ספר בראשית

Genesis 46,1. “he offered meat-offerings in honour of ‎the G’d of his father Yitzchok.” The Midrashim offer ‎many different explanations of this verse.‎The reader’s attention is directed at the commentary of ‎Nachmanides (very lengthy). He concludes that Yaakov, ‎personally, (if it had been up to him) did not really want to ‎descend to Egypt. It was only because he realized that it had been ‎decreed for him to be exiled in Egypt, (compare Shabbat 89) ‎according to which Yaakov should actually have descended to ‎Egypt in iron chains. Under the circumstances, Yaakov realized ‎that he was very fortunate to travel to Egypt in style, instead. ‎When he addressed G’d as the G’d of Yitzchok, he implied that his ‎father Yitzchok had not been forced to leave the Holy Land, even ‎though there had been a famine there in his lifetime also, G’d had ‎commanded him to remain there. (Genesis 26,2) He may have ‎hoped to change G’d’s decree so as to enable him to remain in the ‎Holy Land.‎