Jacob's sojourn in Palestine was a prosperous period of tranquillity, marked almost exclusively by the usual family vicissitudes that span the life of every person...births, deaths, the stories of children and so on, which will be briefly summarized here.
As soon as he left Esau, Jacob crossed the Jordan ford and made his way to the small Palestine tribe that was waiting for him, perhaps at Bethel. Then, for him began the daily routine of a wealthy livestock owner, whose flocks and herds were taken to pasture by sons and servants in central Palestine. This was an area roughly corresponding to that which, following Joshua’s conquest, was to become the domain of Ephraim and Benjamin.
It was during these first years that the escapade of Reuben and Bilhah occurred, which was to cost Reuben his birthright. This event is narrated in Genesis 35, 22 and dated subsequent to the destruction of Shechem, but this placement is not at all convincing. At the time of the Shechem affair, Reuben was already over thirty and Bilhah must have been about forty-five. It is unbelievable that she would have still been so attractive to induce a mature man to commit such a serious transgression. It must have happened in the early years after the return to Palestine, when Reuben was a twenty-year-old and Bilhah was thirty-five. It was also during those same early years--there are not enough elements to fix the time more precisely--that Deborah died. She must have been more or less of the same age as Rebekah. Therefore, when Jacob returned she must have been over seventy--for those times, a well-advanced age at which to die.
On the other hand, the birth of Benjamin and the consequent death, in childbirth, of Rachel, must have taken place during the eleventh year after Jacob's return to Palestine, or at the beginning of the twelfth. It was more or less contemporary with this, that seventeen-year-old Joseph disappeared, sold by his brothers to a passing caravan. Two or three years later, Dinah was kidnapped and raped by Shechem. Simeon and Levi, in spite of Shechem's willingness to make reparations, destroyed the city that bore his name, incurring their father’s wrath, since he was compelled to leave the area in a hurry.
Many years of grieving over Joseph’s presumed death followed. Jacob's other sons had, by then, grown and married. Genesis makes a brief mention of Judah's family, dwelling in particular on the story of Tamar, which occurred towards the end of the Palestinian period. Then came the year of famine, and the brothers’ subsequent journey to Egypt, their meeting with Joseph, and the consequent transfer of the entire Israeli tribe to Egypt.
These events are not always reported by Genesis in their correct sequence, but as we have seen, a simple comparative analysis will help to place them in the most likely correct order. It is equally simple, given the mass of detail and references available, to determine the length of this period and when the main events occurred. The references used for determining the duration are those contained in Joseph's story. He was six years old when he left Haran (Gen 30, 25 and 31, 41); he was seventeen (Gen 31, 1) when his brothers sold him, and thirty when he was presented to the Pharaoh (Gen 41, 46). This means that Joseph was nominated vizier exactly twenty-four years after Jacob returned to Palestine.
The question we must ask now is: “how much time elapsed before Jacob emigrated to Egypt?” The seven years of plenty and seven of famine are simply fictional and, therefore, cannot even be considered as indefinite numbers. In fact, judging by Genesis 41, 50 and 47, 17-18, the “seven” lean years were one year only, or at the most two. The “fat” years were at least two because Joseph had his two sons before the lean year. He married Asenath soon after being presented to the Pharaoh. His first-born, Manasseh, arrived within the same year; the second son, Ephraim, was born at least fifteen months afterwards--in all, not less than two years before the famine. Jacob arrived in Egypt at the end of the first, or during the second year of famine. Therefore, this was a minimum of three years after his son's nomination as vizier, and twenty-seven after his return to Palestine.
As regards a maximum, we can arrive at a fairly precise estimation if we begin with Benjamin's age, when his brothers appeared before Joseph. They refer to him as they would to a youngster, in tones that become humorous if we presume that he was over eighteen at that time. There are no indicators available to establish exactly when Benjamin was born, but certain clues can help us to deduce it fairly precisely. When Joseph's brothers told him in Egypt that they were eleven in number and that “the youngest is with our father ...” (Gen 42,13), they did not say to which mother Benjamin was born, and Joseph asked no question on this subject, otherwise his secret would have been out. It would seem clear, however, that he “knew” that Benjamin was the son of his own mother, Rachel; this was in fact the reason why he ensured that the boy was brought to him. This would indicate that Benjamin was born before Joseph was sold. It is not certain, however, that Joseph had ever seen his little brother, who may have been born while he was absent at the pastures just before the sale, or more likely, immediately afterwards. A precise indicator in this sense is the name Rachel gave to her second son, Ben Oni, which means “son of my mourning.” Joseph had been sold, but his brothers told their parents that he had been torn to pieces by a wild beast (Gen 37, 33); this was the only reason Rachel could have had for mourning. When Joseph was at the pastures in Shechem, he knew that his mother was pregnant again, so he was expecting the news of the birth of a little brother. But the news only arrived many years later and it is easy to imagine how truly anxious he was to see him. Therefore, when Joseph met with his brothers, twenty-seven years after Jacob returned to Palestine, Benjamin could not have been less than sixteen.
A fairly small margin of uncertainty remains concerning the epoch in which Jacob emigrated to Egypt. Supposing that Benjamin at that time was no older than eighteen, Jacob's emigration to Egypt took place no later than the fifth year after his son's nomination to vizier. We can, therefore, reasonably conclude that Jacob remained in Palestine for 28 years, give or take a year. Since he had fled to Haran at nineteen, plus or minus one year, and had stayed in Mesopotamia exactly twenty, when he migrated to Egypt he must have been 67 years old, again give or take two years. The final seventeen years of his life he spent in Egypt (Gen 47, 28). We can definitively conclude that, give or take two years, Jacob died at the age of 84, a remarkable age for those times (see table at fig. 10).