exacting a solemn oath that his wishes would be fulfilled and the peculiar form of that oath, all pointed significantly to the promise and showed the intensity of his desire to enjoy its blessings (compare Nu 10:29).
31. Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head—Oriental beds are mere mats, having no head, and the translation should be "the top of his staff," as the apostle renders it (Heb 11:21).