Exodus - an Authentic Record of Events

The Bible is the inspired word of God. This page is a continuation in a series of articles about the Bible as God’s word.

Part 5  Exodus - an Authentic Record of Events

Seventy men of Jacob and his family entered Egypt - Genesis 46:27, in 1656 BC. 210 years later at the exodus in 1446 BC there were “about six hundred thousand men on foot” - Exodus 12:37, refined in Numbers 1:46 to “six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty.”

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in his book, The antiquities of the Jews, entitles Book II, “Containing the Interval of Two Hundred and Twenty Years from the Death of Isaac to the Exodus out of Egypt.” Isaac died ten years before Jacob moved to Egypt, leaving 210 years for the sojourn of Israel in Egypt.*

* The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (Soncino Press) in notes on Exodus 12:40 says that the understanding of Jewish scholars is 210 years sojourn of Israel in Egypt.

Those Israelites numbered were the warriors - “...every male individually, from twenty years old and above, all who were able to go to war” - Numbers 1:20. Adding woman, children and men unfit for war, the total would likely exceed two million.

Reuben’s descendants by that time had become a tribe - “those [warriors] who were numbered of the tribe of Reuben were forty-six thousand five hundred” - v. 21.

Calculations of the growth in Jacob’s family confirm the results in Numbers chapter 1. It begins with the grandsons of Jacob which were 53, minus the three sons of Levi, whose descendants were not warriors, but “to do the work of the tabernacle” - Numbers 3:7 - leaving a starting number of 50 men at the entry of the family into Egypt.

The extraordinary growth rate of Jacob’s immediate family, an average of 4.4 among four wives, was exceeded in the next generation, while they were in Egypt at 4.6. That phenomenal growth is described in Exodus 1:7 - “the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.”

This should have come as no surprise in view of predictions of this very matter -

• to Abraham in Genesis 13:16 - “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants... numbered.”

• to Abraham in Genesis 15:5 - “Then He brought him outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, So shall your descendants be’.”

• to Abraham in Genesis 17:6 - “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.”

• in Isaac’s blessing of Jacob in Genesis 28:3 - “May God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may be an assembly of peoples.”

• When Jacob was renamed Israel in Genesis 35:11 - “Also God said to him: ‘I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations...proceed from you...’”

• When Jacob moved to Egypt - Genesis 46:3 - “And He said, ‘I am God, the God of your father; do not fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there.’”