Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. – Deuteronomy 26:5

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 12, 2015): Deuteronomy 26

Canadian’s welcomed what the American papers called “The NYC Wild Child” back from her self-imposed exile last week. Her name, of course, is Margaret Trudeau, the former wife of the former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and someone who has been romantically linked to men as diverse as Ted Kennedy and Mick Jagger. Trudeau has opted to stay out of the lime light for the past three decades, but now is getting set to re-enter both the culture and (at least as visitor) the house that she once called a prison and remarked that it was a place to which she would “never, never return” – 24 Sussex Drive, the official home of the Prime Minister of Canada. Of course, this time her connection with 24 Sussex Drive will be through her son, the new Prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. With her exile complete, it seems that the wandering Margaret Trudeau has come full circle – and never, well, never is simply a long time.

Moses reminds the Children of Israel where it is that they could find their origins. The “my father” that he speaks of are actually the Patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And he is quite right in calling them “wandering Arameans.” The fathers hailed most likely from the area around Paddan Aram in what is today Northern Syria or Southern Turkey (which is why some translations say that “my father was a wandering Syrian” – both would be technically correct, although the actual word that is used here is “Aramean”. Then it was simply part of the Kingdom of Aram. But they were “wandering” Arameans. They didn’t stay home. They travelled south into Canaan which eventually would become known as the Promised Land. They made ventures even further south into Egypt. They were keepers of the flock and they were continually on the move. They were wanderers. Jacob would return home to Paddan Aram and live there for a number of years at the express wish of his mother. Her desire was that Jacob would marry a woman from his own family. But, after his marriages to Rachel and Leah, he would return to the family wandering. Eventually, Father Jacob would take his entire family into Egypt to escape a famine that was inflicting much of the Middle East. But the NIV misses what might be an important concept. Jacob’s family exile to live in Egypt is termed a sojourn (the NIV simply says that they “lived there.”) But the idea was that this was a temporary experience. They were not making “we will never return statement.” They had plans to go home. But for now they would live in Egypt. The total time that Israel sojourned in Egypt was 400 years.

Experts have seen a godly purpose in the sojourn of Israel in Egypt. In Canaan, the young nation would most likely have been swallowed up by the peoples that surrounded them. They did not possess the numbers to take the land, and they would have likely been co-opted into the worship of the local gods.

But Egypt was a highly racist nation, and the object of their racist beliefs was the Arameans. In Egypt, the children of Jacob would be left alone giving them ample opportunity to bond together. Eventually, of course, they became slaves to the Egyptians which would have further cemented that bond. In Egypt, they would develop a system of belief and an identity that was separate from the culture at large. In Canaan, they would have been victims of assimilation, but in Egypt they would become a nation. And one day, when their wandering and their sojourn was completed, they would finally be ready to end their exile and to return to their new home.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 27