Diving In Covenant 4 The Abrahamic Covenant – cutting the Covenant Genesis 15

What does cutting a covenant mean?

Two words for making a covenant

• Establish (Heb. Qum) first reference Gen. 6:18 Noah (3 more times Gen. 9:9, 11, 17) first reference in Abrahamic Gen. 17:19, 21
• Cut (Heb. Karath) Gen. 15:18 – first reference

God ‘cuts’ the Covenant with Abraham and ‘established’ (or confirms) it with Isaac – no need for a second cutting, reminding us of Heb. 10. 10:11-12

Example of OT usage Jer. 34:18; Ex. 24:8

Other points to note which will help our understanding of the passage:

• Deep sleep – first ref. Gen. 2:21
• Darkness first ref. v.12  associated with judgement Psa. 82:5; 139:12; Isa. 8:22; 50:10
• Brand/firepot first ref. v17; fire or oven
  • often associated with judgement Psa. 21:9; Hos. 7:4; Mal. 4:1
• Lamp first ref. v. 17
  • Next ref. Ex. 20:18 lightnings at Sinai (Ezek. 1:13; Dan. 10:6)

We began by examining the sections of the chapter dealing with the cutting of the Covenant.

Genesis 15:8-12 – Abram’s Preparation and God’s Sign

• Abram asks a reasonable question in v.8, seeking confirmation of how God will fulfill the promise that he would inherit, that is possess, the land. It was then occupied by antagonistic nations and Abram had just returned from a military expedition that might have resulted in retributions (however, God had already told him that He was his shield). Abraham inquired how he could be certain to inherit the land God promised, prompting God to instruct him to sacrifice animals. Abraham obeyed, cutting the animals in half to enact a covenant with God.
• The 3 kinds of animals (heifer, goat, ram) and their being 3 years old likely have symbolic meaning (purity, sin offering, substitution).
• Abram’s deep sleep brings something new – God’s covenant. Parallel to the darkness starting a new day in Genesis 1, and the deep sleep (same word is with Abram) that God put Adam into to produce Eve.

Genesis 15:17 – The Sign of God’s Presence

• The smoking fire pot and flaming torch passing between the pieces represent God the Father and God the Son. The smoking oven and flaming torch likely represent God the Father and God the Son.
• This points forward to God’s presence at Mount Sinai and ultimately Christ’s sacrifice. The covenant sacrifice points forward to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
• Only God passes through, taking on the obligations of both parties in the covenant. God alone takes on the obligations of both parties in the Abrahamic covenant, making it completely unconditional. God entered into an unconditional, unilateral covenant with Abram alone using a smoking fire pot and flaming torch passing between the animal pieces. God promised the land to Abraham’s descendants.

In summary, we dug deep into the Abrahamic covenant, uncovering rich meaning and symbolism foreshadowing Christ’s new covenant sacrifice. Further exploration of connections to the sacrificial system would prove fruitful, which we will do when we move on to considering the Mosaic Covenant and the Tabernacle system.

We then returned to the verses regarding what would happen to Abram’s descendants.

Were the Children of Israel oppressed in Egypt for 400 years?

Gen 15 v.13-14 And He said to Abram, Knowing you must know that your seed shall be an alien in a land not theirs; and they shall serve them. And they shall afflict them four hundred years; and I also will judge that nation whom they shall serve; and afterward they shall come out with great substance.

v. 16 And in the fourth generation they shall come here again.

Jay P Green Sr. Literal translation

It is often taken for fact that the Children of Israel were slaves for 400 years, based, quite reasonably, on our understanding of the above verses. The 400 years would seem to start at the time, or sometime after, Jacob and his family went down to Egypt during the 7 year famine in Joseph’s time, recorded in Gen. 46. God also said that ‘in the fourth generation’, they would come back to the Promised Land.

What’s the problem?

There are a several problems with the usual understanding:

1. Paul says in Gal. 3:17 that the Law was given at Sinai 430 years after the promise was made to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3, referred to in Gal. 3:8), so Paul’s 430 years includes the time Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in Canaan as well as the years in Egypt, in seeming contradiction of both Gen. 15:14 and Ex. 12:40.
2. If it is right to take the 400 years in Gen. 15:13 as being the years of oppression, that appears to contradict Ex. 12:40 where the whole time Israel was in Egypt is said to be 430 years (according to most translations), and that includes the last 70 years of Joseph’s life, and time for him to be forgotten (Ex. 1:1), before the years of oppression started.
3. If the two statements in Genesis 15 v14 & 17 are equivalent, that would make a generation 100 years.

There are other difficulties as well when you start to compute the years of oppression:

4. We know from Gen. 41:46 that Joseph was 30 years old at the start of the seven years of plenty when he became second to Pharaoh. The time Jacob went to Egypt was around the second year of the famine (Gen. 45:6) so Joseph would have been around 40. He lived for 110 years (Gen. 50:22) and the oppression of the Israelites started when another Pharaoh arose ‘who knew not Joseph’ (Ex.1:8).
So the oppression must have started some time after Joseph’s death, meaning that the 400 years starts maybe more than 100 years after Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, giving an elapsed time in excess of 500 years for their sojourn in Egypt. The four generations then have to be stretched to at least 125 years each. This gives rise to a further problem …

5. If you take the 400 years as referring solely to the years of oppression, you also have to fit that whole period between the new Pharaoh arising in Exodus ch.1 , and ch.2 which starts with Moses parents getting married. We know that Amram, Moses father, was a grandson of Levi, and Levi went down into Egypt with Jacob (Ex. 6:16-20). So now you have to fit just three generations into 500+ years.
Some might argue that the genealogies are often not complete, but Amram married his father’s sister (Ex. 6:20), who is described as the daughter of Levi in Ex. 2:1 and Num. 26:59, so it would appear that the genealogy in Ex. 6 is complete.

How long did the Patriarchs live as strangers in the land of promise? (Heb. 11:9)

We can work out that Jacob and his sons going down to Egypt was 215 years from when Abraham arrived in Canaan at the age of 75. (The events of Gen. 15 occurred before Abraham was 86 (Gen. 16:16), so this puts the Gen. 15 account somewhere between those dates.)

We can calculate exactly how long the patriarchs lived in Canaan:

Note: Adding the 500+ years from point 4 above, would give a total of more than 715 years from God’s promises to Abraham to the Exodus and the giving of the law, whereas Paul states it was 430 years.

How long did the Children of Israel live in Egypt?

All Jacob’s sons, apart from Benjamin, were born while Jacob lived with Laban in Padan Aram. The last one to be born there was Joseph and we’ve seen above that Joseph was 40 when Jacob was 130. So Joseph was born when Jacob was about 90. Jacob worked for Laban for 20 years (he had worked 7 years for Leah when he married her probably aged 77, and then 7 years for Rachel, plus 6 years extra for his ‘wages’). So his children were all born when Jacob was between 77 and 90. As Levi was the third child by Leah, he can’t have been born before Jacob was 80, making Levi 50 when they all went down to Egypt.

We have seen that Jacob was 130 years old when they went down to Egypt with his sons and their families. Levi took his 3 sons, Gershon, Kohath and Merari with him (Gen. 46:11 – physically with him, not potentially, as they are counted as part of the 70 souls in the family, Gen. 46:26-27). They are not listed as having any wives or children so were probably young men at the time.

Josephus, who says that he had access to Temple records from before its destruction, tells us that the Children of Israel were in Egypt for 215 years:

They left Egypt in the month of Xanthicus, on the 15th day of the lunar month; 430 years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but 215 years after Jacob removed into Egypt.

Antiquities ch XV:2

which agrees with Paul in Gal. 3:17 and fits with the 4 generations from Jacob to Moses and the Exodus, but disagrees with the Masoretic text of Ex. 12:40

How can we reconcile the differences?

1. Exodus 12:40 says that their sojourning in Egypt was 430 years where Paul says that it was 430 years from the promises made to Abraham to the giving of the Law (at the Exodus)
2. God says in Gen. 15:13 that they would be oppressed for 400 years

With regard to the first question, the Septuagint (and the Samaritan Pentateuch) gives a little more information than the Masoretic Hebrew text:

And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years.

This agrees with Paul in Gal. 3L:17 and with Josephus statement.

With regard to the second question, we need to look at what God actually said in Gen. 15:13. He specified a number of things:

• They will be sojourners in a land not theirs
  Heb. 11:9 & 14 describes the patriarchs as aliens in a land not belonging to them, so this could partly satisfy this
• They will serve them
  Jacob served Laban for 20 years and was deceived by him Gen. 31:7, 38-40 describes how badly Jacob was treated by Laban, and there are other hints that the patriarchs were not well received by the Amorites during their time in Canaan (see events in Gen. 20; 21; 26; 34)
• They will be afflicted
  This certainly took place in Egypt once the memory of Joseph had faded.
• This will last for 400 years – just the affliction, or all of the above?

The 400 years ended with the Exodus, as did the 430 years from Gen. 12. If we work back from the Exodus, we find that the 400 years started when Isaac was 5 years old. Is there any significance in Isaac being 5? Well, we know from Gen. 21 that Abraham made a great feast for Isaac when he was weaned, which then took place between the ages of 3 and 5. Later in Israel’s history, a child was counted as a full youth when they achieved the age of 5 (Lev. 27:5). We also read in Gen. 21:9 that Ishmael’s persecution of Isaac started at the time of the feast. It would multiply and intensify as the 400 years progress (and is still with us today!)

So how long did the oppression actually last?

• If the above conclusions are correct, the Children of Israel were in Egypt for 215 years. Joseph was alive for the first 70 years, which leaves 145 years.
• As seen above, the oppression must have started some time after Joseph’s death, as the Israelites had time to multiply and become very numerous (Ex. 1:6). Also the Pharaoh of Ex. 1:8 didn’t know about Joseph, so some time must have passed (or a change of dynasty?) before he started oppressing the Israelites.
• From Exodus 1 and 2, we know that the oppression started sometime before Moses was born, and he was born 80 years before the oppression ended with the Exodus. So we can say that they were oppressed for more than 80 years.
• The events of Exodus 1 must have taken more than a few years, but seem to have been within the working life of the two midwives  – at most, 30-40 years before Moses was born.

This suggests that the oppression can only have lasted from 110 to 130 years, as shown in this diagram:

Final thoughts

Ex. 12:41 says that the Israelites left Egypt at the end of 430 years “to the very day”. Which day? According to Josephus, the day Abraham arrived in Canaan. What day was that? Passover, Nisan 14!

We are not told the name of the Pharaoh of the oppression, nor of the Exodus. But we do know the names of the two midwives that feared the Lord! Shiphrah (brightness) and Puah (brilliance) – real lights shining in the darkness!

Footnote re Levi to Moses and Josephus’ 215 years:

Levi lived for 137 years; his son Kohath (grandfather of Moses) lived for 133 years, and Amram (Moses father) lived for 137 years, which adds up to 407 years, but, of course, they would have had their sons during their lives. Unfortunately, we’re not told at what ages they had their sons, but using the ages at which Isaac and Jacob had children as a guide, it’s not unreasonable to assume that they might have been between 60 and 80.

So, counting from the time Jacob and his family went down to Egypt with Levi and his sons:

• If Kohath’s son was born when he was 70 that would be about 50 years later        50
• If Amram’s children (Miriam, Aaron and Moses) started to be born
• when he was 70, that puts him at approx. 80 when Moses was born                     80
• Moses was 80 when the Exodus took place                                                           80
• Estimated total number of years from Jacob going to Egypt to the Exodus            210

(which is fairly close to what Josephus says).