Text: Genesis 37:1-8, 23-28; 41:46-49, 53-57; 42:1-3; 47:13-21; 50:15-21; Luke 6:35
Speaker: Joel Miller
The character of Joseph is complicated, even a contradiction.
It’s a long story, covering the final 14 of 50 chapters in Genesis, so the editors must have thought it was pretty important.
Joseph’s story can be told as one who overcomes hardship and injustice, ultimately choosing forgiveness over vengeance. He becomes a great leader whose foresight saves countless lives. The story can also be told as one whose misuse of power destroyed countless lives, including his own people.
This is the story Genesis gives so much attention.
Joseph doesn’t start out as all that sympathetic of a character. He’s kind of an arrogant youth. Not only does he have dreams about his brothers and even his parents bowing down to him, but he tells them these dreams. Which does not go over well. Multiple times we are told that his brothers are jealous and hate him.
It wasn’t entirely Joseph’s fault. He comes from a long line of parents selecting favorite sons. Abraham favors Isaac over Ishmael. Isaac favors Esau, although Rebekah, his wife, favors Jacob. And Jacob has children through four different women, making perfectly clear to everyone that Rachel is his favorite wife, and her oldest son, Joseph, his favorite son. None of this works out well, to the extent that it’s almost as if the purpose of the book of Genesis is to caution against choosing favorites. Which is ironic because the first character in Genesis to choose a favorite is God, who picks out Abraham and Sarah, from all the peoples of the ancient world to bless with offspring and land. And everyone lived happily ever after. Or not.
Joseph’s father Jacob wishes to make his choice of favorites so clear, so public, that he gives him a special robe. This robe will soon be torn by his brothers, who almost kill him, but he is spared. They throw him in a pit in the field where they are shepherding, and sell him as a slave to a caravan headed to Egypt, convincing their father Joseph was attacked and killed by a wild animal.
So that’s a big shift, from favorite son to dead son, in his father’s eyes; and for Joseph, from ‘everyone bows down to me,’ to human chattel, bought and sold in the marketplace.
Joseph’s first Egyptian owner, Potiphar, grows to love him. So much so that he puts him in charge of his entire household. Potiphar’s wife, loves Joseph so much she asks him to come to bed with her. When he refuses, she accuses him of sexual assault. And what happens to male slaves accused of making advances toward the master’s wife or any woman of that class or race? Well, a quick execution at best, torture worst. It’s happened countless times. Joseph is put in prison, which could mean Potiphar didn’t find his wife’s claims convincing. But he couldn’t just do nothing. Joseph’s life is spared again.
In prison, Joseph the dreamer becomes Joseph the dream interpreter, accurately interpreting the dreams of two fellow inmates, one of whom, after he is free, remembers Joseph and recommends him to Pharaoh, who has been haunted by his own dream that none of his advisors can crack, about seven fat cows who get eaten up by seven skinny cows.
Joseph is brought from prison. He tells Pharaoh what this means: There will be seven years of abundance in Egypt, good harvests, seven fat cows, followed by seven years of famine, seven skinny cows. So, Joseph says, Pharaoh better get busy storing up grain while the getting is good so those seven skinny cows have something to eat when there’s nothing growing. Pharaoh is impressed. He says, “Can we find anyone else like this – one in whom is the spirit of God?” So Pharaoh hands over the entire 14 year social and civil engineering project to save Egypt, to Joseph. This sets an important biblical precedent, which is, if you have a good idea you will be asked the chair the committee that does the thing.
And that’s a big shift. From slave and inmate to second-in command of a world empire.
Joseph gets to work. He uses his executive emergency powers to take 1/5th of the harvest for each of the seven years of abundance. He stores it in every city across Egypt, so much grain, “like the sand of the sea,” Genesis says, that he stops measuring it. Marty taught us last week about sand. It’s a bit of hyperbole here, but that’s a lot of grain.
When the seven years of famine come, Egypt is ready, under Joseph’s leadership. It feeds not only its own people, but surrounding peoples who hear there is food in Egypt. They come and trade their coins for grain, a pretty good deal when you’re really hungry. Joseph’s ten brothers, all except his one full brother Benjamin, the youngest, are among those who make the long journey to gather food for their households; the journey to Joseph.
What follows is several chapters of intra-family drama. Joseph, the powerful Egyptian, in full headdress and dark makeup and cultural attire, like you’ve seen in those pictures of Ancient Egyptians – Joseph recognizes his brothers, still shepherds, the ones who threw him in the pit and sold him into slavery half a lifetime ago. But they, understandably, don’t recognize him.
Joseph takes advantage of this. He accuses them of being spies. He puts all of them in prison for three days. He demands they bring their youngest brother on their next trip, keeping one of them in Egypt, Simeon, as collateral to make sure they return.
Joseph gives them extra provisions for their trip home. After filling their bags with grain, he has their money put back in the bags, which sounds kind except when the brothers discover it they dread being accused as thieves.
When they eventually return, with Benjamin, Joseph sees his mother’s only other son, his little brother, and is overcome with emotion. He hurries into the next room, and weeps. But he collects himself, and he’s not done with his tricks. He has a silver cup put in Benjamin’s bag, and sends his guards out to “find” it once the brothers leave. He demands Benjamin, a proven thief, stay with him while the other brothers take the grain back to their father, but Judah intercedes. He begs this Egyptian overlord to keep him instead, since their father wouldn’t be able to survive losing the two sons of Rachel.
This is how Genesis tells what comes next: “Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, ‘Send everyone away from me.’ So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers: ‘I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?’ But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come closer to me.’ And they came closer. He said to them, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, who you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plow nor harvest.’” (Genesis 45:1-5).
It’s one of the more tender moments in all of scripture. There is Joseph, finally letting go, full body-convulsing tears, years of pent up emotion, bawling so loudly the whole neighborhood can hear it, and probably having that eye make-up smear all over his face, finally claiming his whole story and family.
And there are Joseph’s brothers, all 11 of them, barely able to comprehend what’s going on. I think the motion Ila would make for this would be (mind blown). We could also add (heart blown) for all the emotion in the room. Way to go males. That does feel good to let your feelings out.
It’s a very tender moment, when the impossible happens – reconciliation among these estranged brothers, carrying generations of favoritisms and jealousies. It’s an example of Jesus’ words long before he spoke them: “Love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High” (Luke 6:35).
Joseph tells them to hurry back to their father. To tell him he’s still alive, and bring his father and the whole clan back to Egypt, to settle in a good region, the land of Goshen, where they’ll have all they need. The reward of reconciliation, for everyone, is great.
More from Genesis: “Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him” (45:14-15).
It would make a good end of the story. And I kind of want to just remember Joseph in this light. But this is only chapter 45, and like Joseph said, it’s only year two of a seven year famine. And like we said at the very beginning, Joseph is a complicated character, if not an outright contradiction.
The famine wears on, and Joseph still has a job to do, and the people are running out of money to buy grain. In fact, they do run out of money. Joseph “collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in Canaan” (Genesis 47:14). And when you’re out of money, what do you have left? Well there’s the cattle. So Joseph accepts payment in cattle for the grain, remember grain that he took, not purchased, 1/5 of each Egyptian’s harvest over those seven years of abundance. And now Pharaoh owns all the cattle in all the land. And the famine wears on. And so what do you have left? Well, you have your land, and you have your body, your labor. The people are begging for food, all of which is under Joseph’s control.
Now that is some power. That goes beyond even the wildest dreams of his youth, with not just his family, but an entire nation bowing down to him.
Genesis 47:20-21: “So Joseph bought (with grain) all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them, from one end of Egypt to the other.”
Joseph has saved his family, and enslaved all of Egypt.
His father and brothers and their families do return to Egypt, and settle in the land Goshen, where they found a Mennonite College. No, not that last part, that came later. At his father’s death, Joseph again weeps, and assures his brothers that he has forgiven them.
Joseph also dies in Egypt. And the clan of Jacob, who was also named Israel, the Israelites, prosper and grown numerous in the land. But soon another Pharaoh will arise, one who never knew Joseph. And that power, that Joseph clung to and no longer had, the power of life and death, now gets turned against the Israelites. Pharaoh makes them slaves, just as Joseph had done to the Egyptians.
Joseph is a complicated character, with a contradictory legacy. He saves, and he enslaves. On different accounts he could be a hero or a villain. He always did have a thing for power.
Whoever put Genesis together thought this was an important story to tell, at length. How do we use the power we have, and how will that affect future generations? And what if the most powerful thing we can do, the greatest legacy, is to let go of vengeance, to weep and grieve for the sins of our ancestors and our own, to love those who have treated us like an enemy, and to protect vulnerable life rather than subdue it.
That would be a big shift.
That would be powerful.
