Genesis 46:31-34
That ye may dwell in the land of Goshen
Joseph tells them exactly what to say and why it will work. The thing that makes them unwelcome is the thing that gets them the land.
Places of the Bible
Goshen
Given because shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, and kept because of it.
Joseph coaches his brothers before they meet Pharaoh. Say that your servants have been keepers of cattle from our youth, he tells them, for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians. The advice sounds like a risk and it is a strategy: the answer they give gets them the best of the land in a district apart, where a herding family can live at a distance from a people who will not eat with them. Separation is the gift.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Goshen
- 01
- 02
Genesis 47:5-6
In the best of the land
Pharaoh gives more than was asked and adds a job offer for any man of activity among them, over his own cattle.
- 03
Exodus 8:22-23
I will sever in that day the land of Goshen
The fourth plague is the first to draw a line on a map. The stated purpose is knowledge rather than rescue.
- 04
Exodus 9:26
Only in the land of Goshen was there no hail
One verse, and it does the whole work. The storm is total and the exception is geographic and deliberate.
Why it matters
Generations later that separation is what makes the plagues legible. The flies do not come to Goshen, the murrain does not touch the cattle there, the hail falls everywhere else, and the darkness that can be felt stops at its border while the Israelites have light in their dwellings. The text says why, and it is not geography: that thou mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. The place that kept them at arm’s length becomes the place where a difference can be pointed at.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
