The middle section of Genesis rapidly funnels down from the broad brim of the two millenia spent in the Fertile Crescent to less than two hundred years in the little country of Canaan. Surrounded by the rampant immorality and idolatry of the Canaanites, the godliness of Abraham rapidly degenerates into gross immorality in some of his descendants. In the last fourteen chapters, God dramatically saves the small Israelite nation from extinction by transferring the “seventy souls” to Egypt so that they