Was Benjamin a young boy or a father of ten when Jacob’s family went down to Egypt?

Benjamin was not a young boy. The dates in Genesis make him a grown man. Joseph was seventeen when he was sold (37:2) and thirty when he stood before Pharaoh (41:46); after seven years of plenty and two of famine (45:6) he was about thirty-nine. Joseph was born some six years before Jacob left Haran (30:25; 31:41), and Benjamin only after the family had come back to Canaan and moved on from Bethel (35:16–18). Keil put Benjamin at about twenty-three or twenty-four when the family went down to Egypt, Gill at thirty-two at least.

Judah’s words describe Benjamin’s place in the family, not his years. Joseph too was “the son of his old age” (37:3) when he was seventeen. Qatan, ‘little’, is the ordinary Hebrew for the youngest of a family: the brothers use it of Benjamin when they say “the youngest is this day with our father” (42:13), and it is used of David: “And David was the youngest” (1 Samuel 17:14). Na‘ar, ‘lad’ (43:8), is used of grown men, such as Absalom, a father of three sons (2 Samuel 14:27), when David pleads, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom” (2 Samuel 18:5). Judah is pleading for his father’s favourite, the last son of his beloved wife, and tender words suit the plea.

The list in Genesis 46 must also be read on its own terms. It is not a simple head-count of those who walked into Egypt: it counts Joseph’s two sons, born in Egypt (46:20, 27). As the question on Benjamin’s sons explains, Numbers 26:40 shows that Naaman and Ard were Benjamin’s grandsons, sons of Bela, named among his ‘sons’ as heads of clans. Keil held that the list includes descendants born later in Egypt, reckoned to have come there in their fathers’ loins (compare 46:26, “which came out of his loins”, and Hebrews 7:10). Either way, Benjamin need not have had ten sons of his own before the move.

All born in Canaan

Gill thought it more likely that all those named were born before the move. Benjamin was at least thirty-two, he reckoned, and could have had them, perhaps with twins among them; he thought it unlikely that Benjamin had more than one wife.

Born in Egypt

Keil argued that Benjamin, at about twenty-four, could not have had ten sons or grandsons already, and that the list names the founders of Israel’s families as they stood at the Exodus, some of them born after the move. Hezron and Hamul, the grandsons of Judah in 46:12, raise the same question, and Keil answered it the same way.

Genesis does not give Benjamin’s age, and Christians differ over how many of the names in 46:21 were born before the family went down to Egypt. Both views agree that Judah’s ‘little one’ means the youngest son, not a small child.