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GENESIS 43–45

Week 3, Day 7

When you read these chapters, you realize why the Nobel-prize winning German author Thomas Mann felt driven to expand the story into a four-volume novel. What a plot: Brothers sell their brother into slavery, then are dependent on him years later when he is in a position of absolute power. His father thinks his son long dead but now gets the unbelievable news that the boy is not only alive but as successful as only that boy could have dreamed.

And what a tangle of emotions! Follow the brothers, from resentment to revenge to deception to fear. Or the father, from despair and grief, to fear of losing his other “special” son, to a fantasy of reunion. And Joseph, of course. Surely during his slave and prison days, and perhaps even more in his position of power, he must have contemplated revenge.

But the issue to the writer of Genesis is more than plot or human psychology. He sees God at work. Even through the ugliness of human jealousy and brutality, even in a motley course of heartbreaks and delay, God is working out the divine will. Joseph is so sure of it that he makes the point three times in one paragraph. The brothers are not to “be distressed” for what they did, because “God sent me before you to preserve life” (45:5), “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth” (45:7), “So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (45:8). Joseph sees a far larger plot than his brothers ever dreamed.

PRAYER: May I have the faith, dear Savior, to see your hand at work in all the fortunes of my life! In the name of your Son. Amen.

List the emotions experienced by Joseph and by his brothers in their crucial meetings.

Prayer Time

I will pray daily for these persons who need God’s guidance or intervention in their lives:

How the Drama Develops GENESIS 28–45

The drama continues to unfold in its own complicated, uneven way. Complicated, not because God is difficult but because we humans are so often erratic in the way we handle God’s gifts and opportunities. And complicated too because we live in a world where evil is a factor. We may try earnestly to pursue God’s purposes with pure hearts, but we have to do so in a setting where others seek to thwart those purposes and where the very forces of history and culture are against us.

Jacob obeys his parents’ wishes, and also the plan for a special, separate people, when he seeks a wife from the land of Haran. But then the story gets complicated, and it is not an entirely pretty story; but this is where the story will have to unfold, in a setting where women are often treated as property and where people deceive even as they negotiate, a culture of multiple wives and concubines. It will be interesting to see what good can be brought out of such a world as this.

The development of our drama proceeds mainly, in these chapters, on two matters. The first is Jacob’s confrontation with God (and with himself) in the wrestling with the divine messenger before the reunion with his brother Esau. It is here that Jacob is in some special ways transformed; he loses, and yet he prevails. So it is with every conversion. It is also here that Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, the name that will become historic and to our very day identify his descendants.

Before going on, let me insert a parenthesis. I’m referring to the strange story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. It’s a soap-opera kind of thing. But it has unique significance to us because the descendant of the unseemly union between Judah and Tamar becomes an ancestor of our Lord (Matthew 1:3).

But the second major matter for this period is the story of Joseph—and also, of course, of Joseph and his brothers. It would be a fascinating tale even if we saw no eternal significance in it. Here is a boy who is his father’s favorite, and the father unfeelingly flaunts that favoritism. The boy is also extraordinarily talented, and he keeps that no secret either. So we’re not surprised his brothers want to be rid of him.

Then, a roller coaster of events: quick success, victimization, imprisonment, faithfulness in a hard place, years of waiting, then—suddenly, it seems—he is dramatically elevated to the second place in the land. In the process, of course, Joseph is the administrative savior of the Egyptian people in a time of famine and the preserver of his own family as well.

How does Joseph fit into our continuing drama? First, in this (as he himself declares) he was God’s instrument to keep his family alive: “God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). This is the first instance of God’s intervening on behalf of the family of Israel. The Jewish feast days of Passover and Purim celebrate the continuing story of preservation—and many would say that it has continued through the holocaust of the twentieth century.

Joseph also has a special role as the father of Ephraim and Manasseh. These two sons are “adopted” into Jacob’s family, and Ephraim becomes the symbol of the ten northern tribes so that the prophets often refer to those tribes simply as Ephraim.

Seeing Life Through Scripture

How does God work in our lives? To what degree is God involved in either personal or national history? The Hebrew Scriptures would not hesitate in answering that question. Indeed, for the Scriptures, it is not a question. God’s involvement in history is taken for granted. The only question is the manner by which God chooses to work.

For Jacob, there is a personal confrontation at the ford Jabbok of the River Jordan. With all of his sense of abiding values, Jacob is nevertheless a man who needs to be brought up short by God. Earlier he experienced God at Bethel in an act of great mercy. Now he meets God as an enemy with whom he must contend. He leaves the scene limping but transformed. Many of us see Jacob in this story as our spiritual kin.

And then there is Joseph. We like to see his story as an instance of virtue rewarded, but the biblical writer is more impressed with the fact that God was with him (Genesis 39:2, 21, 23; 41:52). The achievements are a result of God’s blessing, not of Joseph’s considerable talents. And providence is at work. Joseph has a remarkable way of being in the right place at the right time. His is a guided life, often without his really knowing it.

The Sum of It All

“God sent me [Joseph] before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:7-8).