Jacob left the Promised Land when he was young in order find a wife, and now as an old man he has to leave it again. After thinking his son was dead for twenty-two years, he finally reunites with Joseph. He takes his big crazy family with him to Egypt as God tells Him to do, just as God told His father Isaac not to go to Egypt during the famine in his day. Being a Christian is never a matter of following a formula, but of knowing the living God and following Him. Israel goes into Egypt a clan and comes out a nation. God lays the groundwork for that transformation in this story.