Exodus 1:1

"Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt (every man and his household came with Jacob)."

This and the following six verses are a parenthetical statement placed here for the purpose of bridging the gap in Israel's history just recounted in Genesis 37-50. The time-span covered by this parenthesis is more than four hundred years, reaching from the settlement of Jacob's posterity in Egypt to the Exodus, about to be related here.

"Now these are the names ..." It is regrettable that here the translators used their own words instead of the words of the text which are literally, "AND these are the names."[1] So it is that here very early in the sequence of the books of Holy Scripture we have an example of that near-universal practice among the sacred writers of beginning their books with the simple coordinate conjunction "and." The fact that many translations change the word to "now" has no bearing on the truth. All of the sacred writers seemed to be conscious that they were contributors to the One Book of God's revelation to mankind. In the Pentateuch, where this word, "and" is the first word in all five books except Genesis, it also has the utility of supporting the view that a single author wrote all five books, a view which we accept.

A careful study of these opening lines of Exodus reveals the certainty that what we have here is a CONTINUATION of Genesis. One theme, one purpose, one great Coordinator, one design, and one Person, throughout the Pentateuch and the entire Bible, attest to its amazing unity.

The name "Exodus" was apparently first given to this book in the Septuagint (LXX), about 250 years or so before Christ, the same being the theme of the first fifteen chapters. Prior to that time, the Hebrews called it, [~We-Elleh] [~Shemoth], from the first two Hebrew words of the book which mean, "And these are the names."[2] There are countless ancient examples of naming books after the first two or three words.

"Every man and his household came with Jacob ..." As noted frequently in this series, one of the invariable characteristics of the sacred books is the repeated recapitulation of significant events, with new information included in each repetition. (See the Introductions for Genesis, and also for Exodus.) The new information here is the fact that the total number who went down into Egypt was a far greater number than the mere total of those who were named. Here it is clear enough that each of the sons of Jacob brought "his household" with him, and in view of the fact that Abraham's household (Genesis 14:14) included 318 fighting men, to say nothing of women and children, it becomes plain enough that the migration to Egypt by Jacob was by no stretch of imagination a SMALL event!