168 JOEL S. BADEN Egypt. Indeed, it is precisely in raising this question that the verse serves as advance notice of the coming exodus story. These are ex- plicit foreshadowings of the exodus, though of course they do not mention oppression or redemption from oppression by name, since neither Jacob nor Joseph nor anyone else in the story knows that such oppression is coming. From the perspective of the larger story, however, these statements make clear that at the end of the Joseph story the family of Jacob is in Egypt for the foreseeable future, but that they will eventually return to Canaan. It is in the non-priestly passages of Exodus and Numbers that we begin to see not just verbal links to the patriarchal account but, more importantly, narrative dependence on historical claims estab- lished in the patriarchal stories. Such dependence is evident from the very first non-priestly words, in Exod 1,6.8: “Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation ... A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” 12. These lines demand that the reader know not only who Joseph and his brothers are, but that Joseph had a special role in Egypt’s history; in short, they demand that the reader know the patriarchal stories and the Joseph story in some detail. The continuation of these lines, in 1,9-12, describes Pharaoh’s determination not to let the Israelite people increase in number, and the failure of his scheme13. Two elements here are par- ticularly noteworthy. First, Pharaoh refers to the Israelites as a de- finable independent people within Egypt’s borders (see also 1,15-22). Such an identification presumes that the Israelites are for- eigners in Egypt, a presumption based on the account of Jacob’s descent to Egypt with his family at the end of the Joseph story. Without the preceding Joseph story, the sudden introduction of Is- rael as foreigners in a foreign land would be groundless and con- fusing. Second, Pharaoh’s intention to keep the Israelites from multiplying presumes that Israel is not yet a particularly large com- munity (which they become only in 1,12); again, this agrees with Exod 1,6 cannot be from P, as it interrupts the order of events estab- 12 lished by P in Genesis 46–47 that are explicitly resumed in Exod 1,1–5.7. Furthermore, the disjunctively phrased notice in 1,7 that the Israelites had proliferated makes sense only as commentary on the expansion of Israel from seventy people (in 1,5) to an entire nation (in 1,7); as a commentary on the deaths of Joseph and his generation in 1,6 it is quite awkward. Exod 1,9–12 is inseparable from 1,8, as the subject of the first word of 13 1,9, wayyō’mer, “he said”, has its antecedent only in 1,8, “a new king”. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati