HOW LONG DID IT PASS BETWEEN ABRAHAM AND THE LAW?
In Galatians
3:17; Apostle Paul mentions 430 years between the time Abraham was given the promise
of becoming a great nation and inhabit what is today Israel, and the time when Moses
received the Ten Commandments.
THE PROBLEM
This seems to be
the immediate meaning of the text:
“This is
what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant
previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.”
Galatians 3:17
This number
seems to have been taken from the book of Exodus 12:40, Hebrew version, where
it says openly, that the Israelites were in Egypt for this length of time:
“Now the
duration of the Israelites' stay in Egypt was 430 years.”
Exodus 12:40 –
Masoretic.
The problem is
that Exodus quotes that the duration of the time in Egypt, meaning from Joseph
until Moses, were of 430, years, and does not take into account the other three
generations from Jacob to Abraham, when the initial promise from God was issued,
which it seems to be mentioned by Paul in Galatians.
This apparent
contradiction goes even further when the Greek version of the same text of
Exodus, mentions this period as being from Abraham until Moses, which seems to
agree with what Paul says in his letter to the Galatians:
“And the
sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt
and the land of Canaan, was 430 years.”
Exodus 12:40 –
Septuagint.
This has been
used to support the idea of the assumed favoritism the apostles had for the
Greek version of the Tanakh instead of the Hebrew version.
ANALYZING
1 - Both
records, Hebrew and Greek give the same account of the time of future Egyptian captivity
as 400 years in total:
“Then the LORD
said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers
in a land that is not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated 400
years.”
Genesis 15:13 –
Masoretic and Septuagint.
This number, 400
is also confirmed in the NT period by the words of Stephen the martyr:
“God told
him that his descendants would be foreigners in a strange land, and that they
would be enslaved and mistreated 400 years.”
Acts 7:6
2 – If we consider
the years of Abraham to Jacob, it roughly gives over 200 years, not counting the
40 years Moses spent in Midian before he received the Ten Commandments, which gives
around 240 years, apart from the time in captivity.
This has driven
certain scholars to suggest that the Egyptians must have been no more than 200
years under Egyptian captivity in their desire to harmonize the two quantities (1).
3 – The problem is
even more pronounced in the Greek version. The lifetimes of the patriarchs are
the same as in the Masoretic, and in both versions, it is said, that the Jews will
stay for 400 years in captivity (Genesis 15:30), however, by mentioning that
430 years passed between Abraham and the Law, it is implied that they were in
Egypt for no more than 200 years, which contradicts Genesis 15:30 which clearly
mentions four centuries of captivity.
The most
probable solution is that Genesis 15:30 and Acts 7:6, give rounded up quantities,
as it was the custom among Orientals at the time, but the real time spent in
captivity was of 430 years, which Paul quickly quotes from Exodus 12:40,
according to the Hebrew version, with the intention of giving scriptural
support to his argument.
Omar Flores.
(1) Chani Benjaminson, How Many Years Did the Jews Spend
in Egypt?, Chabad.org. https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/617888/jewish/How-many-years-did-the-Jews-spend-in-Egypt.htm
David
Wright, How Long were the Israelites in Egypt?, AnswersinGenesis.org. https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/how-long-were-the-israelites-in-egypt/
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