Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

THE, PROMISE AND COVENANT 1 Y : 12 - 17
to the oppression. The four hundred years mentioned are,
of course, a round number, which is given more exactly in
Exo. 12:40 as 430 years.” Keil and Delitzsch (BCOTP,
216): “That these words had reference to the sojourn of
the children of Israel in Egypt, is placed beyond all doubt
by the fulfillment. The 400 years were, according to
prophetic language, a round number for the 430 years that
Israel spent in Egypt.” Jamieson (CECG, 145) : ‘Four
hundred years.’ The statement is made here in round num-
bers, as also in Acts 7:6, but more exactly 430 years in
Exo. 12:40, Gal. 3:17.” Whitelaw (PCG, 221): “Three
different stages of adverse fortune are described-exile,
bondage, and affliction; or the two last clauses depict the
contents of the first. Fowr hundred years. The duration
not of their affliction merely, but either of their bondage
and affliction, or more probably of their exile, bondage, and
affliction; either a round number for 430, to be reckoned
from the date of the descent into Egypt, as Moses (Exo.
12:40) and Stephen (Acts 7:6) seem to say, and to be
reconciled with the statement of Paul (Gal. 3:17) by
regarding the death of Jacob as the closing of the time of
promise; or an exact number dating from the birth of
Isaac, which was thirty years after the call in Ur, thus
making the entire interval correspond with the 430 years
of Paul, or from the persecution of Ishmael which occurred
thirty years after the promise in ch. 12:3.” Gosman
(CDHCG, 413) : “The genealogical table, Exod. 6:16 ff.,
favors a much shorter residence than four hundred years;
since the combined ages of the persons there mentioned,
Levi, Kohath, Amram, including the years of Moses at
the time of the exodus, amount to only four hundred and
eighty-four years, from which we must take, of course,
the age of Levi, at the entrance of Jacob into Egypt, and
the ages of the different fathers at the birth of their sons.
It is better, therefore, with Wordsworth, Murphy, Jacobus,
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