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Tim Maas
The "sons of Israel" can refer either to the twelve individual sons of Jacob (to whom God gave the name Israel in Genesis 32:24-30), or to the collective nation of Israel consisting of the twelve tribes of which Jacob's sons were the founders (which, by the time of the events described in the passage cited in the question (hundreds of years after Jacob's death), had a total population (men, women, and children of all ages) of at least one million people). Most of the English translations of this verse that appear on the website http://www.biblehub.com make this clearer by translating "the sons of Israel" (which apparently was the original Hebrew wording) as "the people of Israel", or "the Israelites", to indicate that the entire nation is being referred to.
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