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Kept by the Power of God
3 - Jacob, the Patriarch
At various times in his life, Jacob, like other members of his family, appears to have created situations that resulted in trouble. Its easy to criticise after the event and perhaps many of us are just as short sighted. One of Jacob's saddest mistakes was his favouritism to Rachel's children while rather harsh with Leah's. They didn't choose to be the sons, of Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah. Jacob's own young life had been twisted by the favouritism of his mother while his father favoured Esau.. Why hadn't Jacob learned the lesson? Thus, Joseph received a coat suited to the son and heir who was not expected to take a share of the hard work handling the stock. But didn't God favour Joseph too? He was the one who had dreams of becoming lord over the rest of the family. While Jacob manipulated family favouritism he was not prepared that he and Leah should do obeisance to Joseph.
God spoke to Joseph in dreams and thereby showed that the 17 year old youth to be the one God had selected for His purpose in the same way that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were part of the 'election of God'. This is a display of God's love for carefully selected people who are to carry out His sovereign will. That love, which in the New Testament is represented in 'agape' is a seeking love that ultimately must result in the blessing of all mankind. Neither the failure of His servants nor the hatred of His enemies can thwart God's sovereign purpose that is totally motivated by love.
However much Jacob thought he loved Joseph, he failed to foresee the hazard of sending him to his brothers in the northern part of the country. He was learning, as generations before and since have learned 'to dote' is not the same as 'to love'. As Joseph, secured to another slave or to an animal, trudged the weary miles to Egypt, Jacob wept for his beloved son but was it more in self pity than disinterested unconditional love? He had lost Rachel and now he had lost her son. It is probable that his thoughts at that moment were far from the promise made to Abraham recorded in Genesis 15. 13,14 that his descendants would live in an alien land and be delivered from the people there; but then it is also probable that he didn't know that the land would be Egypt. Derek Kidner
(1) observes that events that led Israel into Egypt were "set in motion through the rivalries and predicaments" of Joseph's brothers" under God's hand. Stephen showed that this pattern of human behaviour runs through the Old Testament, culminating at Calvary. Israel, in envy and unbelief rejected God's servants but that rejection plays its part in bringing about their deliverance. While nine cruel brothers bartered for their brother's life, as Judas would later to do with Jesus' life, God was with the victim and nothing could be done outside His purpose. So it was with Christian martyrs on the rack and at the stake in the persecution which led up to the reformation. "But now thus says the Lord, he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: 'Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." (Isaiah 43. 1-2 RSV)While Jacob mourned the loss of a dearly loved son the power of God was as able to keep Joseph on the journey to Egypt and in that pagan country just as He had 'kept' his father in Haran. Divine providence was exercised at every stage of the drama that raised the Hebrew boy to the highest place in the land. He could have had few better places to receive an initial education for later court life than the home of Potiphar.
The mean temptation of an immoral woman only served to contrast the integrity of the young man. Prison was a further stage of that education to mellow his character and make him a sympathetic as well as a disciplined ruler of the future. In some circumstances the incident in Potiphar's household might have cost him his life. The royal butler's memory might have left Joseph languishing in the Egyptian jail forever. But the God of Israel had the young life under control and the dreams of his youth came true. Joseph had been placed in that position to save Israel's family and the whole of that part of the world from famine. "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm."
It isn't the immensity of the miracle or the piety of the one receiving it that really counts, important though these may be. We need to discern, as Joseph did, the wonder of the Divine hand that is able to move the pieces across the world's chess board yet give freedom of decision and action to those whose lives are so touched. How little we really know about God's providential care. Perhaps we should look more closely at His loving plan and purpose in our own lives, as Joseph did. Its so easy to get wrapped up in studies which hardly affect our lives yet fail to see how the Scriptures are concerned with the intimate details of our lives. The moment of greatest distress is the moment of God's victory in us. In his darkest moments Joseph related his loyalty and long suffering to God; as also he did in the moment of deliverance and victory (Genesis 39.9; 40.8; 41.16,25)
The story of Joseph's reunion and reconciliation with his brothers is a very moving one. His manner of teaching them concern for every member of the family, the fear which gripped their hard hearts, the changes that eventually came upon everyone of the characters involved in the drama, all make a fascinating study. Yet from it the most important lesson is the power of God which weaves the pattern of our lives, transforming and renewing, until that wonderful image given to man at the beginning is restored, for that is the purpose of God's wondrous care. Behind the apparent harsh display of Joseph there is warm affection in his character as he thoughtfully invites and receives the whole family into Egypt. Wagons are sent so that his father and the grandchildren are able to travel. Brothers are reminded of the foolishness of quarrelling. They are settled in the finest, most productive area in Egypt at the Nile delta. Then at last Joseph introduces father and selected brothers to Pharaoh.
There are some interesting details mentioned in this story. Joseph's divination in his cup is very strange in view of the practice being strictly forbidden to Israel. But then his accusations of his brothers being spies was just a pose. The way in which Joseph directs them not to speak of themselves as shepherds but as stockmen after which they say exactly what they were told not to say, leaves something of an enigma. The Hyksos shepherd kings were still the ruling class of the land. Egyptians scorned the poor Canaanite shepherds in contrast with their own wealthy sophisticated city life. There is the anomaly of Egyptian farmers growing a surplus corn that is stored on a national basis and then they buy it back until at last they 'sold themselves' to Pharaoh and put themselves into a position of everlasting debt to their monarch. These and other details are a testimony to scholars and scribes who later did not remove records that did not match their own ethical standards. It may seem strange to us that a nomadic sheikh should give his blessing to the head of the greatest empire of that time. Jacob's words are measured as he speaks of his 'pilgrimage' the days of which have been 'few and hard'. This is the first time that life is described in the Bible as a pilgrimage and as W.H.Thomson
(2) writes "A pilgrimage has no abiding place by the way. That comes only at its end".As Jacob makes his final farewell and blesses sons and grandsons, there is revealed something of what he has learned during the long and eventful years of his life. First he speaks to Joseph of Rachel his mother. Then poetically, He likens God to a shepherd reminding those present what he had done in his younger days. His special blessing is for the younger of Joseph's sons and favour rests upon Joseph in that his two sons each made up a tribe. He never seems to have forgiven Reuben for his indiscretion about Bilhah nor Simeon and Levi for their violence at Shechem. Did he ever discover that Reuben had planned to save Joseph from slavery? Was he to know that Levi was to the patriarch of the family of priests from whom also Moses would come? Certainly there is the special command that his remains should go back to Canaan to be buried alongside Leah, with his parents and grandparents. What was it that was so important about where they were buried? How much did they know about life after death, and the promise of the resurrection? This old patriarch, having seen the hand of God in his son and through angels that had visited him, played the part of a prophet. All that he has to say recorded in Genesis 48 and 49 is a remarkable act of faith that things will not always be as they are. (Hebrews 11.21)
DN(1) Kidner p179 'Genesis (Tyndale 1968)
(2) Thomson The Patriarchs (1912)
