Jovial (16 Dec 2005)
"The 430 Years and the 4th Generation..."

Gen 15 says...

""Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure"

Let's recap the timing on this based on what we KNOW from Scripture:

• Year 1958 (after Adam +/- 19 years): Abraham Born
• Year 2033: Gen/Ber 12-> Abraham 75 when given the Promise and Leaves Egypt.
• Year 2058 (after Adam): Abraham was 100 when he begat Isaac.
• 2118: Isaac begat Jacob at age 60
• ~2200: Jacob begat Levi, his 3rd son.  Jacob died at age 147.  He went to Egypt at age 130 during the famine. 12 years passed from his 11th to 12th son.  I have some notes that say Jacob was 82 when Levi was born, or 162 years after the promise (ATP).  I think that was deduced from several Biblical datings of events.
• > 2208: Joseph was the 11th son of Jacob,and as such, had to have been at least 8 years after Levi.
• > 2318: Joseph dies at 110 (Gen 50:26). It says he saw the 3rd generation of Ephraim's children. Israel did not serve as a slave and become mistreated by Egypt until after Joseph died. No more than
• Kohath begat Amran, died at age 133.
• Amran begat Moses, died at age 137.
• 2463: Moses was 80 at the Exodus. 
• 2503: Moses dies at 120. Joshua Leads Israel into the Promised Land

To accept the idea that the 400 years started 30 years after the Promise to Abraham, we have to accept the idea that there were 4 generations in those 400 years. Let's count and see if the theory that the 400 years ran from Isaac's birth to Moses CAN fit......:

• Generation 1: Isaac (born 405 years before the Exodus)
• Generation 2: Jacob
• Generation 3: Levi
• Generation 4: Kohath
• Generation 5: Amran
• Generation 6: Moses

Even if we exclude Isaac, we have more than 4 generations.

We know this...Moses was in that 4th generation. He was 80 when they went out, so if we count back 4 generations, we get to Levi as the 1st, (Kohath as the 2nd, Amran as the 3rd, and Moses as the 4th). That makes the birth of Isaac insignificant in determining the 400 year period anyway, because it was 6 generations back.

Now earlier it was proposed that Isaac was born 400 years before the exodus, and this magically matched the prophecy. Actually, he was born 405 years before the exodus, and the exodus was 400 years after Isaac's 5th birthday, and nothing significant is recorded on Isaac's 5th birthday recording slavery or anything else. In fact, it was shortly after Isaac's birth that Abraham RETURNED to the Promised Land a free man.

Earlier I said that we had to have an average age of 100 for each birth to get 4 generations in 400 years. Actually, since Moses was 80 when they went out, we need 3 births in 320 years, or an average age of 107, which would be OLDER than Abraham's age to Isaac, making the birth of Isaac not only no miracle, but a younger age than common for an Israeli.

But if the Scriptures say they went OUT of Egypt in the 4th Generation, then we can safely conclude this...

• If Israel WAS in bondage for a continuous 400 year period to Egypt beginning 400 years before the Exodus

  AND
  

• Israel was in bondage for 4 generations before the Exodus

Then the "Generation" that kicks this off was Levi's and we have to find a way to fit 400 years from Levi to the Exodus. Isaac was 6 generations back, so whether he was born 400 years before the exodus or 405, it doesn't matter, because it was 6 generations.

But wait.....even those trying to tell us that Israel was in slavery to Egypt admit that it was ROUGHLY 400 years from Isaac to the Exodus.

So in order to believe that the count of 400 years ENDED at the Exodus and started 400 years prior to that, we have to come to the conclusion that the 4th generation prophecy was wrong. There's simply no way to reconcile the prophecy of Israel leaving Egypt in the 4th generation with the interpretation that they were in bondage for a contiguous 400 year period prior to that.

I said earlier we can interpret Gen 15 one of two ways.....

• Interpretation #1:
  • that they will be strangers for an indeterminate time
  • that they will be enslaved for an indeterminate time
  • that they will be mistreated for 400 years
• Interpretation #2:
  • they will be strangers, enslaved, and mistreated, all 3 at the same time, for 400 years.

But we can't fit 4 generations into the second interpretation.

Now if we dogmatically demand that interpretation #2 is the only valid interpretation, and shout that it can only be interpretted the second way and that Israel was in bondage for 400 years because we don't want to be mentally open to the idea that interpretation #1 is legitimate, we have to reject the clear prophecy that Israel would come out in the 4th generation as an error in the Bible. And since the Bible cannot have errors, we are left with a huge problem here.

Moses was 80 at the exodus. The Exodus was 430 years after the promise. Do the math, that means Moses was born in 2383. Levi born about 2200. that's 183 years for the 4 generations from Levi to Moses.

• From the birth of Isaac to the Exodus was 405 years and 6 generations. We know that as a FACT.
• From the birth of Levi to the birth of Moses was 4 generations and 183 years, an average age of 46 for the father when each child was born. We know that as a FACT.

What we deduce by INTERPRETATION has to fit these facts. There's no way to get 4 generations over 400 years, but we have to have 4 generations over 400 years to interpret Gen 15 according to the 2nd interpretation proposed. Thus, the only conclusion then is that the 1st interpretation is correct, and the 400 years only applies to the third item of the 3 mentioned, which was the affliction they would suffer under someone else's hands. And the bible proved itself true, because the sum of all the time periods in which they were enslaved to other nations, beginning with the 215 years in Egpyt, the 70 to Bablyon, and others, adds up to 400 years perfectly! God's word is very reliable!

Let me also get back to the statement Gen 15 says...

""Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, AND ^(then?) they will be enslaved AND ^(then?) mistreated four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure"

In Hebrew, the word "and" usually comes from the letter VAV, which is often used as a "consecutive VAV", meaning that it is describing a sequence of events. In English , we would usually express this as "and THEN", rather than as "AND". the VAV can be translated into English several ways...

• "AND"
• "BUT" / "YET"
• "AND THEN" (Called the "consecutive VAV")
• "THEN" (conclusion of a previous "IF" statement)

It's not identical to the English word "and", but "and" has enough ambiguity to it in English we can translate it that way most of the time and preserve the original ambiguity to the VAV as long as we keep in mind the range of things that "AND" can mean to Hebrew ears. A person reading this in Hebrew might easily only deduced that the 3 things mentioned in Gen 15 have to happen IN THAT ORDER, not that they have to happen all at the same time. In other words, that first, they will be strangers. That was fulfilled when Jacob/Israel and his 11 sons went down to Egypt to join Joseph when he was already there.

LATER, they were enslaved, fullfilling the second sequence of events the prophecy predicted. Sometimes after becoming enslaved, perhaps immediately, they were afflicted by the Egpytians. This lasted for 215 years, and did not start until Joseph had died. Genesis says Joseph say the 3rd generation of Ephraim's children, which could have been in either Kohath's or Amran's days.

One of the worse things someone can do is base their entire theology on how something sounds to them reading the Scriptures in English, especially when it does not fit the other facts that have little or no room for interpretation. I don't have to read the Scriptures in English. I read Hebrew just fine. I just got done reading a book that was 184 pages all in Hebrew and enjoyed it very much. I don't need an English translation of what I read in Hebrew. And I can tell you quite certainly that Gen 15 is too ambiguous for us to START with the assumption that all 3 of these things must happen simultaneously. It just doesn't say that in any kind of clear directive.

Shalom,

Joe
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