Genesis 39-43
Introduction
This lesson continues the account of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, who have convinced their father that his favorite son is dead. His life from this point will be a roller-coaster ride: from trusted slave, to forgotten prisoner, to dream interpreter, to Pharaoah’s court, to the savior of the family that shunned him.
As before, please see the NETS Translation and the Constable’s notes commentary.
Gen. 39
The first 6 verses here describe Joseph’s having been sold to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s guard, and that since Joseph’s arrival his household had prospered. So Potiphar appointed him as manager over his whole estate and the future was looking bright for Joseph, even as a slave. But soon we’ll see that no good deed goes unpunished. Joseph had grown up to be a handsome and well-built man, and Potiphar’s wife wants him. But unlike his brothers, Joseph has high moral standards and refuses her many attempts to seduce him. So she decides to give him a choice between giving in to her or giving up his life. She makes everyone else leave the house before Joseph arrives to work one morning, then seizes him by his outer garment and tries one last time. But he leaves the garment in her hands and runs away. So the next thing she seizes is the opportunity to tell everyone that he had tried to rape her, and that he only ran because she screamed for help, which no one could confirm or deny since she had told them all to leave the house. Nobody would think of considering the testimony of a slave, so when Potiphar heard his wife’s story, he was enraged and threw Joseph into prison.
As Constable’s notes point out for vs. 19, this event prefigures the eventual betrayal and enslavement of the nation of Israel in Egypt. But though it looks like the end of the story for Joseph, God has other plans. Just as Potiphar had prospered with Joseph around, now the prison also prospers, and the warden puts him in charge of the whole prison!
Gen. 40
Meanwhile, Pharaoh had thrown two members of his court into that prison: his cupbearer and his baker. After they’d been there a while, they each have a dream that leaves them bewildered. So Joseph asks them what’s bothering them and to tell him about the strange dreams, because somehow he knows that God will give him the interpretations.
We see in vs. 9 that the cupbearer’s dream turns out to mean he will be restored to his job, so the baker thinks that he too will be released and restored. But instead, as we see in vs. 16, the dream turns out to mean he will be executed. Joseph is nothing if not brutally honest, and everything he had said came true. But though he asks the cupbearer to put in a good word for him to Pharaoah, he is forgotten and abandoned. Not only do good deeds not go unpunished, they can also be ignored and forgotten.
Gen. 41
Two years pass and then Pharaoh himself has a bewildering dream, one that his soothsayers can’t interpret. Only then (vs. 8) does the cupbearer remember what Joseph had asked him to do, but this delay is undoubtedly God’s doing.
So Pharaoh summons Joseph from prison and tells him he heard he can interpret dreams. But Joseph, ever mindful of the fact that he does so only by the gift of God, boldly gives God all the credit. After telling him the dream, God gives Joseph the interpretation: Egypt is about to experience 7 years of abundance, followed by 7 years of extreme famine. In fact, the famine will consume that whole part of the world. So he advises Pharaoh to choose someone to oversee the collection and storage of grain during the abundant years, so they won’t starve during the famine years.
To Joseph’s likely surprise, Pharaoh chooses him to be the savior
of Egypt, to be second only to Pharaoh himself. He has gone from favorite son, to hated brother, to slave, to business manager, to prisoner, and now to what is essentially vice president of the Egyptian empire— and all by the age of 30. Remember some mention of a roller-coaster ride? We should stop to realize that not only is Joseph’s life to this point a prophetic picture of the Messiah to come, including even his approximate age at his being lifted up
, it also prefigures the life of the prophet Daniel. He too would be a captive who rises to power in a foreign land, due to interpreting the king’s dream when no one else could, and would demonstrate his character at every turn.
So Joseph gets busy immediately seeing to the storage of grain, and in the meantime he starts a family of his own. He has two sons, Manasseh (God made me move beyond my former life
) and Ephraim (God blessed me in the land of my persecution
). Their mother was the daughter of the priest of On, which the Greeks called Heliopolis. These two sons would be the heads of the last 2 tribes of Israel.
As with the dreams of Pharaoh’s prisoners, Joseph’s own dream also comes true as he had said: People from Egypt and also the surrounding nations start coming to him to buy food.
Gen. 42
We haven’t had enough plot twists yet, so now the text picks up again with Jacob and the rest of the family. The famine has reached them too, and one day Jacob says to his sons, You gonna sit around and stare at each other till we all die, or go down to Egypt and buy some food?
So he sends off all his sons except the youngest, Benjamin, because he remembers what happened the last time he sent a youngster to be with the rest of his sons.
Remember those dreams that had gotten Joseph in so much trouble back home? Here he sees the beginning of their fulfillment, at least 20 years later: His older brothers are bowing down to him. But they don’t realize who he is., so he decides to test them by playing the role of harsh Egyptian tyrant. The memory of how they treated him must have made that fairly easy to do. But fear of the death penalty, as pointed out by Constable, would make them honest. Joseph accuses them of being spies, then detains them until they agree to fetch their youngest brother, whose safe passage would stand in stark contrast to his own experiences.
The one they had sold into slavery was now throwing them into prison. But after 3 days, possibly to represent the 3 years of his own imprisonment in Egypt, Joseph cuts them a little slack: They can all go except one, so they can bring grain to their starving people. It’s at this point that the brothers finally see what’s happening to them as revenge from God over how they had treated Joseph, who they still didn’t recognize. And Joseph knows this because he has been pretending not to know their language by using an interpreter.
Upon hearing that his brothers have a smidgen of conscience after all, he leaves the room to cry, proof that he never hated them, or anyone else who had mistreated him. Then he composes himself and goes back to the room to select Simeon as the one to be handcuffed and thrown into prison while the rest return home. This choice may have been, per Constable’s notes, due to his overhearing Reuben say that he had prevented his brothers from killing him. But he isn’t done dealing with them just yet: He frames them by having the money they paid for the grain put into each sack.
On their way home, they stop to feed their donkeys and are horrified to see their money in the sack they open. So they begin to wonder what God is up to— as if God had ever mattered to them before. But at least they know why it’s happening, unlike many today who think that they can ignore God as long as things are going well, then hate God for not rushing to help them when bad things happen.
Now when they get home and tell their father Jacob all this, they open the rest of their sacks of grain only to see that all their money is there! Now Jacob is also afraid of what this all means, since at this point he has essentially lost yet another son, Simeon. When the food runs out, the brothers will have to go back to Egypt and bring the money in the sacks plus more to buy more grain. They also intend to take their youngest brother Benjamin with them per the Egyptian official’s orders, but Jacob refuses to release him to them.
Gen. 43
Now the brothers cannot return without Benjamin, so they wait until the food is gone and their father tries again to send them to Egypt without him. Jacob demands to know why they even told the official they had another brother, but they reply that they were asked a lot of questions about their family and had no way of knowing Benjamin would be at risk.
This time it’s Judah who guarantees Benjamin’s safety, and he adds that they could have gone to Egypt and back twice by now, had Jacob not dragged his feet. This is the point at which scripture considers Judah the head of the clan, rather than his older brothers, per Constable’s notes on this passage.
Finally Jacob relents, apparently forgetting all the promises and miracles of the past, resigning himself to die in grief from the loss of his sons. But he sweetens the deal by sending along lavish gifts to the Egyptian official, as he had done to appease his own brother Esau many years before.
When they arrive in Egypt and stand before Joseph, he sees that Benjamin is there too, so he tells his steward to invite them to his house for lunch. They are naturally afraid and expect to be accused again and kept as slaves permanently. So they plead with the steward for mercy and explain all that had happened. But the steward does something completely inexplicable: He assures the brothers that all is well, and adds that their God must have put the silver in their sacks of grain. He then gets Simeon out of prison to join them and makes sure they’re comfortable.
Taking this as a positive sign, they prepare all the gifts they brought, and again they bow low before Joseph when he arrives. Now at the sight of Benjamin he hurries out to cry again, then composes himself and returns. But what happens next is truly bizarre to the brothers: They’re seated at the dinner table in order by age. And the fact that they were eating with the Egyptian official meant, in that culture, that they were being assured of safety in spite of everything. Also, Benjamin is given 5 times as much food as the rest, which as Constable explains, is a very high compliment. It was likely a test of the older brothers’ jealousy, since again the youngest was being given the most honor.