What Does Genesis 46:9 Mean?

The sons of Reuben: Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi. Reuben's four sons are the first grandsons listed in the genealogical record of the migration. Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi: four names, four descendants who entered Egypt as part of the migration. They are listed without biographical information, purely as names in the census of the family of Israel. The genealogical list's function is not character but count: who is here, descended from whom, going to Egypt together.

The listing of the sons of each patriarch's sons provides the generational depth of the migration: Jacob himself, his sons, and his grandsons (and a great-granddaughter: Serah, daughter of Asher, listed in v.17). The genealogy records three generations in the migration, establishing that the family is already established and fertile: an already-branching tree of descendants. The four sons of Reuben who enter Egypt will be the progenitors of the Reubenite clan that Exodus and Numbers will document as a defined tribal group.

Reuben's four sons' names appear again in Numbers 26:5 to 6 as the founders of the Reubenite sub-clans (Numbers 26: Hanochites, Palluites, Hezronites, Carmites). The genealogical list of Genesis 46 is thus the foundational document of the tribal sub-structure that will organize the nation emerging from Egypt. The names of Reuben's sons in this verse are also the names of sub-tribal divisions of the tribe of Reuben in Israel's later national life.