Genesis 46 – 48

Old Jacob sets out for Egypt with the carts Pharaoh sent him loaded with all his earthly possessions and offspring. Stopping at Beersheba where he met God before, he offered sacrifices to Him, hoping to speak with Him once more. God obliged by speaking with Jacob, who must have had some temerity about the move to Egypt, and told him not to be afraid to go. It was all a part of God’s plan to sequester Israel while He grew her into a great nation. They would be outcasts in Egypt, so they would be left to themselves to develop the worship and culture God wanted them to have. God promised Israel He would bring them back to Canaan.
Genesis enumerates all who went with Jacob to Egypt, including Joseph and his sons who were already there. There were seventy of them, not counting Jacob’s daughters-in-law. I guess they didn’t count them because they weren’t descendants of Jacob. Jacob was 130 years old when he moved to Egypt.
Joseph hitched his chariot and went to meet his father in the Land of Goshen in the Nile River Delta. There was a tearful reunion when father laid eyes on son and old Jacob proclaimed he was then ready to die, since he had seen his favorite son. Joseph promised them Goshen as their country, since it was lush and could support all their livestock, and he was pretty sure Pharaoh would go along with that, since herds and herdsmen would not be welcomed by the general population of Egypt. They disdained sheep and sheepherders, probably for the same reason we do today—they smell bad.
Pharaoh gave them the most fertile region of Egypt and also put them in charge of his livestock.
The famine got more severe, just as Joseph had predicted by God’s guidance. Joseph was a strict Prime Minister, however, and required payment for all the food he doled out of the storehouses. Soon all the land belonged to Pharaoh and all the people are indentured to him.
So Jacob lived another seventeen years in Egypt. He is on his deathbed and Joseph goes to see him one last time. Jacob made him promise to take him back to Canaan for burial alongside Abraham and Isaac. They had a custom then where, instead of shaking hands to seal a deal, one would put his hand under the other’s thigh. Joseph did this, and we see Israel worshipping God at the end of Chapter 47.
Joseph takes his two sons to see their grandfather before he dies and Jacob blesses them, curiously, giving the greater blessing to the younger brother. Joseph tried to correct his father in this, but Jacob persisted. Ephraim, the younger brother, would become a mightier nation than the tribe of Manasseh, and we will see this played out in later chapters.
Jacob promised a certain portion of land he had fought for and won back in Canaan to Joseph’s descendants.