Jacob recalculated

Chronology in the Bible is often based on comparing Scripture with Scripture, and thereby on the combining of data. Sometimes it is made easy for us when a longer period is delineated, such as the 430 years in Galatians 3:17 or the time span of 480 years from the Exodus to the building of the temple (1Kings 6:1).

Jakob’s age when he arrived at Laban

The timeline of a single individual can also be a puzzle in itself. A good example of this is Jacob. We know that he was 130 years old when he arrived before Pharaoh (Gen.47:9). That was after two years of famine (Gen.45:6) which followed seven years of abundance (Gen.41:29,30) and thus the ninth year of Joseph’s reign. Joseph was thirty years old when he became king (Gen.41:46), so his father, nine years earlier, would have been 121 years old. That means that Jacob, at Joseph’s birth, would have been (121-30=) 91 years old. In the year of Joseph’s birth, Jacob had served his uncle Laban for 14 years (Gen.30:25,26), that is, seven years for Leah and seven years for Rachel (Gen.29:30; 31:41). Jacob was therefore (91-14=) 77 years old when he arrived at Laban’s. That is considerably older than in the common depictions.

Seven years

The first seven years of his stay with Laban, that is, up to his 84th year, Jacob was still unmarried and childless (Gen.29:20,21). It is in the second period of seven years, thus from his 84th to his 91st year, that all his children (except Benjamin) are born from four women: Leah and her maid Zilpah on the one hand, and Rachel and her maid Bilhah on the other hand (image 1). The house of Jacob is built in the last seven years… a prophetically interesting fact, but that aside.

The births in order

The order of the births of Jacob’s children, as described in Gen.29:31 to 30:25, is not chronological but arranged by mother. The first four births from Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah) follow one another rapidly. Meanwhile, Rachel had recognised her own barrenness and, out of frustration, gave her maid Bilhah to Jacob (Gen.30:1–3), who was to serve as a kind of surrogate for her. When Leah noticed that she was no longer conceiving as easily as before (or did Jacob perhaps reject her?; Gen.29:35; 30:16), she applied the same trick as her sister Rachel and also gave her maid Zilpah to Jacob, from whom Gad and Asher were born. In the meantime, however, Leah had become pregnant again and, in the final two years, bore the sons Issachar and Zebulun. And perhaps also her daughter Dinah, though that may have been later. With some reservation, it appears as in image 2.

Timeline

The period that Jacob spent abroad was a total of twenty years (Gen.31:38,41): from his 77th to his 97th year of life. These twenty years serve as a model for the twenty centuries during which the house of Jacob resides outside the land, but after which it will return to the land as a believing Israel. In image 3, a complete overview of key moments in Jacob’s life.

Delen: