January 17: Genesis 45:16 – Genesis 47:27

Joseph Provides for His Brothers and Family – Genesis 45:16

• Pharaoh is pleased when he learns Joseph's brothers have come to Egypt, and he tells Joseph to have the whole family come and live on the best lands in Egypt. He even sends wagons and everything the family will need to move. Joseph gives each of his brothers a change of clothing, except for Benjamin. He gives Benjamin three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothing.
• Joseph's brothers tell Jacob that Joseph is still alive, but Jacob doesn't believe them. When the brothers tell Jacob what Joseph has said, and show him all the wagons, Jacob's spirit revives. Jacob now believes, and he determines to go to see Joseph before he dies.

Joseph Brings the Family to Egypt – Genesis 46

• Jacob takes all he has and journeys to Beersheba, where he offers sacrifices to God.
• God speaks to Jacob in a nighttime vision and tells him not to be afraid to go to Egypt because He will make him a great nation there (God had previously forbidden Isaac to go to Egypt, and Abram had an unpleasant experience there). God promises to be with Jacob in Egypt.
• Jacob takes his family (not including his sons' wives, sixty-six people in all) and all that he owns to Egypt. Including Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph's two sons, they are seventy people in all.

Jacob and Joseph Reunited

• Jacob sends Judah ahead of him to Joseph, and Joseph prepares his chariot and meets his father in Goshen. After they have wept together, Jacob says that he can now die since he has seen Joseph's face and knows he is alive.
• Joseph tells his father that he will tell Pharaoh that his family has arrived, and that when Pharaoh asks their occupation, they are to say that they are shepherds (which the Egyptians consider an abomination) and that they would live in Goshen. (God uses the ethnic and racial prejudice of the Egyptians as a way of preserving the ethnic and spiritual identity of the Hebrews.) 

Jacob's Family Settles in Goshen – Genesis 47

• Joseph goes to Pharaoh and tells him that Jacob, his family, and their flocks and herds have come from Canaan and are now in Goshen. He presents five of his brothers to Pharaoh.
• Pharaoh asks the brothers' occupation, and they tell him they are shepherds. They point out that they have come because there is no pasture land in Canaan due to the famine and request to dwell in the land of Goshen.
• Pharaoh tells Joseph to settle his family in the best lands of Egypt—in Goshen—and also that Joseph may put some of the able-bodied men in charge of Pharaoh's livestock.
• Joseph brings Jacob before Pharaoh, and Jacob blesses Pharaoh. Pharaoh asks Jacob's age, and he tells him he is 130 years. He also claims that "Few and evil have been the days of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning." Jacob blesses Pharaoh again before leaving him.
• Joseph settles his family in the best land of Egypt, in the land of Ramses, and he provides for the entire household.

Joseph and the Famine 

• The famine is so severe that the lands of Egypt and Canaan languish. Joseph gathers up all the money found in Egypt and Canaan in exchange for the grain he has stored, and brings the money into the house of Pharaoh. 
• When the people have spent all their money on grain, they trade their livestock for grain instead for that year. The next year they again ask for grain, and this time they have nothing but themselves and their lands to give. Joseph buys all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh and makes all the people servants. The only land he doesn't buy is that of the priests, since they lived on a fixed allowance given by Pharaoh. 
• In return for the lands and the people's servanthood, Joseph gives them seed so they can sow the land. He tells them that one-fifth of what is harvested must be given to Pharaoh while the rest is theirs to use for food and seed. Joseph makes a statute that Pharaoh should always have a fifth, and the lands of the priests were all that didn't belong to Pharaoh.
• In Egypt, Jacob's family prospers and grows substantially.