Timeline: Abraham To The Exodus

Unlike previous generations, the Bible does not give Jacob’s age at the birth of his sons. Instead the Bible gives a reference from Jacob’s life to the Exodus directly. From that we can piece back together the years for the other events in the period.

Background

The Abraham to Exodus part of the chronology is different than earlier parts because we are now entering heavy narrative in Genesis. The numbers we need to reconstruct this part of the time line must be found through careful reading.

We also find when we tackle this problem that there are several apparent problems in this part of the chronology that must be overcome.

Overcoming these problems is as much a study in how to study the Bible as it is a mathematical puzzle.

Our strategy here will be two fold. First, we take a quick pass through this part of the time line and find the year on Adam’s calendar of the Exodus from Egypt. This can be easily established. Then we work through various "missing pieces" in order to find out when each of the men recorded in this part of the chronology actually lived.

What we find when we do this is some very surprising things about when various things happened in this part of Genesis

So, now, on to the Quick Pass at the Exodus date.

Quick Pass to the Exodus

There are just a few verses needed to span this section of the chronology to the Exodus. Recall, the article Timeline: Adam to Abraham established that Abraham was born in 8784 AA. We will build from that year and move towards the Exodus. We repeat the various verses we need to span this interval here for clarity. (Gen 21:5)

This is also repeated two other times.(Gen 17:17) (Rom 4:19) So we do not miss it. Abraham was considered very old to be having kids, both he and Sarah having laughed at the possibility and so the son’s name Isaac means "laughter."

Since Abraham was 100, the year of Isaac’s birth was 99 years after the year of Abraham’s first year, the year he was born. So the year of Isaac’s birth is 8784 AA + 100 - 1 = 8883 AA.

The next generation will see the birth of twins, which we turn our attention to next.

Twins Born to Isaac

The next generation is Jacob and Esau. They are born when Isaac is 60 years old.

This too is reasonably easy to compute the year of birth. Isaac’s year of birth was 8884 AA, which was his first year so 59 years later the twins are born. 8883 AA + 60 - 1 = 8942 AA.

Jacob Blesses Pharaoh

Abraham’s family grows large in Canaan. By this time there are about 70 people in it. But, times are not well. Famine has gripped the promised land and the family cannot survive on the land. Deliverance comes through a lost son who has ended up as prime minister of Egypt. To Jacob’s, great surprise.

At the invitation of Joseph, the lost son, the rest of the family decides to move to Egypt to escape the famine. When they arrive in Egypt Jacob has an audience with Pharaoh.

The year this happens is Jacob’s 130th and so we need add 129 years to his first year to discover the year from Adam. 8942 AA + 130 - 1 = 9071 AA.

Jacob’s family would remain in Egypt and not return to Canaan for 430 years.(Exod 12:40)

Since 9071 AA was the first year in Egypt, they would remain there for another 429 years, making the last full year in Egypt 9071 AA + 430 - 1 = 9500 AA.

In the year 9501 AA, at Passover, in the first month, the whole assembly of the children of Jacob depart Egypt for the promised land. Note that the first year of Adam is the year 1, so the difference between this year of departure and Adam’s first year is 9500 years exactly.

This is interesting because there are further dates which will align on the half-millennium boundary we are seeing here. But, more on this later, back to our story.

Note that Jacob’s family would leave 430 years later, to the very day.(Exod 12:41) Since they left on the Passover the 15th day of the first month, they must have arrived in Egypt on the 15th day of the first month in the year of their arrival, 9071-01-15 AA. We assume it was sometime later in that year when Jacob had his audience with Pharaoh.

Now that we have made a quick trip to the Exodus, we need to back up and find out when the rest of the events of Genesis happened. There are some hard problems which must be solved before we can say we have it complete.

So, we turn our attention back to the time from Abraham to the Exodus again, this time taking a slower journey through this period, filling in some missing details.

Slow Trip to Exodus

The reason we had to take the quick trip through to the Exodus is because there appears to be a missing chronological key.

Jacob goes to Padan Aram and there agrees to work 7 years for his future father-in-law in order to buy his wife, but in a honeymoon night mix up, he finds he’s been slipped his beloved’s sister. No matter, says father of the bride, take them both, but remain here working for me another 7 years.

Jacob agrees, and in fact remains there another 13 years before returning home with wives, kids and flocks.

Throughout this dialog we are not told what age Jacob was when he started having kids, so we are unable, so it seems, to establish the time chronology through to the Exodus using the family genealogy recorded for us.

It turns out there is a date for this, but Jacob is not the one used to date the births of the sons. To find where that date is we need to start out ahead, at the Exodus and work backwards, finding out when his sons are born and thereby finding out what Genesis uses to date their births moving forwards across the time line.

Jacob’s Family in Egypt

Late in the year 9500 AA Moses along with his older brother Aaron appear before Pharaoh. Over about one month’s time they perform a series of miracles for Pharaoh, so he will believe that the God of the Bible was real, and so that Pharaoh would let the Hebrews out of Egypt to return to their homeland, Canaan.

We also find in Exodus chapter 6 the family record of Aaron and Moses, the records of which provide the overall life lengths of certain individuals. The following table contains those values.

We are not told how old these men are at the time they become fathers, so we are being given a different set of data. The only thing we are being told is their overall life span times. This is interesting because it can be strung together no other way besides end-to-end.

These might be absurd data values, ones without meaning, but if this is so there was no reason for the Holy Spirit to allow them to remain. Why use valuable biblical column inches with details such as this?

A simple check that we are at least close involves simply adding these numbers together. 137 + 133 + 137 = 407 years. This, combined with either Moses or Aaron’s age (83 years) at appearance before Pharaoh gives an answer at 490 years. This is not bad, if the Levi, the man in question went to Egypt at age 60 or so this works. But we want a precise answer, not a general one. This only tells us we are in the ball park.

Can we get more precise? Yes. Lets keep going with the math and solve this puzzle completely. We’ll take that scripture intends us to string these names together end-to-end. But, which brother, Aaron or Moses, is the one we are to use at the end of this sequence?

There is no strong biblical answer for either. Moses gets the better press in his later life, but his older brother becomes the high priest which as an office would continue through many more generations.

There is a pattern that we see in other places that the older brother gets the birthright unless something upsets that pattern. Aaron will eventually forge a calf-idol, at the prompting of the crowd or elders, but he is never explicitly thrown out of office for this, so we will follow the general pattern and favor the older brother here.

Without a strong case for either brother at this point, we need further confirmation. So a "back-check" where we revisit this and show it did turn out to be the right choice for some other reason. That other reason will turn out to be that our choice will agree across the time line to the one already developed.

We have enough data at this point to compute birth years for each of the men mentioned earlier.

Aaron appears at age 83 to Pharaoh in the year 9500 AA, 82 years earlier would be his first year, the year he was born. 9500 AA - 83 + 1 = 9418 AA.

Amram, Aaron’s ancestor, lives 137 years, so his first year is 9418 AA - 137 = 9281 AA. Note that there is no single year correction here because these lives are strung together end-to-end. We have no way to know what sort of correction to apply. It turns out none is needed.

Kohath, Amram’s ancestor, lives 133 years, so his first year is 9281 AA - 133 = 9148 AA. Again, no correction for any overlapping years, these are end-to-end lives.

Levi, Kohath’s ancestor, lives 137 years, so his first year is 9148 AA - 137 = 9011 AA. Again, no correction for any overlap.

So, what does this give us? Nothing in the lives of these men, appears to link to anything in Egypt, nor to the arrival in Egypt, so it must point at something else. But what?

The answer lies in the account of Jacob’s sons. We now know when one of them was born. Can we tell when the others were born? Yes, we can.

Jacob’s Sons

Jacob spent twenty years in Padan Aram.(Gen 31:38) While he was there he worked 7 years for each daughter (Gen 29:18) for a total of 14 years(Gen 31:41) he then worked 6 years for the flocks.(Gen 31:41) In total Jacob spent 20 years in Padan Aram(Gen 31:38) working for Laban.

We have a few other details, that do appear to matter. The first is that he arrived in Padan Aram after the 1st month, (Gen 29:14) so the 7 years he spends working for the first wife end early in his 8th year. His wedding week with Leah and his wedding week with Rachel are therefore somewhere early in the 8th year there.

Remember that like Noah, the seed is planted in one year, and the baby born in the next, unless we are told otherwise. Nowhere in this account are we told otherwise. So, the first baby born is in Jacob’s 9th year in Padan Aram. We are given a long sequence describing the births of the first 11 children.(Gen 29:31) The last, born on the road home, is recorded separately.(Gen 48:7) Since we are not told otherwise we again assume the normal case, of one baby per year.

What is unusual about this case is that there are different mothers through this list. The mother than matters for us here is Leah, the mother of the first four boys. We assume she goes through the normal cycle, while Rachel watches jealously.

This pattern is interesting because one son we already have the birth year for. We have already shown Levi to be born in 9011 AA. That means we can chart it, and discover the birth years of each of the sons of Jacob. The following chart shows the result.

Since the first son was born in the 9th year in Padan Aram, this means that the first full year in Padan Aram must have been 9009 AA - 9 + 1 = 9001 AA.

This is interesting since Jacob’s dream at Bethel, were he saw a ladder was 500 years, almost to the day, as the children of Jacob departed Egypt for the promised land.

This is interesting data, and provides two more threads which we need to work through further. The first is that Joseph’s birth year is given, and we also know details of his life and arrival in Egypt. Before we address Joseph, we need to find the forward key which gets the birth table we just presented, keyed to time working forward instead of backward from the Exodus. That key is Jacob’s uncle Ishmael.

Uncle Ishmael

The chronology we are following is built around the family line from Adam through to the first high priest, Aaron. In all cases except for one, the time sequence at each generation is built from the time sequence of the one before. The one exception is Ishmael. We turn our attention now to Ishmael.

Ishmael’s father, Abraham, was called to go to Canaan from this point, through the rest of his life, Abraham will hear from God.

Once in Canaan, God continues to speak, telling Abraham that to his offspring God will give the land. (Gen 12:7)

After Abraham has walked with God for awhile, he spoke again. This time is recorded for us as well.

Abraham is given a great thing at this point, but he does not follow through that belief with action and he proceeds to take matters into his own hand by marrying his wife’s maid, Hagar.

This wedding takes place after he has been in Canaan for 10 years.(Gen 16:3) Abraham was called to Canaan when he was 75 years old, as we have shown above. He remains there 10 years, or through his 85th year. Then, in the next year, his 86th he weds Hagar and in that same year has a son by her named Ishmael.(Gen 16:16) The idea that this all happens in the same year is emphasized by an expression which says he slept with her, and she conceived(Gen 16:4) emphasizing the sudden nature of this conception.

What this is telling us is that Ishmael, unlike the other people in our story, is identified as being born late in the year, in this case late in Abraham’s 86th year, the same year the seed was planted. Since we know that Abraham’s first year was 8784 AA we know his 86th year was 8784 AA + 86 - 1 = 8869 AA. This time, we have a birth who’s placement in the year is unusual, unusual enough that we must track it.

When in this year was Ishmael born? We are not given a date, but it must have been in what we would call the "fourth quarter" of the year, since it takes about 9 months to have a baby, for a conception to occur in the same year as birth requires the birth to be late in the year.

We are told that Ishmael will live for 137 years(Gen 25:17) so what year is the last year of his life? To run this number out we stop for a moment and put his first year as the year 8871 AA, though his first year did overlap into the previous year. His 137th year is then 8871 AA + 137 - 1 = 9006 AA, though we are running about a quarter year late, so Ishmael did not make it into the last quarter of that indicated year.

The last year that Ishmael’s nephew Jacob works for his first wife is 9007 AA. He weds and sleeps with his new wives early in 9008 AA and has his first child in the normal way in 9009 AA. The year of Ishmael’s death has the same purpose in this chronology as the 500th year of Noah. It is after this year that we should start looking for children.

Ishmael is the chronological key which links the time sequence going forward. His death foretells the soon coming 12 sons of Jacob, the patriarchs of the 12 Tribes. This is an interesting coincidence. After Jacob had stolen Esau’s birthright, Esau married back into Ishmael’s family. Ishmael had been promised 12 rulers too, and Esau is being shown by the chronology that these could have been his if he had not despised his birthright.

Joseph in Egypt

As we saw earlier, Ishmael was the only man not in Aaron’s genealogy who was used to establish the chronology between Adam and Aaron. Only one other man in this entire era, not in the chronology, has his life length given. This man is Joseph. Altogether, Joseph lives 110 years.(Gen 50:22)

What we turn our attention to now is the life story of Joseph, and show the various years in which the events of Joseph’s life take place. What we’ll learn from this is that there was an unusual chronology in the time of the famine in Egypt.

Joseph’s Dreams

When Joseph was seventeen(Gen 37:2) events began to unfold that would see him a slave in Egypt. After bringing a bad report to their father about their flock tending skills, Joseph’s brother begin to hate him.

When Joseph begins to have dreams about his brother’s and their eventually bowing down to him they only hate him all the more.

His brothers eventually conspire to kill Joseph, but Reuben the oldest, convinces them to put Joseph in a cistern. Before Reuben can rescue his brother, a caravan of Ishmaelites purchases Joseph as a slave and eventually sells him in Egypt. The price put on Joseph’s head? 20 shekels. (Gen 37:28)

This price, 20 shekels, is giving us the age of Joseph when he is sold as a slave, one shekel per year. This is consistent with the Denarius/Day principle we saw in the article titled Time Transforms, this time it is 1 unit of currency for 1 year of life.

The math for this is based on the year of Joseph's birth from the table above. 9019 AA + 20 - 1 = 9038 AA.

Joseph’s story continues in Egypt were he ends up as a manager over the household of Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.(Gen 37:36) (Gen 39:1) It is here in Potiphar’s service that Joseph learns the language and ways of the Egyptians. Then, through the lustful desires of Potiphar’s wife, Joseph ends up in the king’s prison.(Gen 39:20)

Joseph was so skilled in administration that he even ended up running the prison.(Gen 39:22) This is important enough to mention that this is God preparing Joseph for his later life as Prime Minister of Egypt. Joseph starts out as a young man learning and being mentored by a member of Pharaoh’s court. It continues with the rigors of prison and then will continue with his later job in Pharaoh’s court.

After some number of years Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharaoh’s cup bearer and baker. His correct interpretations will warrant an invitation to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams 2 years later.(Gen 41:1) At that point Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that Pharaoh makes him prime minister of Egypt. The time when Joseph enters Pharaoh’s service is Joseph’s 30th year.(Gen 41:46)

The math for finding this year of entering Pharaoh's service is 9019 AA + 30 = 1 = 9048 AA.

We have also already established that Jacob, Joseph’s father, arrived in Egypt and blessed Pharaoh in 9071 AA.

The difference between these two dates is 23 years, not what we would expect. It turns out this is correct. Lets work through it in detail.

The last time that Joseph’s brothers arrive in Egypt they are told that 2 years of famine have passed and that 5 years remain.(Gen 45:6) The time it takes to go fetch Jacob, the family and flocks, is enough to push into a new year their arrival being in the middle of the first month, at the time of Passover. So we put 9071 AAas the 3rd year in the 7 years of famine. This means that famine in Egypt was from 9069 AA through 9075 AA. We also know that there were to be 7 years of plenty before the 7 years of famine. This a butted 7 years before so 9062 AA + 7 = 1 = 9068 AA were those years of plenty when Joseph collected grain for sale through the famine.

If Joseph entered Pharaoh’s service in 9048 AA and the time of plenty starts in 9062 AA, what gives? We have a problem. Or do we? It helps here to look at the dreams of Pharaoh.

The actual dream comes as a pair of dreams, each giving a 14 year interval. Later in the chapter Joseph indicates that these are one and the same dream which is why this is traditionally placed as a single 14 year interval, but there is a clue that these are actually two sequential events that are about to fall upon Pharaoh. The clue?

Joseph is first put in charge of Pharaoh’s Palace, and then later, put in charge of the whole land of Egypt.

Why?

Because Pharaoh was not stupid, he needed to see Joseph work for himself. If Joseph could not be trusted with the palace, he could not be trusted with the country.

The duplication of the dreams firmly establishes that God will do what he says, but it also shows that it will happen twice. The 14 year discrepancy in the chronologies being the time when these events will happen to Pharaoh’s house, before they happen to the entire country.

When Joseph was ready, and the country needed him, not just Pharaoh’s people, he was then made second highest ruler in the country.

This is actually an example we will see later where the king (in this case Pharaoh) represents his country and walks through the events that the country is to go through before the rest of the country actually does it. This is seen in Nebuchadnezzar’s time.(Dan 4:1)

In that story Wyatt reported finding an Egyptian inscription that reported 7 years of famine before 7 years of plenty. This appears wrong to the people reading the inscription. It is not. The Egyptians recorded it as it happened.

To wrap up this section, we have shown that there was a 14 year period where Joseph was prime minister trainee in Pharaoh’s palace and then made full Prime Minister when the second 14 year interval began. This second period is the one with all the "press", the earlier one was in Pharaoh’s house.

This fits the chronological data perfectly and completes our chronology to the Exodus. What remains for us to cover next? Exodus to Solomon’s reign. Which is what we turn our attention to next.

Egypt -- Loose Ends

There are several other references to time contained in this section of the Bible which we should address before moving on to Moses and the Exodus.

Slavery in Egypt

Two different time spans are given for the time in Egypt. 430 years is given as the total,(Exod 12:40) while 400 years are given as the time in Egypt as slaves. (Gen 15:13) (Acts 7:6)

The difference between these times has to do with the adjective slavery. The sons of Jacob are in Egypt for a grand total of 430 years, but they do not become slaves until they have been there 30 years. (430 - 400 = 30)

The year of the start of slavery can thus be computed. 9071 AA + 30 = 9101 AA the start of slavery.

Also, computed from the other end, the year of the Exodus, 9501 AA - 400 = 9101 AA, the date of the start of Slavery in Egypt.

Four Generations in Egypt

Abraham was told that his descendants would be in Egypt for 4 generations.(Gen 15:16) There are 2 ways that this can be considered fulfilled. The first is the 4 generations recorded in the genealogies, Levi, the first generation in Egypt, Kohath, Amram and Aaron make up those four generations.

This answer, though technically correct is not satisfying since there are end-to-end time segments used to construct it and that implies there were other generations between.

Another answer is to take a strict definition of generation as being 120 years, exactly. This is the standing life length given as the new length at the time of Noah’s flood.(Gen 6:3)

4 such generations are 4 * 120 = 480 years. This is at fist glance longer than the 430 years spent in Egypt by the Hebrews, but when we take 9500 AA as the last year in Egypt, the 1st year in this interval is 9500 AA - 480 + 1 = 9021 AA. Curiously, Jacob’s last son Benjamin is born in 9020 AA. This is a better solution to the issue of 4 generations and provides yet another confirmation that we have the birth placements right for Jacob’s sons.

Abraham’s 99th Year

When Abraham was 99 years old,(Gen 17:24) the text of the Bible says he was told that God had changed the covenant between God and Abraham. It was being increased - many nations were to come from him, his name was changed from Abram to Abraham and his wife’s name was changed from Sarai to Sarah. As a sign of this he and his household were to undergo circumcision.

When this happened his son Ishmael was 13 years old.(Gen 17:25) As we established earlier, Ishmael was born in the last quarter of Abraham’s 86th year, so Ishmael’s 13th year is from the fourth quarter of Abraham’s 98th year through to the point in the fourth quarter of Abraham’s 99th year when this covenant change takes place.

Alignment With the Base Calendar

So far we have assumed, without elaboration, that the various years we have been counting off from Adam are synchronized with the base calendar of God. This assumption needs further elaboration.

If this assumption is wrong, we could expect each generation to have an accurately recorded life length, but that those lengths overlap with each other in ways which generate error at each generation. If there is such error, there would be no reason to so carefully record the chronology in the way done here. To establish long distance chronology a different strategy would be needed.

There are other places where long distance chronologies are given, and we typically see that the base chronology has tough parts to understand which is why the long distance times are given.

Since we have no long distance times given from Adam to the arrival in Egypt, we must assume that the times given across this age are good enough for calculating the overall time.

Summary

This article covered the time from Abraham up through the Exodus. The next season in the chronology is the times surrounding Moses. We turn to that next.