Jacob sent ten sons to Egypt, and they entered not as a group but through ten different doors. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:5 preserves the reason: "every one by one door, lest the ayin ha-ra — the evil eye — should have sway over them."
The evil eye and caravan travel
The concern was deeply ancient. The ayin ha-ra in Jewish thought is not a supernatural curse but a concentrated attention from others — envy, jealousy, scrutiny — that can translate into real harm. A striking family of ten handsome, strong brothers walking into a famine-stricken city in matching clothes would draw stares. Stares draw thieves. Stares draw tax collectors. Stares draw memory. The Aramaic paraphrase, which took its final form in the Land of Israel around the seventh or eighth century CE, shares this tradition with the Talmud (Bava Metzia 84a), compiled in Babylonia around 500 CE, which records the same principle: brothers of unusual beauty or strength should not gather together in public.
Humility, not superstition
The rabbinic tradition reads the scattered entrance not as magical protection but as a practice of humility. Do not advertise your numbers. Do not flaunt your cohesion. Walk in separately, do your business, and walk out. It is a disposition that protected Jewish communities under many regimes afterward.
The takeaway
Jacob's sons enter Egypt through ten gates because attention is a liability during famine. Not every strength is meant to be on display.