Jacob Enters Egypt and Blesses a King

When the procession came out of Egypt to meet Jacob, it stretched further than he could see. Joseph had issued a royal proclamation: anyone who failed to come out and greet his father would be put to death. The nobles of Egypt wore byssus and purple. Musical instruments sounded along the whole road. The women of the city climbed to the rooftops and played on cymbals and timbrels as the old man's caravan approached.

Joseph wore Pharaoh's crown for the occasion. He descended from his chariot when he was fifty ells from his father and walked the rest of the way on foot, and every prince and nobleman behind him did the same. When Jacob caught sight of the procession he bowed, not yet knowing who led it, only knowing that someone of great importance was coming to him. He bowed before he recognized his son. This, the Legends of the Jews records, was a small act with large consequences: for allowing his father to bow before him without stopping it, Joseph would die before his years were complete.

The reunion itself happened without words for a long moment. Joseph fell upon his father's neck and wept. Jacob was reciting the Shema. He had heard Joseph was dead, had believed it for decades, had mourned without comfort for a man who was not dead, and now here was that man in front of him, and Jacob would not interrupt his prayer. He finished the Shema. Then he spoke.

He said: when they told me you were dead, I thought I was doomed twice over. God had promised to make me the ancestor of twelve tribes, and your death seemed to end that promise. I thought I had sinned badly enough that I would lose this world and the next. But now I see you alive, and I know my death will only be the ordinary death, the one that takes you from this world. The other death, the one I feared, is not mine.

Sixty-nine people had come down from Canaan into Egypt. On the road between cities, just as the caravan passed from one wall to the next, a seventieth was born: Jochebed, who would become the mother of Moses. The Ginzberg texts are precise about this. She was born between the walls. The number was seventy as they passed through the gate.

Joseph brought some of his brothers before Pharaoh. He chose the weakest of them, the texts say, so the king would not be tempted to conscript them as soldiers. He introduced them as shepherds, knowing that Egyptians, who worshipped the constellation of the rain and paid divine honor to animals, would keep their distance from shepherds. This was careful thinking. He wanted his family in Goshen, which was theirs by right in any case: the Pharaoh who had once taken Sarah from Abraham had given it to her as her irrevocable possession, and the land had remained Israelite territory ever since.

Then Joseph brought Jacob before Pharaoh. The king, looking at the old man, was startled by the resemblance to Abraham. He thought for a moment he was looking at Abraham himself, so close was the likeness between grandfather and grandson. He asked Jacob's age. Jacob answered: a hundred and thirty years, and few and evil have they been. I fled in youth to a strange land because of my brother. I flee in old age to another strange land because of famine. My days have not attained the days of my fathers.

According to the midrashic tradition surrounding this scene, God heard these words and was not pleased. Jacob had been saved from Esau and Laban. Joseph had been restored to him. Joseph was a king of Egypt. And still Jacob spoke of few and evil days, without gratitude for what he had been given. Because of this ingratitude, Jacob would not reach the age of Isaac: he would die thirty-three years short of his father's lifespan.

When Jacob left Pharaoh's presence, he blessed the king. He said: may the years still in store for me be given to you. May the Nile overflow its banks and water the land again. Egypt had been in drought. The blessing took effect immediately. The Nile rose above its bed and the land was fructified. The ancient teachers who preserved this in the Legends of the Jews wanted this detail remembered: the pious are a blessing to the world. When Jacob walked into Egypt, the Nile answered.

Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt, the same number of years that Joseph had lived with his father in Canaan before being sold. This symmetry was not lost on the ancient teachers. The midrashic tradition preserved in dozens of texts across the Ginzberg collection reads Jacob's life as a series of balanced accounts: the years of loss and the years of restoration, the suffering and the consolation, the years he thought his son was dead and the years he watched his son govern an empire. Jacob died in Egypt at the age of a hundred and forty-seven. His body was carried back to Canaan by his sons, by the servants of Pharaoh, by the elders of Egypt, in a procession so large and so solemn that the Canaanites watching from a distance said: this is a heavy mourning for the Egyptians.