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Genesis46:7

Those Who Went to Egypt

✦ Public-domain source — quoted & attributed⚙ AI synthesis — generated, verify

Genesis 46:7 — Those Who Went to Egypt. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

7

Jacob took with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons, and his daughters and granddaughters—all his offspring.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

hê·ḇî ’it·tōw miṣ·rā·yə·māh bā·nāw ū·ḇə·nê ḇā·nāw ’it·tōw bə·nō·ṯāw ū·ḇə·nō·wṯ bā·nāw wə·ḵāl zar·‘ōw

Word by word12 · parsed
הֵבִ֥יאhê·ḇî[Jacob] tookH935
√ bôwʼ — to go or come (in a wide variety of applications)VerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
The verb is hēḇî, parsed Hiphil perfect 3ms of bôʼ (H935, “to come / go”). The Hiphil is causative: not “came” but “caused to come / brought in,” making Jacob the grammatical agent who effects the descent of his whole house. It controls the verse and is repeated at its close, framing the migration as one deliberate act. Strikingly, the same root bôʼ is the verb of God’s own pledge four verses earlier — “I will go down (ʼērēḏ) with you… and I will surely bring you up (aʻalḵā) again” (46:4). The man brings his house down because God has promised to bring the man down — and back up.
אִתּ֖וֹ’it·tōwwith himH854
√ ʼêth — properly, nearness (used only as a preposition or an adverb), nearPrepositionthird person masculine singular
The first of three occurrences of ’ittô, “with him.” A small word doing covenantal work: the family is defined by being with the patriarch.
מִצְרָֽיְמָה׃סmiṣ·rā·yə·māhto EgyptH4714
√ Mitsrayim — Mitsrajim, iNounproperfeminine singularthird person feminine singular
Miṣrāyəmāh — “toward Egypt,” the directional -āh ending (“to/into Egypt”). The same destination word frames the verse at its head and tail (an inclusio), sealing the migration. Egypt: place of refuge that becomes the place of bondage, and so the soil from which redemption will one day be wrought (Exodus 12).
בָּנָ֞יוbā·nāwhis sonsH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
bānāw, “his sons” — the construct plural of bēn. The literal sons of Israel, the eleven who traveled (Joseph already in Egypt), heads of the tribes-to-be.
וּבְנֵ֤יū·ḇə·nêand grandsonsH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcConjunctive wawNounmasculine plural construct
Not a separate word for “grandsons” but the construct chain ū-ḇənê (“and the sons of”) governing the next word: “the sons of his sons.” Hebrew builds generations by stacking the one word bēn.
בָנָיו֙ḇā·nāw. . .H1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
The repeated bānāw completing “sons of his sons.” The doubling of bēn is the Hebrew way of saying “grandchildren”; the gloss leaves it untranslated because it belongs to the phrase above.
אִתּ֔וֹ’it·tōwH854
√ ʼêth — properly, nearness (used only as a preposition or an adverb), nearPrepositionthird person masculine singular
The second ’ittô, “with him” — reinforcing that the grandsons too came under Jacob’s gathering.
בְּנֹתָ֛יוbə·nō·ṯāw[and] his daughtersH1323
√ bath — a daughter (used in the same wide sense as other terms of relationship, literally and figuratively)Nounfeminine plural constructthird person masculine singular
bənōṯāw, “his daughters” (from baṯ). The plural is the crux every commentator wrestles: only one daughter, Dinah, is later named. Poole takes it as “the plural number for the singular”; JFB and Gill read “daughters-in-law”; Benson agrees the women “seem to have been daughters-in-law.” Hebrew kinship terms are wide enough to hold all three.
וּבְנ֥וֹתū·ḇə·nō·wṯand granddaughtersH1323
√ bath — a daughter (used in the same wide sense as other terms of relationship, literally and figuratively)Conjunctive wawNounfeminine plural construct
ū-ḇənôṯ bānāw, “and the daughters of his sons” — granddaughters. In the roster only Serah daughter of Asher appears (46:17). As Barnes notes, the plural follows “the general form of classification,” the single granddaughter being an “accidental deviation.”
בָּנָ֖יוbā·nāw. . .H1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
The final bānāw, closing the kinship catalogue: sons, sons of sons, daughters, daughters of sons. Four terms tracing a complete household across two generations.
וְכָל־wə·ḵālallH3605
√ kôl — properly, the wholeConjunctive wawNounmasculine singular construct
wə-ḵol, “and all” — the totalizing particle kōl. Gill’s point lands here: Jacob “left none behind him in Canaan, son or daughter.” The entire covenant line goes down together; nothing of the promised seed is left in the land of promise.
זַרְע֑וֹzar·‘ōwhis offspringH2233
√ zeraʻ — seedNounmasculine singular constructthird person masculine singular
zarʻô, “his seed” — singular construct of zeraʻ (H2233) with the 3ms suffix, the single most freighted word in the verse. The form is a collective: one grammatical noun gathering the whole company. Zeraʻ is the language of the Abrahamic covenant — “in your seed all nations shall be blessed” (Genesis 22:18) — and the same lexeme runs through the land-grant to “your seed” (Deuteronomy 1:8) and forward into the Servant who “shall see his seed” (Isaiah 53:10). By labeling the seventy as Jacob’s seed, the narrator marks this small, vulnerable company as the carrier of the world’s promised blessing, now entering exile. The contrast Benson and Henry both seize on: 215 years after the promise of a great nation, the “seed” numbers only seventy — so that the multiplication to come will be unmistakably God’s doing.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. One verse, three times “with him” — 46:7

The verse is a single, gathering breath. Twice it opens and closes on the same word — miṣrāyəmāh, “to Egypt” — and three times it repeats ’ittô, “with him,” until the whole clan is folded under one aged head. The controlling verb is hēḇî, the Hiphil of bôʼ: not the soft “took with him” of the English, but the causative “brought” — Jacob is the active agent who carries his house down. Keil & Delitzsch picture the scene exactly: “Jacob went into Egypt with children and children's children, his sons driving their aged father together with their wives and children in the carriages sent by Pharaoh, and taking their flocks with all the possessions that they had acquired in Canaan.” The grammar and the picture agree — an entire household on the move, nothing left behind.

ii. The plural daughters — an honest crux — 46:7

Hebrew says “his daughters” and “the daughters of his sons,” but the roster that follows names only one daughter (Dinah) and one granddaughter (Serah). The public-domain voices do not paper over this; they reason it out. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown are blunt: “As Dinah was his only daughter, this must mean daughters-in-law.” Matthew Poole offers the grammar instead — “his daughter Dinah, the plural number for the singular” — while allowing it could mean “his daughters-in-law, his son’s wives.” Benson splits the difference: the women “seem to have been daughters-in-law.” Albert Barnes reaches for the literary cause: the plural is “adopted in order to correspond with the general form of classification, from which the one daughter and the one granddaughter are merely accidental deviations.” Four careful readers, three solutions, no fabrication — exactly the kind of honest disagreement Scripture invites a reader to weigh.

iii. The seed, the seventy, and the slow promise — 46:7

The verse ends on its weightiest word: kol zarʻô, “all his seed.” John Gill draws the historian’s intent out of it — Jacob “left none behind him in Canaan, son or daughter,” so that “the increase of them might be observed.” The whole covenant line goes down together, and it is small. Benson does the arithmetic that gives the genealogy its theological charge: “two hundred and fifteen years since God had promised Abraham to make of him a great nation… and yet that branch of his seed, on which the promise was entailed, was as yet increased but to seventy.” Matthew Henry states the principle the numbers serve: “Though the fulfilling of promises is always sure, yet it is often slow.” The point of counting the seventy is to make the coming multiplication unmistakably God’s — and Benson closes with the line that crowns the chapter: “When he pleases, a little one shall become a thousand.”

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

Read under the rule that Scripture alone is the final authority, this quiet census verse is doing covenant theology in a single noun. The narrator could have written “his offspring”; he writes zarʻô, “his seed” — the exact word of the promises to Abraham (Genesis 22:18) and Isaac (Genesis 26:4). To call the seventy travelers Jacob’s “seed” is to say that the whole future of the blessing-of-the-nations is sitting in these carts going down into a foreign land. Three things follow, offered as a reading to be tested, not a verdict to be trusted. First, the promise travels through weakness. Two centuries on, the great nation is seventy souls heading into what will become slavery; the smallness is not the promise failing but the stage being set for its power to show. Second, the seed is preserved whole. Nothing is left in Canaan — the entire line is kept together, accounted for, named, so that none of the promise is mislaid in exile. Third, Egypt is not the end of the road but a bend in it. The same verb that brings them down (bôʼ) is the verb of God’s own pledge four verses earlier, “I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will surely bring you up again” (46:4). The descent is inside the promise, not outside it.

Seventy souls in borrowed carts — and the blessing of all nations rode down with them.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

“His seed” → the Abrahamic promise structural / thematic — confirmed

The summarizing word of the verse, zeraʻ (“seed”), is the technical term of the covenant — the same word that carries the promise “in your seed all nations of the earth shall be blessed.” By tagging the seventy as Jacob’s seed, the genealogy quietly identifies this small company as the bearer of the Abrahamic blessing. The shared lexeme is the recorded basis; the motif (offspring as promise-carrier) is the link.

Genesis 46:7 · Genesis 21:12 · Genesis 26:4

basis: shared Hebrew lexeme H2233 zeraʻ (in 205 vv) — a thematic, not rare/verbal, link; the motif is offspring-as-covenant-seed

The seed carried down → the seed Joseph rejoices to see structural / thematic — confirmed

Within the same chapter-cluster the word turns from grief to wonder. Jacob brings “all his seed” (zeraʻ) down into Egypt; two chapters on, blessing Joseph’s boys, the patriarch marvels — “I never expected to see your face, and now God has let me see your offspring (zeraʻ) as well” (Genesis 48:11). The man who once mourned a son devoured by beasts is now shown that son’s sons. The same covenant noun that frames the descent frames its first quiet vindication: the seed is not only preserved but multiplied before the patriarch’s own eyes. The shared lexeme is the basis; the link is the seed-preservation motif running through the Joseph narrative.

Genesis 46:7 · Genesis 48:11

basis: shared Hebrew lexeme H2233 zeraʻ (in 205 vv) — same narrative arc, the seed-preservation motif within the Joseph cycle; thematic, not a rare/verbal link

The descent into Egypt → the seventy who became a nation structural / thematic — confirmed

Jacob brings “all his seed” down to Egypt — the verse’s framing inclusio. Exodus picks up the same household at the same threshold: “all those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons.” The genealogy here is counted precisely so the later multiplication into a vast people can be measured against it; Benson and Henry both read the seventy as the deliberate baseline of God’s power to multiply.

Genesis 46:7 · Exodus 1:5

basis: shared Hebrew lexeme H4714 Mitsrayim (in 573 vv) — common term; the real link is the structural ‘seventy who went down to Egypt’ census reused in Exodus 1:5

The seed kept and carried → the everlasting covenant land-grant structural / thematic — confirmed

The same zeraʻ that goes down to Egypt is the zeraʻ to whom the land is sworn — “to you and to your seed I will give all these lands.” The descent looks like a departure from the promised land, yet the very word marks it as a detour within the land-promise: the seed leaves Canaan only to be brought back multiplied. The shared lexeme is the basis; the connection is the covenant-seed motif, not a quotation.

Genesis 46:7 · Deuteronomy 1:8

basis: shared Hebrew lexeme H2233 zeraʻ (in 205 vv) — thematic land-grant-to-the-seed motif, not a verbal/rare-word link

Jacob’s seed → the Servant’s seed structural / thematic — confirmed

The word that names the seventy, zeraʻ, reappears in the Servant Song: “he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days.” The verbal point of contact is the lexeme itself; the thematic point is that the line of promise-bearing offspring runs from Jacob’s household toward the Servant who, through suffering, sees offspring of his own. Held honestly: the connection is motif-and-word, not a citation — the contexts (a family migrating; a suffering Servant) differ sharply, and the bridge between them must be argued from the wider canon, not asserted from the shared noun alone.

Genesis 46:7 · Isaiah 53:10

basis: shared Hebrew lexeme H2233 zeraʻ (in 205 vv); thematic only — common word, distinct contexts, the typological weight must be argued not asserted

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The seed that goes down to come up widely-held

Stephen rehearses this very verse before the Sanhedrin: “Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he and our fathers” (Acts 7:15). The descent of the seed into Egypt becomes, in his telling, the opening movement of the redemption story that culminates in “the Righteous One” (Acts 7:52). The pattern — the promised seed going down into a foreign land, into death and bondage, only to be brought up again — is the shape Christ Himself fills: He goes down (even into Egypt as a child, Matthew 2:15; and down into death) and is brought up. Cross-Testament: the Verifier finds no shared original-language lexeme between this Hebrew verse and Acts 7:15, so the link cannot be called “verbal.” It is read structurally — Stephen’s explicit retelling of Genesis 46 — and the typology is offered to be tested.

Genesis 46:7 · Acts 7:15 · Matthew 2:15

“Seed” singular — and the one Seed novel

The verse calls the whole multitude Jacob’s seed using a collective singular. Paul presses the singular of the Abrahamic promise to its point: “He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but… ‘And to your seed,’ who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). The seventy who go down are the corporate seed; the canon narrows that seed, generation by generation, until it comes to rest on one. Cross-Testament and admittedly novel in this verse’s own scope: the Verifier finds no shared lexeme with Galatians 3:16; the connection is wholly thematic, runs through the zeraʻ-line of Genesis, and must be argued from Paul’s reading, not from this verse alone. Weigh it.

Genesis 46:7 · Galatians 3:16

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)

This unit is a single verse (Genesis 46:7), the closing summary of the list of those who went down to Egypt. The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (CC0); the Hebrew is the Masoretic tradition; transliterations, the literal rendering, the “where the English smooths the Hebrew” notes, and all ⚙ synthesis are this tool’s own fallible work — check them against BDB/HALOT.

Two honesty notes specific to this verse. (1) The plural “daughters.” The Hebrew plural does not match the single daughter (Dinah) and single granddaughter (Serah) actually named in the roster; the public-domain voices disagree on why (daughters-in-law, per JFB/Gill; plural-for-singular, per Poole; classificatory plural, per Barnes). We report the disagreement rather than resolve it. (2) zeraʻ is a common word. All the seed-based threads (the Abrahamic promise, the seed Joseph rejoices to see in Genesis 48:11, the land-grant of Deuteronomy 1:8, the Servant’s seed of Isaiah 53:10) share lexeme H2233, which occurs in 205 verses — so they are tiered structural / thematic, never “verbal,” and Genesis 47:24 (where zeraʻ means agricultural “seed for sowing,” not offspring) was deliberately excluded as a false friend despite the Verifier surfacing it. The two cross-Testament Christ links (Acts 7:15; Galatians 3:16) share no original-language lexeme with this Hebrew verse — they are read structurally/typologically and flagged as such, never asserted as verbal. This unit does not contain Joshua 1:5, so the mandatory Joshua 1:5 → Hebrews 13:5 flag does not apply here.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)