British-israel.us -- A Nation and A Company of Nations Shall Be of Thee, and Kings Shall Come Out of Thy Loins

Genesis chapter 35 Star Chart: Clockwise from when "God said unto Jacob (Ophiuchus), Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an (Ara) altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou (Ophiuchus) fleddest from the face of (Hercules) Esau thy brother" (35:1) in 1687 B.C. till "they journeyed: and the (Scorpio lunar crescent stinger and lunar crescent snake fang) terror of God was upon the (lunar) cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the (Gemini) sons of Jacob" (35:5) till "Jacob came to ... Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an (Ara) altar, and called the place Elbethel" (35:6-7) is 8° days. From then till "Deborah (Virgo), Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak" (green Milky Way)(35:8) is another 294° or 19.6 hours using the degree-hour scale. Then "Rachel (Virgo) died, and was buried in ... Bethlehem" (35:19) after giving birth to Benjamin, which is another 294° days. From that point in time till "Reuben (Aquarius) went and lay with Bilhah (Coma) his father's concubine" (35:22) is another 133° days. "And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto ... Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years. And Isaac ... died ... and his (Gemini) sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (35:27-29) is another 143° or 9.5 hours. Therefore 1687 B.C. + 8 days + 19.6 hours + 294° days + 133° days + 9.5 hours is 436 days in the year 1686 B.C. when Isaac died.

However, this 1686 B.C. date only allows Isaac to be 165 years old in order to agree with a 60-year age difference between Isaac and Jacob (Genesis 25:26) and in order to agree with the 28-year chronology between 31:41 and 35:28 that makes Jacob 105 years old. If we are to trust 35:28 at its face value, and assume it is not a copyist error, which says Isaac died when he was "180 years old", then his death occurred in 1671 B.C. and there must be a gap of 15 years in the chronology from 31:41 to 35:28. But the simplest explanation is a copyist error.

As a review, Abraham was 75 when he entered Canaan (Gen. 12:4) in 1876 B.C. -- 430 years before Israel's exodus from Egypt in 1446 B.C. (Ex. 12:40-41). He received the covenant at this time, making it year zero in the calculation. Isaac was born 25 years later when Abraham was 100 (Gen. 21:5) in 1851 B.C. Isaac was age 60 when Jacob was born (Gen. 25:26) in 1791 B.C. When Jacob was 130, he entered Egypt (Gen. 47:28) in the second year of the famine (45:6) when Joseph was 39 in 1661 B.C. Therefore "Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh" (41:46) in 1670 B.C. at the beginning of the seven years of plenty. "Two full years" before that, the butler-baker incident occurred in 1672 B.C. (41:1). Joseph was "seventeen years old" (37:2) in 1683 B.C. when he was sold into Egypt. Furthermore, Joseph was born in 1700 B.C. when God "opened her (Rachel's) womb" (29:22) and Jacob was age 91. This means that fourteen years before that (29:27-30), Jacob travelled to Padan-Aram in 1714 B.C. when he was 77 (28:1-2). Adding "twenty years" with Laban (31:41) + 7 years when Jacob "erected there an altar" in Shekem (33:18-20) + about one year till "Isaac ... died" (35:27) makes Jacob 105 years old in 1686 when Isaac died at 165 (105 + 60 = 165). In order for Isaac to be 180 when he died (35:28), we must find a gap of 15 years in the chronology somewhere between 31:41 and 35:28. Adding together 25 + 60 + 130 = 215 years sojourning outside Egypt. With the other 215 years inside Egypt, we can construct the 430-year period till 1446 B.C. (see also Josephus' Antiquities 2:15:2). The Exodus in 1446 B.C. was 430 years after Abraham entered Canaan in 1876 B.C. "Now the sojourning (in Canaan and Egypt -- 215 years each) of the children of Israel (which here includes Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- see footnotes in both the Companion Bible and Jerusalem Bible), who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. 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" (Ex.12:40-41). Josephus says the same thing: "They left Egypt ... on the fifteenth day of the lunar month (Num. 33:3), four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan" (Ant.2:15:2). Both the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint add "and in Canaan" in verse 40. The Septuagint, quoted by Paul in Galatians, says "the sojourning of the sons of Israel who dwelt in the land of Egypt and Canaan was 430 years" because they dwelt in Canaan before they dwelt in Egypt.