Genesis 47:9
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
Jacob said unto Pharaoh, the days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years,.... He calls his life a "pilgrimage"; as every good man's is; they are not at home in their own country, they are seeking a better, even an heavenly one: Jacob's life was very emphatically and literally a pilgrimage; he first dwelt in Canaan, from thence he removed to Padanaram, and sojourned there awhile, and then came to Canaan again; for some time he dwelt at Succoth, and then at Shechem, and after that at Hebron, and now he was come down to Egypt, and he had spent one hundred and thirty years of his life in this way: and with this perfectly agrees the account of Polyhistor from Demetrius {n}, an Heathen writer, who makes the age of Jacob when he came into Egypt one hundred and thirty, and that year to be the third year of the famine, agreeably to Genesis 45:6;
few and evil have the days of the years of my life been; see
Job 14:1; he calls his days but "few", in comparison of the long lives of the patriarchs in former times, and especially in comparison of the days of eternity: and "evil", because of the many afflictions he had met with; as from Esau, from whose face he was obliged to flee lest he should kill him, Genesis 27:41; and in Laban's house, where he served for a wife fourteen years, and endured great hardships, Genesis 31:41; and at Shechem, where his daughter was ravished, Genesis 34:2, and his sons made that slaughter of the Shechemites, Genesis 34:25, which he feared would cause his name to stink, Genesis 34:30; and at Ephrath, where he buried his beloved Rachel, Genesis 35:16; and at Hebron, where his sons brought him such an account as if they believed his beloved son Joseph was destroyed by a wild beast, Genesis 37:32;
and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage; his grandfather Abraham lived to be one hundred amnd seventy five years of age, Genesis 25:7, and his father Isaac lived to the age of one hundred and eighty, Genesis 35:28.
{n} Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. p. 21. p. 425.