Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yigal:

You are making assumptions that the text doesn’t necessarily support.

For example, in verse 21, which land? Any reason why it couldn’t have been 
Egypt? When were Ephraim’s sons killed, after at least one of them had 
children and his children named for several generations? And while the text 
mentions the daughter building three towns, is there any reason to suggest 
that they were other than small settlements only for as long as Israel was in 
Egypt, hence were not mentioned in Egyptian records?

Karl W. Randolph.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>

> While I agree with George's statement below, what do you do with 1 Chr.
> 7:20-28, in which the sons of Ephraim were killed by the men of Gath, and
> Ephraim, after mourning their loss, then had another son and a daughter (or
> maybe granddaughter), who "built" places in the Beth-horon area. This would
> seem to contradict the Torah, according to which Ephraim was born in Egypt
> and never lived in Canaan. There are many other passages in the Chr.
> genealogies which seem to assume that the sons of Jacob and their immediate
> descendants all lived in the Land of Israel, but this is the most specific.
> Sarah Japhet concluded that the Chronicler denied the whole Egypt-Exodus
> story. I would not go that far, but this certainly does not fit in with the
> passages y'all have been quoting.
> 
> There is a talmudic midrash, by the way, that explains this by claiming that
> there was a group of Israelites who tried to "hasten the redemption" by
> fleeing Egypt right after the death of Joseph and attempting to settle in
> Canaan. Of course they failed, since they were not following God's plan.
> 
> Yigal
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