Thoughts while reading: Joseph
Our Biblical heroes can easily become characters to emulate, and they begin to stand alone in our brains as moral examples when torn from the fabric of the rest of the Scripture. I don’t remember teachers showing me, as a child, how the stories and people of the Bible pointed to the promised Jesus. I just recall wanting to be like Esther and Daniel, but didn’t understand why Samson’s story ended in his bizarre, self-sacrificial death. And goodness, should I want to be like Solomon, or not? We try to categorize these people: Saul was a bad king, and David good, but I was flummoxed when I found out the rest of David’s story. I didn’t want to be a liar like Jacob and yet he wrestled with God and lived. Elijah was okay because he defeated 450 false prophets, but then, whoops he ran away, afraid of one, evil Jezebel. Man, Job sure did suffer, but he had patience. And I should be like Ruth, too, she stuck with her mother-in-law and worked hard and got married. Don’t run from God like Jonah, or I’ll end up in the belly of a fish (nevermind his angry and disillusioned ending…) However, I’ve learned these people aren’t meant to take on meaning or moralization apart from Jesus and the truth of God’s kingdom. These were actual, historical people, and they have already lived their lives, never to pass this way again. The lessons they leave for us point to the Eternal and Almighty God, and His perfection exhibited through His chosen, beloved jars of clay.
I enjoy embarking on the adventure of visiting these stories again in new (to me) translations. If you’ve always read just one translation, try a new one, for new vocabulary, new insight and general freshness. While familiarity can bring comfort, it can also breed contempt. I find myself just skimming oft-read passages because I think I have gleaned everything I need to know. It is a dangerous and complacent mind-set, and I find just a different word can change the flow of my reading, and awaken my mind to Spirit thoughts. The people of the Bible are there because the Spirit has put them there. The portraits of them serve as a doorway through which we can enter into the Father’s heart. He has something to show us of Himself through His human agents, as we have been created in His image. This is profound, considering He eventually (literally) broke into His own story disguised as one of His creatures. I am grateful He is the Author, or we may have missed His appearance.
I was listening to Genesis 37 in the car, and new thoughts captivated me, so I spent some time rereading the life of Joseph over the next few days. His story is recounted in Genesis 37-50. I read his story in the English Standard Version, and then spent some time looking at various individual verses in a wide range of translations. I have heard the story of Joseph too many times to count, and I remember once, in an adult Sunday school class listening to others assign and overlay their own opinions and meanings on the Scripture. Some of these adults worked to rationalize why his brothers acted like they did, and concluded Joseph was guilty of sin for sharing his dreams, when Scripture doesn’t tell us this anywhere. I came away from the lesson thinking I need to tune my mind to the mind of God. If His Word does not give us the details, we are certainly free to use our imaginations, but ultimately trust His Spirit to give us proper meaning and interpretation. When we don’t take the time to understand God’s Father heart, then His words will not seep into ours and do the work of transforming us, growing us up into His likeness.
Reading about Joseph again made me think of Jesus. There are so many connections, and more I’d like to explore. But really, the part of the story that stirred my imagination this time around was how the hatred and sins of other people ended up placing Joseph right in the middle of God’s plan so that he was used mightily to save the world! Psalm 76:10 turns my thought in an interesting way: “Surely the wrath of man shall praise You; the remnant of wrath You will put on like a belt.” If you’ve been around me any length of time, I am open about my struggles against sinful anger, and so this verse caused me to stop and take notice. If my anger can praise God and He can wear it like a belt, my anger must be puny against Him. This realization manifested thankfulness and gratitude, since I can see my anger as serious, but also small, never derailing my faithful Father’s plan. The same goes for other sins. These actions, attitudes and omissions grieve the heart of God, and yet He is so GOD, so completely Other, that He can take these puny, offensive things and turn them into catalysts, assets, and good that can accomplish His will completely and without fail. I can rest in knowing He is actively working things for Himself, and can then rejoice when I see His ways even in times when it seems I am a victim of injustice, laboring unseen in a pit.
Joseph and his family
We’re introduced to Joseph when he’s 17, and he brought a bad report of his brothers to his father. Jacob loves him more than any of his other sons, and made him a special robe. All of this is simply and straightforwardly stated. I take it as an introduction to a family dynamic. His brothers saw the special treatment, and hated Joseph, and could not speak peacefully to him. When I read it in Scripture, it just IS. These are statements to the reader, not necessarily indictments against the characters.
Early in his introduction, Joseph is already connected to dreams and interpretations. He told the first dream to his brothers and they hated him even more (v5) and then hated him some more for his dreams and for his words (v 8) He told the second dream to his father and his brothers, and his father rebuked him. The brothers were jealous but his father pondered on the dream. I have heard adults pontificate as to why Joseph was wrong to tell his brothers his dreams. My goodness, it was his family! This is where we share things. God does not rebuke Joseph here. He is likely the One who sent the dreams, especially since we see them fulfilled many years later.
When listening to the account of Genesis 37, I could feel the hatred Joseph’s brothers reserved for him. Scripture makes it abundantly clear about how zealous they were in their hatred. And while this may be offensive to you, I see God leveraging their hatred for His plan. God wanted to get Joseph to Egypt since He had a much larger plan to save Jacob and his family. I wonder if God sent the dreams to Joseph in order to further alienate him from his family, using the brothers’ hatred to cast Joseph out to slave traders…thus ensuring their own lives were preserved. Before he even came near them in the fields at Dothan, they conspired against him to kill him. They cite his dreams. Reuben rescued him by downgrading their murderous intentions. They instead stripped him of his robe, and tossed him in a dry pit. They enjoy a meal, and behold a caravan of Ishmaelites (remember the half-brother of Isaac) are headed their way. Judah persuades the brothers to sell him for 20 shekels of silver.
Here, I examined some teachings I used to believe and operated under. I had made a large and heavy doctrine of sin, and in the process, I became a professional sin hunter, poking about in my life and the lives of others to find sin, sin, sin. Until I changed my focus and considered that there is a larger and greater plan beyond me, with a beautiful Person at the center, my mind was not properly renewed. Honestly, I could find everyone in the story of Joseph guilty of some sort of sin, but when will I realize Jesus has made an end to all our sin? It’s like my sin (and yours) is up against Jesus. Is there anything too big? Too small? He swallowed up sin on the cross, in order that we might become righteousness. When I am hunting sin, I can find all sorts of things to call sin. However, when I begin to tune my ear to sin, in creeps paranoia, fear, guilt, shame and a whole host of slave-traders. If instead, I can focus on the One who has freed me, and is Himself indeed Freedom, I can begin to see as He sees, and therefore walk as He walks. This is evident in the life of Joseph. His focus is not on others or even himself. His circumstances are not where he finds his life. It’s like he has eyes attuned to the eternal. He goes from a favored status within his home, to being a slave in a foreign land. Similarly, Jesus left heaven, and laid aside His glory and appeared to lose His favored status, to become like us. Joseph kept a grip on hope while living in reality. Because of the unseen and eternal realm, things here, in the seen and temporary realm, are not as they appear. I do not believe Joseph or Jesus ever lost God’s favor, blessing or presence, it was simply harder to see, and often took on the appearance of suffering in this temporary realm.
When Joseph makes it to Egypt, the Scripture makes it plain that Lord was with him, and made him a successful man. Others saw that the Lord was with him and caused all that he did to succeed. Joseph found favor among men, and the Lord blessed others for Joseph’s (and His own) sake. Once again, Joseph is promoted to a favored status among people. And we see the insatiable lust of Potipher’s wife result in false accusations that drive Joseph into the bowels of the dungeon (once again, he is stripped of his robe). Her wickedness puts Joseph in the right place to interpret the dreams of the baker and the cupbearer, for this was the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. Even there, the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Whatever Joseph did, the Lord made it succeed. What trust Joseph showed, not in his circumstances, but in the Lord. He continued to operate in this temporary realm with the faith and knowledge that his legitimate status with God had never changed. I am enthralled with this foreshadowing of Jesus walking on earth and perfectly showing us how secure we are in Him, because He is secure in the Father. Nothing in the circumstances of this world properly show the glory that we simultaneously possess in Christ.
It’s excruciating for me to read Joseph’s story while marking real time. The cupbearer forgets Joseph for two whole years! The Lord sends Pharaoh dreams, and the cupbearer is reminded of Joseph. Because Joseph was still in prison, Pharaoh knew exactly how to find him. If Joseph had been released 2 years prior, could he have been found again by Pharaoh? Would Joseph have remained in Egypt? After he interprets Pharaoh’s dreams, Pharaoh recognizes the Spirit of God inside Joseph, and clothes Joseph in garments (robes) of fine linen! This makes me think of Jesus’s robe gambled for at the foot of the cross, and ultimately, Jesus wrapped in linen cloths. There is a greater purpose and meaning in the life of Joseph, than his mistreatment and suffering. And when we look to the Father’s heart, we can see the desire to create a holy family and living temple has always been His intention. “For this very reason, the Father robed His Son in human flesh and sent Him to walk among man1.” When I look at the life of Joseph, I am commended to look closer and find the life of Jesus. Jesus was hated, persecuted, sold and eventually killed to extend life to the world.
Nothing can thwart God’s plans. While this is simple to say, and it may be easy to see on the macro level, this can be heart wrenching in our daily lives. We aren’t told a lot about what Joseph thought, or how he felt. I can imagine he was hurt, and had great grief. I look at what he named his children, and the depth of his emotional responses later on in his life when his brothers reappeared2 on the scene, and I know he was a real person. He was not a Pollyanna version of a human. He suffered in his life, and hung on to the hope God gave him in the dreams of his teen years. I am further convinced that Joseph was able to walk in faith, simply because Jesus walked the same path. While Joseph was an admirable man, Jesus is the better.
To make this personal, I can walk the road before me because of the indwelling Jesus. He has been this way before. There is no person I must be like, other than me. I will look to Christ, and find the courage to continue living this life, even when the actions of others show they hate me, can’t say a kind word to me, wish I were dead, or cast me from their fellowship. My life in Christ now leads from life to more life. He has already rescued me from death, what more could I lose? I am thankful to see this lived out in Joseph, and yet more gratitude comes when I ponder the actual Savior, who gave His life for me. He has saved me from the famine of this world, simply because He is the bread of life and the living water. I have been adopted into a family who will never cast me out, and I am built together with other believers into a temple for the Spirit to dwell. All of this in spite of me, my shortcomings, mistakes or sins. And no matter what evil intentions exist against me, my God is with me and for me. What a realization.
- Ultimate Intention, DeVern Fromke, p. 54 ↩︎
- Here is another place where I think some of us miss the actual reporting of Scripture. I have often heard we are to emulate Joseph because he forgave his brothers. I don’t find that picture painted in Scripture as people would want us to believe. Usually we are exhorted to imitate Joseph in order to get us to forgive quickly (and often incompletely and without repentance). When I read the story of Joseph with his brothers, he toyed with his them, imprisoned them, tricked them, hid from them and eventually pointed at them and told them they had meant evil against him. I can imagine the fear and guilt and brothers were living under. His father was even caused more fear and grief because of Joseph’s actions. We tend to jump all this and skip to the happy ending of 50:20b, where He acknowledges God turned it all for good. While I believe Joseph did finally forgive, it was a result of taking the time to process his circumstances and grief. In the interim, he responded in ways that should make many religious people reexamine their ideas of forgiveness, and how they use Joseph as an example. This too, points to the life of Christ and especially his death, where He was able to offer forgiveness for all, only after a terrible struggle in the garden of Gethsemane. ↩︎
