Genesis 47:28

And Jakob lived in the land of Mizraim seventeen years. And the sum of the days of Jakob, of the days of his life, was a hundred and forty and seven years.

AND JACOB LIVED IN THE LAND OF EGYPT SEVENTEEN YEARS. I have already mentioned that Jacob’s descent into Egypt alludes to our present exile at the hand of the “fourth beast,”. which represents Rome. [There are many parallels,] for it was Jacob’s sons themselves who, by the sale of their brother Joseph, caused their going down there. Jacob, moreover, went there on account of the famine, thinking to find relief with his son in the house of his son’s friend, for Pharaoh loved Joseph and considered him as a son. It was their hope to ascend from there as soon as the famine would cease in the land of Canaan, just as they said, To sojourn in the land we have come, for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks, for the famine is heavy in the land of Canaan. But then they did not come up, but instead the exile prolonged itself upon Jacob and he died there, and his bones ascended from there accompanied by all the elders and courtiers of Pharaoh, who instituted severe lamentation for him. Our relationship with our brothers Rome and Edom is similar. We ourselves have caused our falling into their clutches, as they made a covenant with the Romans, and Agrippa, the last king during the Second Temple, fled to them for help. It was due to famine that Jerusalem was captured by the Romans, and the exile has exceedingly prolonged itself over us, with its end, unlike the other exiles, being unknown. We are in it as the dead, who say, “Our bones are dried up, we are completely cut off.” But in the end they will bring us from all the nations as an offering to the Eternal, and they will be in deep sorrow as they will behold our glory, and we will see the vengeance of the Eternal. May He raise us, that we may live in His presence.

ויחי יעקב בארץ מצרים שבע עשרה שנה, the commentators point out that just as Joseph was under the protection of his father for the first 17 years of his life, so his father was under Joseph’s protection for the last 17 tears of his life.

ויחי יעקב, “Yaakov “lived;” Rashi explains why there is not even the space of a single letter between the last letter of the previous portion and the first letter of this portion. It is the only time this occurs in the Torah. He writes that as soon as the eyes of Yaakov closed for the last time, so did the spiritual eyes of the Jewish nation and their hearts, on account of the hardships experienced when they became enslaved. [He adds that an alternate explanation is that seeing he was about to reveal parts of the future to his children, G–d immediately deprived him of his prophetic insights, preventing him form carrying out his wish. Ed.] The difficulty with Rashi’s first explanation is that Joseph’s rule in Egypt continued for another 54 years, during which period the Jews enjoyed preferred social status. Also, how do we know that Yaakov had at all been privy to what would happen to his descendants after his death, and when? We would have to answer that in his dream of the ladder he watched the ascension of that ladder by the guardian angel of brother Esau, as Rashi had explained in his commentary of B’reshit Rabbah, 68,12, and as we know from Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 35.

'ויחי יעקב בארץ מצרים וגו, “Why did the Torah mention the number of years that Yaakov lived in Egypt? We could have figured this out from the data the Torah already provided us with about how old Joseph was when he left the house of father, (Genesis 37,2) how old he was when he was appointed as viceroy by Pharaoh, and from the age of Yaakov (130) at the time of his death which is listed in the same verse. The point the Torah wished us to appreciate is that just as for the first seventeen years of his life Yaakov, his father, had provided for him, during the last seventeen years of his life, his son Joseph provided for his father.