83 The Family of Israel Goes to Egypt

It is important for us to remember that one principal reason that God took the Hebrews down to Egypt was to keep them from intermarrying into the Canaanites. Shaul was the son of a Canaanitish woman and that means he had a different mother than the other sons of Simeon. So Shaul’s mother was either a concubine or she was a second wife since only he is listed as her son. Most of Jacob’s sons were not married to Canaanite women. There had been some intermarriage though such as Judah and Simeon and that was why God wanted to move them out of Canaan. They had to remain pure. It is quite clear from Exodus chapter one that they did remain separate and a pure race of people.
Three times in the Old Testament, it is stated that seventy people from the house of Jacob went down into Egypt. Here is Genesis 46:27, 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 into Egypt, were threescore and ten