# Contradiction between Exodus 12:40 and Genesis 3:17?



## Rufus (Jul 16, 2012)

> The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.


 Exodus 12:40



> 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.


 - Genesis 3:17


How could the law come 430 years after Abraham, when he wasn't alive when the Hebrews were in Egypt, and they were in Egypt for 430 years?


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## VictorBravo (Jul 16, 2012)

Sean, can you clarify your question? I don't see what is bothering you. I think the law you are speaking of is the Law of Moses, right? What does Abraham have to do with that?

And how are you seeing the law annulling a covenant? 

Maybe you are referring to Exodus 3:17? Gen 3:17 speaks of the original curse.


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## Contra_Mundum (Jul 16, 2012)

From Matthew Poole, on Ex.12:40It is plain that those years are to be computed from the first promise made to Abraham, Gen.12:1,2, to the giving of the law, from Gal.3:17, where this is affirmed. And although it doth not plainly appear when that promise was made, because the Scripture mentions not Abraham’s age, neither when it was made, nor when Abraham came to Haran with his father, Gen.11:31, but only when he went out of Haran, being seventy-five years old, Gen.12:4; yet a good while after it was made, and, as it may seem more than probable, thirty years afterward, it is manifest there were only four hundred years of this time to come, Gen.15:13. And many more years passed ere there was such a man as Israel or Jacob, and more ere there were any children of Israel, or of Jacob, and yet more ere they came into Egypt.

How then can this be true which is here said? 

Answ. 1. *Some affirm that they were in Egypt four hundred and thirty years, which is sooner said than proved*. 

2. Some ancient Hebrew copies are said to have had more words than ours now have; for the LXX. and Samaritan interpreters after the words in Egypt, read, and in the land of Canaan. And some other copies after the word who, add, together with their fathers, or, and their fathers. And so the difficulty vanisheth. And if it should be granted that there were some few such errors in our present copies in matters ... historical or chronological, which God might permit to be there for many wise and holy reasons, yet this is no prejudice to our faith, or to God’s providence, which hath been pleased to have so special a care of those texts which concern the essentials of faith and a good life, that all copies are agreed in them. 

3. These four hundred and thirty years are not by the text confined to Egypt, but may be extended to any place where they were sojourners; and the Hebrew word asher is not to be rendered which, as relating to the time of their sojourning, but who, as belonging to the persons sojourning, as our translation well renders it; and the sense is, that they were sojourners, or, which is all one, strangers, or dwellers in a land that was not theirs, as it is said Gen.15:13, for four hundred and thirty years. And the emphasis lies in the Hebrew word moshab, which is here fitly rendered sojourning; as toshab, coming from the same root, is commonly used for a sojourner, or one that lives in a place or land which is not his, as Lev.22:10; 25:35,40 Num.35:15 Ps.39:12.

There is now but one difficulty remains, How the children of Israel can be said to be sojourners so long, seeing much of this time passed before they were born? 

Answ. As Levi is said to pay tithes in Abraham, Heb.7:9, because he was in the loins of Abraham when Abraham paid tithes; with much more reason might the children of Israel be said to sojourn so long, because they sojourned a great part of it in their own persons, and the rest in the loins of their parents. And as ofttimes when the parents only are mentioned, the children are included or intended, as Gen.12:3, in thee, i.e. in thy seed; and Gen.13:17, I will give it (the land) unto thee, i.e. to thy seed; and Jacob is said to be brought up again out of Egypt, Gen.46:4, to wit, in his posterity; and David is oft put for his posterity, as 1Ki.12:16; Ezk.34:23; 37:24,25; why may not parents also be understood sometimes when the children only are mentioned? But we need not make suppositions, seeing we have examples; the persecution in Egypt, and deliverance out of it, which happened to the parents only, being attributed to their posterity, who neither felt the one, nor saw the other, Dt.26:5, &c. Compare Ps.16:6 Jdg.10:11,12. And the souls of the house of Jacob, (i.e. of the children of Israel, for by house it is evident he means only children,) which came with Jacob into Egypt, are said to be threescore and ten souls, Gen.46:26,27. In which number and title Jacob himself is confessedly included. And therefore upon the very same ground, under this title of the children of Israel, we must understand Israel himself, who being the chief author and subject of this sojourning in Egypt, it were unreasonable to exclude him from the number of those sojourners. And this phrase being once extended to their immediate parent, may by a parity of reason be extended to their great grandfather Abraham, as being the first author of that famous peregrination or sojourning, which being begun in Canaan, ended in Egypt. Add to this, that the word Israel, as it is put for the people or children of Israel, is elsewhere used for the whole church of God, as Rom.9:6, and therefore may well include Abraham as the father, and, under God, the founder of it.

And the title of the children of Israel might well be given to all that people, and to the family from which they descended, because they were now known by that name. And that this indeed was Moses’s meaning, which is here produced, may be further gathered from hence, that otherwise Moses had contradicted himself; for by the years of the lives of Jacob, and Levi, and Kohath, and Amram, and Moses himself, which he precisely sets down, *it appears that the sojourning of the children of Israel, strictly so called, in Egypt, was not above two hundred and fifteen years*. And it is absurd to think that so wise and learned a man, as all acknowledge Moses to have been, should commit so gross an error, especially seeing that generation could easily have confuted him.​
These conclusions are not universally approved, but I believe them to be substantially the truth of the matter.


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## VictorBravo (Jul 16, 2012)

Thanks, Bruce. Now I see the issue.


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## arapahoepark (Jul 17, 2012)

That's what I've gotten recently, that the 430 years started when Ishmael started persecuting Issac or something like that. And it makes sense when God told Abraham it would be 400 years before going into the promised land because the iniquity of the Canaanites was not yet complete, back in Gen 15.


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