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Genesis 46

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1 And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-sheba; and he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

2 And God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob! And he said, Here am I.

3 And he said, I am ùGod, the God of thy father: fear not to go down to Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation.

4 I will go down with thee to Egypt, and I will also certainly bring thee up; and Joseph shall put his hand on thine eyes.

5 And Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba; and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, on the waggons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

6 And they took their cattle, and their goods which they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and came to Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him;

7 his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters and all his seed he brought with him to Egypt.

8 And these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt: Jacob and his sons. Jacob's firstborn, Reuben.

9 And the sons of Reuben: Enoch, and Phallu, and Hezron, and Carmi.

10 -- And the sons of Simeon: Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Saul the son of a Canaanitish woman.

11 -- And the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.

12 -- And the sons of Judah: Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pherez, and Zerah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pherez were Hezron and Hamul.

13 -- And the sons of Issachar: Tola, and Puah, and Job, and Shimron.

14 -- And the sons of Zebulun: Sered, and Elon, and Jahleel.

15 -- These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob in Padan-Aram; and his daughter, Dinah. All the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty-three.

16 And the sons of Gad: Ziphion and Haggi, Shuni and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Areli.

17 -- And the sons of Asher: Jimnah, and Jishvah, and Jishvi, and Beriah; and Serah their sister; and the sons of Beriah: Heber and Malchiel.

18 -- These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter; and she bore these to Jacob: sixteen souls.

19 The sons of Rachel Jacob's wife: Joseph and Benjamin.

20 And to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asnath bore to him, the daughter of Potipherah the priest in On.

21 -- And the sons of Benjamin: Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera and Naaman, Ehi and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard.

22 -- These are the sons of Rachel who were born to Jacob: all the souls were fourteen.

23 And the sons of Dan: Hushim.

24 -- And the sons of Naphtali: Jahzeel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shillem.

25 -- These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel his daughter; and she bore these to Jacob: all the souls were seven.

26 All the souls that came with Jacob to Egypt, that had come out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives: all the souls were sixty-six.

27 And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt, were two souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob that came to Egypt were seventy.

28 And he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to give notice before he came to Goshen. And they came into the land of Goshen.

29 Then Joseph yoked his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and he presented himself to him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.

30 And Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, after I have seen thy face, since thou still livest.

31 And Joseph said to his brethren and to his father's house, I will go up, and tell Pharaoh, and say to him, My brethren and my father's house, who were in the land of Canaan, are come to me;

32 and the men are shepherds, for they have been occupied with cattle; and they have brought their sheep, and their cattle, and all that they have.

33 And it shall come to pass that when Pharaoh shall call you and say, What is your occupation?

34 then ye shall say, Thy servants are men that have been occupied with cattle from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers; in order that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.

   

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Bilhah

  

In Genesis 29:29, Bilhah signifies exterior affections, which are subservient in nature. (Arcana Coelestia 3849)

Bilhah is the maidservant of Rachel, Jacob's second wife. Jacob's first wife is Rachel's sister, Leah, and she has a maidservant, too, named Zilpah. In the polygamous culture of Mesopotamia at the time, maybe it wasn't that unusual that Jacob would father children by all four women - as he did. It's an important story; the 12 sons of Jacob and these four mothers become the founders of the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel.

There's a lot going on in this story in the internal sense, as you can imagine from the web of relationships. Leah represents external truth - a state that we begin in. She's the first to have children. Rachel, her younger sister, represents internal truth - a state that is supposed to develop within us. Ultimately, as we develop spiritually, our external truths should become conjoined to our internal ones. There's a gap, though, and it can be hard to bridge. The maidservants in the story represent states that make a bridge between the external mind and the internal mind. Bilhah represents an affirmative attitude towards interior truth - which allows good to start flowing in from the Lord. A Bilhah attitude might be something like this: "I can see that there might be some deeper, inner truths that I need here. I don't necessarily believe them all yet, but I am open to learning them and trying to use them in my life.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 3913)