The Egyptian Sojourn

Exd 12:41 And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.

I was just staring at my clock and it said 8:45 PM and I thought that can’t be right, it’s still daylight.  I looked at my Blackberry and it read 2:13 PM.  I corrected the clock.  That was simple.  But it was funny that should happen when I’m sitting down to write an article on biblical time.  And that brings me to my question – in the history of the world, what time is it now?  For those who read and trust the bible, I’ll ask: how much time has passed from creation to today?

The bible wasn’t written to be easily understood.  Christ spoke in parables and a true spiritual understanding of the bible will only come when we understand the parables of the bible.  The numbers are also a parable.  I’m not going to answer the question of how much time has passed from creation to today in this post, but I would like to offer some biblical evidence of how to unlock spiritual truth in understanding generations and God’s means of keeping time by way of the 430 years that the Israelites spent in Egypt: the Egyptian Sojourn.

God told Abraham in Gen 15:16 that “in the fourth generation” his seed would come out from captivity (in Egypt) and return again to their own land.  During that time, the bible records the lifespan of Levi (137 years, Exo 6:16), Kohath (133 years, Exo 6:18), and Amram (137 years, Exo 6:20).  We also know that Aaron was 83 years of age when Moses and Aaron spoke to Pharaoh (Exo 7:7).   

I believe the bible teaches that the age of Levi and his sons were God’s means of keeping time during the Egyptian Sojourn.  Each was a calendar patriarch in his day.  The key is that the year that one calendar patriarch died, the other was born.  The entire lifespan of each in that respect was a ‘generation’.  If Aaron was the fourth generation and Moses and Aaron led the Israelites out of Egypt when Aaron was 83 or 84 and Levi entered Egypt at age 60 or 61 (Levi died at 137, so that would be 76 or 77 years Levi spent in Egypt), then the calendar would look as follows:

Levi  77
Kohath 133
Amram 137
Aaron 83

Total: 430

or

Levi 76
Kohath 133
Amram 137
Aaron 84

Total: 430

One interesting fact is that in the long explanation in the account of Moses birth in Exo 2:1-10, it doesn’t specifically name Amram and Jochebed as Moses’s father and mother and instead says “a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.  And the woman conceived and bare a son”.  In Num 26:59 we read that “…Amram’s wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses…”  With the generation timetable above and this statement in Num 26:59, God is showing us that when He tells us that a son was born, it is not necessarily a direct son.  In the statement in Num 26:59 and compared with the account in Exo 2:1-10 and the ‘four generations’ totaling 430 years outlined above, we learn that Moses and Aaron were not direct sons of Amram and Jochebed but instead they were progenitors (i.e. grandparents, great grandparents, etc.). 

Why is all of this important?  Because a correct understanding of the calendar of history from creation to today reveals spiritual truth that has been hidden (or sealed) about God’s salvation and judgment plan and since the consequences are eternal, everything else pales in comparison.  The Egyptian Sojourn is the key that unlocks the calendar of history in Genesis 5 and 11.

I hope someone is blessed from reading this post.