JOSEPH – RULER OF EGYPT.  THE SLAVE WHO RISES TO COMMANDER IN CHIEF – AND SAVES A NATION.  HIS ACTION-PACKED LIFE ENCOMPASSES LOVE, HATE, BETRAYAL AND REDEMPTION.  HE RESCUES HIS FAMILY AND FOREVER CHANGES THE WORLD.  JOSEPH: RULER OF EGYPT

INTRODUCTION

Nearly four thousand years ago under a scorching Middle-Eastern sun, a family of nomad shepherds roamed throughout Canaan, pitching their tents in what is now the region of modern Israel, Jordan and Syria.  The large family was wealthy, intelligent, and prone to indulge in astonishing family drama. 

The head of the family was a man named Jacob. Although he was a wealthy clan leader, he had numerous character faults, and perhaps the most glaring was the open favouritism he showed his son Joseph. His behaviour not only provoked his other sons to jealousy and hatred but also left its mark on Joseph. 

Pampered and sheltered from a young age, Joseph knew nothing of the hardship and turmoil of life beyond his father’s tents. Kind, loyal and affectionate, Joseph was, nevertheless, self-centred, and proud. 

But as it turned out, when life delivered him some unexpected blows, Joseph learned to roll with the punches. His story is both remarkable and inspiring, filled with moments of deep despair and unmitigated triumph. 

From the pampered son of a wealthy herdsman to a scorned Canaanite slave, Joseph was forced to make the transition into his new life of servitude.

He was unjustly accused of a vile crime, tossed into an Egyptian prison, forgotten, and weighed down with discouragement. Nevertheless he persisted, and his persistence paid off in remarkable ways. 

He was taken from a life of servitude and placed at the centre of royal power, wielding the sceptre of Pharaoh over the entire Kingdom of Egypt and beyond. He was a man who handled both tragedy and triumph with equal measures of grace and dignity. 

Joseph.  Favoured son, despised brother, betrayed slave, helpless prisoner, ruler of Egypt.   So, who was this remarkable man who lived such an action-packed life? What kind of family did he come from? During what period of history did he live? Well, join me as we dig into the first part of a powerful series about the life and times of Joseph in this week’s episode of The Incredible Journey. 

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ANCIENT EGYPT 

The story of Joseph is one of the best-known narratives in the Bible. It begins in Canaan which covers the geographic areas of modern-day Israel, Jordan, and Syria. Most scholars agree that the events in this amazing story took place between 2000 to 1800 B.C – about 4 thousand years ago.

Recent archaeological and anthropological discoveries reveal some intriguing evidence in support of the story of Joseph and his time in both Canaan and then, later, as a slave and Prime Minister of Egypt. 

One of the amazing ways to study past climates is through ice-cores.  They are frozen time capsules that give reliable information and evidence of past times in history.

Studies in ice cores found in Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa reveal that a drought took place in Egypt around 4,000 years ago. 

The drought indicated by the ice cores took place around the same time Joseph was in Egypt, and the Bible records that Joseph helped the Egyptians survive a severe seven-year drought that affected not just Egypt, but many of the surrounding nations as well. 

Another compelling piece of evidence that Joseph was in Egypt at this time is Bahr Yusef, a canal built during the time Joseph would have been in Egypt. The canal connects the Nile River with the Faiyum in Middle Egypt.

The canal was originally a natural offshoot of the Nile and during periods of high flooding excess water from the Nile flowed through the canal creating a lake. 

While there is no record of who built the canal, its name provides a pretty good clue. The English translation of the Arabic name Bahr Yusef is the Waterway of Joseph. This evidence alone strongly supports the biblical narrative of Joseph.  

Then, there’s archaeological and hieroglyphic evidence from ancient Egyptian tombs, temples and cities that provide evidence to support the Bible record. Egyptian names, titles, places, and customs match Joseph’s story.

So who was Joseph and what kind of family did he come from? Well, the Bible records the story of Joseph and his family in the Book of Genesis. Beginning with his great-grandfather Abraham we’re given a glimpse of the trials and triumphs of the leading members of the clan. 

THE EARLY YEARS

Joseph’s story begins in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, chapter 37, and is prefaced with a few key elements that set the stage for the rest of the narrative. First, we are told that Jacob loved Joseph more than all of his other children.  Joseph was his father’s favourite.

We are then told that he gave him a tunic, a coat, of many colours. The gift sparked jealousy among Joseph’s older brothers and with good reason. 

Anthropologists have made some interesting discoveries about the time period Joseph lived in, that helps us to understand the reaction of Joseph’s brothers, especially when it came to this special gift – this coat of many colours. 

Choosing to weave a coat of various colours was a symbol of prestige and favour. In the ancient world dye was a precious commodity which meant Joseph’s coat would have been a very expensive gift. 

Added to this was the fact that bright colours such as red and purple were costly to produce, indicating that the owner of a garment dyed in these colours was important.

All this meant that Joseph’s coat was an open declaration that he was both his father’s favourite and that he held a position of honour among his siblings. This was not something Joseph’s brothers were willing to accept without a fight. 

Joseph’s family was highly dysfunctional. There were thirteen siblings in all. Twelve boys and one girl. They all had the same father but four different mothers, two of whom were sisters who didn’t like each other, and treated each other with open animosity.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

The hatred between the sister wives stemmed from their husband’s penchant for playing favourites. It all began when Joseph’s father Jacob fell in love with Joseph’s mother Rachel who was the younger of two sisters.

Jacob offered to work seven years in order to pay Rachel’s dowry, or bride price, which was an ancient near eastern custom. Rachel’s father Laban agreed to the arrangement but later, reneged and went back on his word and deceived Jacob. 

Instead of giving him Rachel as a bride, Laban gave Jacob a heavily veiled Leah, Rachel’s older sister. Jacob uncovered the deception too late, and was furious with both Laban and Leah, who had gone along with her father’s plans. 

After some negotiation Laban agreed to let Jacob marry Rachel, as long as Leah remained his wife as well. Jacob naively thought that the matter was neatly resolved, but as it turned out it definitely wasn’t. 

Though Jacob loved Rachel it was Leah who was able to give him children. This problem led Rachel to insist that Jacob take her slave girl as a concubine, or mistress, so that she could bear him children by proxy. 

Well, not to be outdone, Leah offered up her slave girl as a concubine as well, which is how Jacob ended up with four wives, thirteen children and piles of family challenges and dramas. 

Rachel eventually did fall pregnant, and her sons Joseph and Benjamin were the youngest of the mixed siblings. They were also their father’s favourites. Firstly, because they were Rachel’s sons, and secondly because Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin, which meant that her boys were all that the grieving Jacob had left of his adored wife. 

Joseph and Benjamin’s arrival increased already simmering family turmoil. Jealousy and insecurity skyrocketed among Jacob’s older sons and grew in intensity as Jacob lavished special attention on Rachel’s elder son, Joseph. 

THE DREAMER

And then, to make matters even worse, Joseph began to have dreams. These dreams appeared to be prophetic, and confirmed Joseph’s special position of pre-eminence among his brothers. 

Naïve and unaware of the growing hatred of his brothers, and excited to share his dreams with the family, Joseph recounted them in vivid detail. Genesis 37:6-7 gives an account of Joseph’s first dream, describing the scene in these words;

“So he said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: there we were binding sheaves in the field. Then behold my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf” 

When Joseph’s brothers heard the dream, they hated him even more. But that wasn’t the end of it. Joseph had a second dream, and failing to pick up on the growing animosity of his brothers, he decided to share it with them as well. 

Genesis 37:9 says 

“Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, and said, “look I have dreamed another dream. And this time, the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me” 

The second dream not only earned him the increased hatred of his brothers but also a rebuke from his father, who sternly asked him “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you?”

Now, shortly after these dreams, Jacob’s older sons had taken his vast flocks and herds in search of fresh grazing land.  Wealthy stock owners like Jacob constantly struggled to find adequate water and pastureland for their flocks, often moving them from one fertile spot to another.

Sometime later, Jacob sent Joseph on an errand to check on the well-being of his older brothers, who had been away from home for some time. 

When Joseph finally found his brothers, they were grazing their father’s flocks in Dothan. He was excited to see them after a long separation, but his brothers felt differently.  Their hatred for Joseph had reached the stage where they wanted to get rid of him for good.

HEADING FOR EGYPT

The moment he was within reach, Joseph’s brothers grabbed him and tossed him into a pit. When they finally pulled him out hours later it wasn’t to release him but to surrender him to a fate worse than death. 

They sold him to a traveling band of Ishmaelite traders for twenty pieces of silver. Perhaps these traders were distant relatives, considering the connection between Joseph’s grandfather Isaac and Ishmael, his half-brother. The Bible doesn’t shed light on this detail, but it does tell us that the traders took Joseph down to Egypt. 

Now, archaeological evidence presents a compelling case for placing Joseph during the time of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and specifically within the 12th dynasty. This was a time of great prosperity in Egypt. 

The Middle Kingdom spans a period between 2000 B.C. and 1800 B.C. and is considered to be the golden age of Egyptian culture. It was during this period that hieroglyphs acquired their ideal shape and literature began to flourish. 

Throughout its history Egypt was economically dependent on the Nile River because of the almost total absence of rainfall in the area. The Nile provided Egypt with rich agricultural resources.

Archaeological excavations show that ancient Egyptians relied heavily on trade connections ranging as far afield as Asia Minor and Iran, in order to buy supplies like timber, copper and tin. This gives us a pretty good idea of what kind of materials the Ishmaelite caravan that purchased Joseph might have been carrying. 

Another precious commodity on the Egyptian market was silver or ‘the white’ as it was commonly referred to. While the country had plenty of gold, most often brought down in large quantities from Nubian mines, silver was not as readily available. 

The fact that Joseph had been purchased for 20 pieces of silver would have immediately increased his value as a slave. This may have provided Joseph a measure of protection against being sold for cheap labour in the mines.

SPINNING A FANTASY

When Joseph’s brothers returned to their father without Joseph, they spun him a fantastic tale about Joseph’s supposed death. They dipped his beautiful coat of many colours in goat’s blood and presented it to their father, telling him they had found it and asking him to identify it. 

Grief stricken; the aged man jumped to the first conclusion that the bloodied coat presented: his son had been torn apart by a wild beast. Cruelly, Joseph’s brothers allowed their father to believe that lie and watched in horror as the grief of losing his beloved son nearly destroyed him. 

When they had chosen to sell their brother in a moment of unbridled rage and jealousy, Jacob’s older sons hadn’t really stopped to consider the cost of their cruelty. As they saw their father heartbroken by grief, they felt the first seeds of remorse for what they had done. 

They had followed the anger and jealousy that bubbled up in their hearts, only to find that it was not as satisfying as they had hoped.  Actions done in anger often bring shame.

Now, while Joseph’s brothers faced the consequences of their actions, Joseph himself was wrestling with the same thing. His circumstances were bleak. The life of a slave in the ancient world was not just filled with difficulty and backbreaking work, it was also, more often than not, short. 

Slaves were overworked and mistreated in even the best of circumstances. Some found themselves working in the bowels of the earth, mining gold or copper. They were forced to work in such terrible conditions that they often died of exhaustion. 

Though Joseph lived a largely sheltered life as a child, he would have known the risks and dangers of the life of a slave.  No doubt his heart would have been seized with terror at the prospect of a life of servitude, far from the comforts of his father’s household. 

TALES FROM CHILDHOOD

Joseph would have remembered all the stories about God’s care and guidance that he had grown up listening to, as he progressed on his long dusty journey into Egypt. 

Joseph would have also remembered the story of how his father Jacob had contended with God one night by the brook Jabbok. Jacob was returning home after being away for twenty years and had gotten word that his angry brother, who he’d deceived and cheated years earlier, was on the warpath against him. 

Jacob was a shepherd and a family man, with wives, children, sheep and servants who were unable to put up much of a fight. Jacob’s brother Esau on the other hand was reportedly approaching him with a formidable and large group of heavily armed warriors. 

Jacob sent his wives and children over the brook to keep them safe and he spent the night in prayer. While he was there, he wrestled with a man all night long, only to find, as dawn was breaking over the horizon, that he’d actually been contending and wrestling with God. 

Desperate for an assurance of protection against his angry brother, Jacob clung to the man and begged him for a blessing. God granted both his requests. Joseph would have known this story well, and would have taken courage from it. 

CLINGING TO HOPE

Now, at the lowest point of his young life, Joseph would have recalled this special experience and clung to the hope it represented. If his father had wrestled with God and prevailed, then surely, he could reach out to that same God for help. 

But perhaps the most poignant story that Joseph would have remembered his father, Jacob, telling him and his siblings, was of the vision God gave him when he was running away from home. 

Jacob had deceived his father Isaac and stole the birthright that belonged to his older brother. When his brother Esau threatened to kill him, Jacob left home with nothing but the staff in his hand and the clothes on his back. He was lonely and afraid.

Gripped by guilt and remorse over what he had done, Jacob settled down for the night in the vast wilderness. His thoughts were filled with a longing to be forgiven and cleansed of the sins he had committed against his family.

That night God gave him a dream. In it he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven from earth, and angels of God ascending and descending that ladder. Along with the vision, God gave Jacob a promise, a promise that Joseph would have recalled as he faced his own uncertain future. 

God said to Jacob, 

“I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac…I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…for I will not leave you… (Genesis 28:13-15)

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

On that long and lonely journey to Egypt, Joseph experienced a spiritual transformation. His father’s God now became his God and peace filled his heart and soul.  He found the inner peace and strength he so desperately needed. 

Often in life God allows us to go through trials and difficulties so we can learn to rely on Him. Trials can lead us to accept the invitation King David extends in Psalms 34:8, 

“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him.”

Joseph chose to accept that invitation by placing his trust in God, even when the future was bleak and unknown. And it changed his life forever.  This simple choice, this decision to put his trust in God, defined the rest of his journey and life in Egypt, and proved to be the secret of his integrity and success. 

If you’re going through a difficult season in your life right now, look at it as an opportunity to experience the promises of God in your life. Instead of turning away from God, turn to Him and ask Him to guide you and provide for you as He has promised. 

Well, the caravan carrying Joseph would have made its way down into Egypt through what the Egyptians called the Deshret or the Red Land. Deshret was the name given to the red desert sands that flanked the fertile Nile River Valley. 

In fact, the transition from arable land to desert in ancient Egypt was so abrupt that it was possible to stand with one foot in a green fertile field and the other on the red sand of the desert. 

Egyptians called the fertile lands of the Nile River Valley Kemet or the Black Land, mainly because of the black loamy soil that covered the area, rich in nutrients from the waters of the Nile that it carried down from Africa when it annually flooded the valley. 

Now, in ancient Egyptian folklore, deshret or the Red Land was filled with chaos, ruled by their pagan god Seth. Foreigners who made their way across deshret into Egypt proper were treated with suspicion because it was believed that they could bring chaos with them and disrupt ma’at, the Egyptian idea of the natural order of things. 

All of these prevailing superstitions would have increased prejudice against Joseph, who was both an outsider, a foreigner, and a slave. But, despite his grim circumstances, Joseph chose to trust in God. 

His choice is one that we can all make each day. Lamentations 3:22-23 says, 

“Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your Faithfulness.”

God is both merciful and faithful to all those who choose to trust in Him. Joseph experienced this throughout his journey and life in Egypt. His belief and trust in God not only sustained him, but gave him wisdom to make the right choices time and time again. 

Like Joseph, we too can access the faithfulness, mercy and grace of God. All we have to do is believe God and reach out and grasp His promises by faith.  It doesn’t matter how big or difficult our problems are.  God has an answer, a solution.

SPECIAL OFFER AND CLOSING PRAYER

And if, like Joseph, you’d like to really experience the faithfulness, mercy and grace of God, then I’d like to recommend the free gift we have for all our Incredible Journey viewers today. It’s the popular booklet, Does Faith Really Make a Difference? This booklet is our gift to you and is absolutely free.  I can assure you there are no costs or obligations whatsoever.  So, make the most of this wonderful opportunity to receive the free gift we have for you today.

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But Joseph’s story doesn’t end here. This is just the beginning of a phenomenal journey, a truly incredible journey. Where would he go next? What would happen to him? How would he weather the challenges that lay ahead? And what were God’s plans for his life? Join us next week as we continue our series on the amazing action-packed life of Joseph.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love and goodness to us.   We thank you for the promises you’ve made to us, promises that give us hope and courage, like, “Don’t be afraid, because I am with you.  Don’t be intimidated; I am your God.  I will strengthen you.  I will help you.  I will support you with my victorious right hand.”  Lord, we claim these promises.  Thank you.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.