Exodus Exodus 2:1-25
Pharaoh decreed the Nile for every Hebrew son. A Levite mother answered with a tevah - the one word that, in all the Hebrew Bible, names only Noah's ark and Moses' basket: the seed of deliverance carried safely through the very waters meant to destroy it.
Genesis Genesis 47:1-31
Aged and dependent on Egyptian grain, Jacob blesses Pharaoh twice. Israel multiplies in exile. A dying oath binds the patriarch's body to Canaan. The covenant blessing proves portable, the land of sojourning still home.
Genesis Genesis 23:1-20
Abraham buys a tomb in a land he was promised, calls himself a sojourner before the Hittites, and coins the vocabulary the New Testament will speak to the diaspora.
Exodus Exodus 22:18-23:13
The heart of the Book of the Covenant is one sentence said twice: 'for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.' It brackets the whole unit and states the law's spine — Israel, the redeemed oppressed, is forbidden to become the oppressor. The verb of Pharaoh's program against Israel is the very verb God forbids Israel to use against the widow and orphan, and the release it sets in motion reaches, through Jubilee and prophecy, to the year of the Lord's favor that Jesus proclaims at Nazareth.