Egypt as Divine Incubator

I was reminded recently of how Egypt served as a divine incubator of sorts for Jacob's family (Gen 46-50). The two great dangers facing the incipient nation of Israel was assimilation and/or elimination. Certain aspects related to Egypt provided protection from both. Here is a simple table I created for a recent class on Genesis. (I apologize that I couldn't get the formatting quite right but you get the idea.)

 

Egypt as a Divine Incubator
Isolation to Avoid Assimilation	Protection to Avoid Elimination
·  Egyptians don’t like eating with foreigners (43:32) ·  Egyptians don’t like shepherds (46:34)	·  Protection of the Egyptian army ·  Protection against famines