Texts in Conversation
The prediction in Genesis that Abram’s descendants will suffer for four hundred years seems added later by an editor. It combines language from different traditions in Exodus about Israel’s time in Egypt, describing their slavery, foreign status, and eventual escape with wealth.
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Genesis 15:13
Hebrew Bible
12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep, and great terror overwhelmed him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years. 14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.” 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking firepot with a flaming torch passed between the animal parts.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Exodus 1:11
Hebrew Bible
10 Come, let’s deal wisely with them. Otherwise they will continue to multiply, and if a war breaks out, they will ally themselves with our enemies and fight against us and leave the country.” 11 So they put foremen over the Israelites to oppress them with hard labor. As a result they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites,
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Exodus 2:22
Hebrew Bible
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land.” 23 During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Exodus 12:40
Hebrew Bible
39 They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast. Because they were thrust out of Egypt and were not able to delay, they could not prepare food for themselves either. 40 Now the length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years. 41 At the end of the 430 years, on the very day, all the regiments of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Genesis 15:13-17 appears to be an addition to this story because (1) it is enclosed by a resumptive repetition: the sun is about to set in verse 12 and then is reported to set in verse 17; (2) the prediction of the future that God gives Abram has nothing to do with the covenant ceremony that is taking place; and (3) these lines merge terms that are characteristic of each of the sources: the phrase “alien in a land” is reminiscent of J (Exodus 2:22), the phrase “will degrade them” is reminiscent of E (Exodus 1:11-12), and the word for “property” otherwise occurs only in P (and once in the separate source of Genesis 14). The reference to four hundred years of slavery in Egypt may relate to the “thirty years and four hundred years” in P (Exodus 12:40) ..."
Friedman, Richard Elliott
The Bible with Sources Revealed: A New View Into the Five Books of Moses
(p. 54) Harper San Francisco, 2005
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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