The Reason for Jacob's Fear

(God) said, “I am the Omnipotent God of your father. Do not be afraid to go to Egypt, for it is there that I will make you into a great nation.”                                                     Genesis 46:3 Only one who is afraid needs to be told “Do not be afraid.”                       Bereishit Rabba 76:1

            Rashi explains that the source of Jacob’s fear was his need to leave the Holy Land.

            Yalkut Shimoni [152] elaborates on Jacob’s fear:

Jacob wondered: how can I leave the Land of my fathers, the Land of my birth and the sojournings of my fathers, the Land in which the Shechina of the Holy One, blessed be He is imbued and go to a defiled land, among the uncircumcised who do not fear Heaven?

The very fact of his being on the verge of leaving the Land which God had promised to him and his descendants engendered fear in Jacob.

            Netziv focuses the point even more:  Jacob’s fear was that in Egypt his family would assimilate into Egyptian culture and abandon their own traditions, while as long as his family remained in their Land, Jacob was confident that they would remain loyal to his tradition and teachings. “Only in the Land of Israel, the place sanctified for the service of sacrifices and more specially suited to the wisdom of Torah than any other land, could the Israelite uniqueness be preserved from generation to generation.”

            In his commentary on Genesis, Netziv follows the approach that “the events of the fathers are signs for the sons,” and this is stressed in his closing comment, quoted above: “from generation to generation.” In our generation as well, the Land of Israel, the natural habitat of the People of Israel and of Judaism (as Maharal of Prague emphasizes), is the place best suited to preserve the Israelite uniqueness.