Deuteronomy 26 · a question people ask
Who is the "Syrian ready to perish" in 26:5?
The verse doesn't name him: "My father was a Syrian ready to perish. He went down into Egypt, and lived there, few in number. There he became a great, mighty, and populous nation" (26:5). "Syrian" is the word Genesis uses for Rebekah's family: "Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian" (Genesis 25:20) (tap Syrian). "Ready to perish" is one Hebrew word, and Brown-Driver-Briggs lists this verse, unsure each time, under two senses, "perish, die" and "be lost, strayed" (tap ready to perish). Christians read the father in two main ways, each resting on verses. Both agree that the one who speaks calls him "my father" and then says "us" (26:6), and that the story runs from him to the land the speaker now stands in (26:9-10).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Jacob
Those who hold this view note that Jacob went "to Paddan Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian" (Genesis 28:5), and that the book of Hosea says, "Jacob fled into the country of Aram" (Hosea 12:12). He served Laban twenty years (Genesis 31:41), and said, "God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands" (Genesis 31:42). And it was Jacob who went down: God told him, "Don’t be afraid to go down into Egypt, for there I will make of you a great nation" (Genesis 46:3), and "All the souls of the house of Jacob, who came into Egypt, were seventy" (Genesis 46:27), as Moses has said, "Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy persons" (10:22). On this reading, "He went down into Egypt, and lived there, few in number" (26:5) is Jacob's story.
Genesis 28:5 · Hosea 12:12 · Genesis 31:41-42 · Genesis 46:3 · Genesis 46:27 · Deuteronomy 10:22
Abraham
Those who hold this view note that Abraham's family came from Ur to Haran and "lived there" (Genesis 11:31), and the LORD called him: "Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house" (Genesis 12:1). Abraham later sent his servant back "to my country, and to my relatives" (Genesis 24:4), and the servant "went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor" (Genesis 24:10), where Rebekah's father was Bethuel (Genesis 24:15), whom Genesis calls "Bethuel the Syrian" (Genesis 25:20). Joshua gives the LORD's words, "I took your father Abraham from beyond the River" (Joshua 24:3), and the LORD had said to Abraham, "I will make of you a great nation" (Genesis 12:2). Abraham too "went down into Egypt to live as a foreigner there" (Genesis 12:10), where the Hebrew verb is the one behind 26:5's "lived there". On this reading, the story begins with Abraham, the first of "our fathers" (26:3, 26:7).
Genesis 11:31 · Genesis 12:1-2 · Genesis 24:4 · Genesis 24:10 · Genesis 24:15 · Genesis 25:20 · Joshua 24:3 · Genesis 12:10
The verses
“Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to be his wife.”