Joshua 17:6

But first of all, consider the meaning of the mystery, which anyone who observes it carefully will find in the Scriptures: that in the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt there were forty-two stations; and again, the coming of our Lord and Savior into this world is traced through forty-two generations. For thus the Evangelist Matthew recounts, saying: "From Abraham until David the king, fourteen generations, and from David until the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon until Christ fourteen generations." These forty-two stations of the generations, then, which Christ made in descending into the Egypt of this world, make up by the very same number the forty-two stations of those who go up from Egypt. And Moses set it down well and observantly, saying: "The children of Israel went up with their power." And what is their power, if not Christ himself, who is the power of God? He therefore who goes up, goes up together with him who came down to us from thence, so that he might arrive there whence that one descended not by necessity but by condescension, that the saying might be true which was spoken, that "he who descended is himself also the one who ascended." Therefore in forty-two stations the children of Israel arrive at the beginning of the taking of their inheritance. And the beginning of taking the inheritance was where Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh receive the land of Gilead. And so the number of Christ's descent through forty-two fathers according to the flesh, as though descending to us through forty-two stations, matches the ascent of the children of Israel through just as many stations up to the beginning of the promised inheritance.