The Israelites in Egypt
By Geoff Haddow
Are we able to ascertain the interval of time between Joseph and Moses? And when did the Israelites make their journey out of Egypt on the night of the Passover?
There are a number of key Scriptures that provide help in answering these questions:
- Genesis 15:13: “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.”
- Exodus 12:40-41: “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.”
- Acts 7:6 “And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.”
- Galatians 3:16-17: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.”
On a brief inspection it seems as though these Scriptures cannot be consistent with one another. But those of us who believe in the authority of the Scriptures will strive (without unnecessarily stretching our interpretations) to look for an explanation which demonstrates no inconsistency.
The passage in Galatians gives a clear interval of 430 years between the promise made to Abraham (given when Abraham was 75 years old – see Genesis 12:1-4) and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai (which took place a mere three months after the delivery from Egypt – see Exodus 19:1). Based on my calculations this would give a date of 2,513 for the deliverance from Egypt (2,008 – the date of Abraham’s birth – plus 75 plus 430). This took place when Moses was eighty years old (see Exodus 7:7), and would have the consequence that Moses was born in the year 2,433, 64 years after the death of Joseph. The children of Israel came to Egypt when Jacob was 130 years old, which would have been in the year 2,298. This would then mean that the Israelites were in Egypt for 215 years.
This in turn suggests that the period of affliction (referred to in Genesis 15:13 and Acts 7:6) does not simply refer to the years of slavery in Egypt but to a longer period of time beginning when Isaac was mocked by Ishmael when the former was five years old, which would indeed have been thirty years after the promise given to Abraham. “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking” (Genesis 21:9).
The wording of Exodus 12:40-41 (quoted above) is interesting. It seems perfectly possible to understand that it is telling us that there was a period of sojourning lasting 430 years, and that they dwelt in Egypt at some stage in this period. We do not have to conclude that they dwelt in Egypt throughout the 430 years. And the reference to the children of Israel can refer back to Abraham himself, the father of the nation. And finally I would note that there are details regarding the birth of Moses in Exodus 6:16-20. Although there is insufficient information in these verses to give the exact date of Moses’s birth, it is clear that he was the great-grandson of Levi, and therefore also the great-great-nephew of Joseph. A stay of 430 years in Egypt is evidently inconsistent with this genealogy, but a gap of 64 years between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses fits very comfortably with my analysis above.
We thank Mr. Haddow for permission to reproduce this, and commend the following links to the author’s books on Amazon: