Then Joseph could no
longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out,
“Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made
himself known to his brothers. 2 And he wept so loudly that the
Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. 3 Joseph
said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers
could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer
to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you
sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed, or angry with
yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve
life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years; and
there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7
God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to
keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me
here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house
and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 9 Hurry and go up to my father
and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt;
come down to me, do not delay. 10 You shall settle in the land of
Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s
children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. 11 I
will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so
that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ 12
And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my
own mouth that speaks to you. 13 You must tell my father how greatly
I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father
down here.” 14 Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and
wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. 15 And he kissed all his
brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
In Genesis 45,
Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. The chapter is a composite of J and E. We
have the final narrative sequence in the story of Israel's founders as the
story of Joseph concludes.
Joseph's
revelation of himself to his brothers brings to its fullness, with emotional
power, psychological insight and theological acumen, a tale of folly,
favoritism, jealousy, deceit, cowardice, malevolence and injustice. We can read
this story as a story of estrangement and reconciliation, as forgiveness
overcoming our tendency toward holding grudges and resentment, and as love
overcoming anger. Although the story of Joseph and his brothers
concludes in chapters 46-50 with considerably less drama and tension than
characterized its bulk, distrust and the fear of reprisal for old wrongs
overshadow Jacob's family until the closing words of its story (50:15-21). The
biblical writer does not avoid the hard truth that for humans, at least, the
past is never completely gone. When Narvaez , the
Spanish patriot, lay dying, his father-confessor asked him whether he had
forgiven all his enemies. Narvaez looked astonished
and said, “Father, I have no enemies, I have shot them all.” Joseph has
now learned, through a series of tests, that his brothers, once murderers, have
changed to people of honor and compassion. Joseph has used this time in Egypt
to become a person of character. When he sees his brothers, he has every right
to move against them. Instead, he invites them to come close, thereby extending
to them the opportunity to reconcile with him. He forgives them. He even sees
the hand of God at work in it all. Yet, the story of Joseph is less a "how to" manage anger
and more an example of the life-giving results of mercy. This is not to say
that those who have been mistreated must instantly run out to offer undeserved
leniency to their tormentors. Instead, the story encourages us to place
ourselves in the hands of God, the fountain of forgiveness and the source of
new life. The most life-giving response to bullies and abusers may be to give
them a wide berth and deny them any further destructive influence over our
lives. What Joseph models is the refusal to allow those evildoers any power
over his life. Instead of permitting the resulting anger to destroy him, thus
compounding the damage already done to him, he refuses to allow anger to take
over his life and define his actions. He will not lose control of his emotions,
but more importantly, he retains control over his life. Anger and fear are not
directing his actions. He is able to choose how to respond to his brothers. He
puts anger behind him and offers them new life.
Before certain thoughts one stands in
bewilderment, especially at the sight of human sin, and one asks oneself,
"Should I take it by force or by humble love?"
Always determine: "I shall take it by
humble love." If thus you determine once and for all, you will be able to
subdue the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force, the most terrible
of all, the like of which there is none.
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
(Penguin, 2003).
A
childhood accident caused poet Elizabeth
Barrett Robert Browning Italy Elizabeth Elizabeth
In one of Aristophanes’
comedies, The Acharnians, an aged
farmer staggers onto the stage. He is weeping. Enemy soldiers have invaded his
land, terrorized his family, and killed both of his oxen. His family is
pitifully hungry. However, when someone asks him what he wants, instead of
asking for something to eat or something to drink, he says, “What I want more
than anything else is for a drop of peace to be poured into my eyes.”
The story of Joseph, if we
let it, will touch us at profound levels. We long for reconciliation, but we
often do not want to travel the path it will take to get us there, such as developing
character, extending an invitation to the offender, forgiveness, seeing the
fingerprints of God in it all, and seeking the good of others. Too often, we
want to hold on to the bitterness and anger, exacting what we think is justice
in the relationship. Reflecting on the story of Joseph can help us overcome
this desire.
Second, beyond the reconciliation and forgiveness in this
family, we also find a lesson in the way the providence of God actually works
in human life. What unfolds in the episode is the theological truth of
divine providence: neither external circumstances nor twisted human wills can
finally thwart the purposes of a loving God who acts in human history. The hand
of God has directed all the confusion of human guilt toward a gracious goal. The author has written so much about the
action of people. It is surprising that
Joseph now says the real actor has been God.
The meteoric rise of a Hebrew slave against such a sociopolitical
background reinforces the theological point of the narrative: it is divine and
not human agency at work. This theological point becomes explicit: "for
God sent me before you to preserve life." The theological theme that
Joseph's observation identifies reflects upon the total story. The idea of
providence expressed in the story — “So it was not you who sent me here, but
God” (v. 8).
Human
life is often so messy. We might like everything in our lives to be far more
clear and distinct, the next step in our lives to be obvious, and the way
forward that we should travel marked clearly. We might prefer human life lived
on level, smooth places. However, it does not take long in life to know that
the terrain of human life is rocky, hilly, and difficult. There are many twists
and turns in life. Other people act upon us, sometimes graciously and sometimes
not. We act upon the lives of others, sometimes with grace and kindness, and
sometimes not. In the midst of
the confusion of human life, we may wonder where God has been. Of course, it
takes a mature faith, meditation, and openness, to see the ways of God in the
midst of it all. We can often look back on paths that, at the time, we thought
of as painful and difficult. Yet, God has used those paths to bring us to a
gracious, healing end. The end human beings seek is often self-centered,
self-destructive, evil, and hateful. Yet, the end God seeks is reconciliation
and peace. God seeks the preservation of life. God is so sovereign that even
mixed human motives God can work through to bring people reconciliation. Of
course, the fact that reconciliation does not always happen on this earth means
that some healing of relationships is a promise that will not occur except in
eternity.
Joseph’s revelation is a
fitting climax to the series of family stories that form the bulk of the
beginning of the Bible. It brings together many of the themes that link the
disparate materials in Genesis. Among the themes are the nature of human
society and its relation to the natural world, the complexities of family
dynamics, the struggle for group identity and survival, the competing demands
of insiders and outsiders, the interplay of loyalty, betrayal, selfishness and
altruism, and perhaps most important of all, the nature of divine intention and
God’s interaction with the world.
We might even say,
"Man proposes, but God disposes"[1]
sums up Genesis 45:1-15 and 50:14-21. We might recall many Psalms that pray
that God will spoil the plans of those who plot against them. Proverbs 16:1-9
and 19-21 say that the human mind or heart devises plans, but the purpose of
God will find victory. It suggests that what appears to be the human case is,
in fact, not the case, but is, rather, a working out of a much grander hidden
divine plan. However, such a view is more at home in the later stages of Israelite
religion, when Israelite thought had been influenced by the wisdom tradition
that flourished throughout the ancient Near East. Many scholars, in fact,
consider the final form of the Joseph story to show extensive evidence of
wisdom thought, and most scholars reckon the influence of the wisdom tradition
to be a later rather than an earlier development in Israelite religion.
Third, we see an
emphasis on preserving life in verse 5. We see this notion obviously in the
story of the flood. Less obviously, we see this theme in Genesis 38 and the
story of the determination of Tamar to preserve life through a male descendant.
Joseph preserved the lives of Egyptians and the life of his family. The theme
of preserving life runs prominently but not straightforwardly throughout the
story of Jacob’s family. In the Joseph story, the threat to preserving life by
the worldwide famine is the occasion for Joseph’s rise to greatness, on the one
hand, and his reunion with his family, on the other. The narrative expresses concerns
several times to preserve life. In 41:36, the food in reserve supply will
preserve life. In 42:2, 18, the hope is that the food in Egypt will preserve
the family of Jacob. In 42:20, we find the promise that if the brothers bring
Benjamin they will live. In 43:8, Judah wants Jacob to send Benjamin with him
so that they will not die.
Fourth, another
theme in this story is that of the remnant and survivors in verse 7. The theme
is an important one in Genesis. We see it in the story of the flood, in the
call of Abraham, in the story of Lot, and in the story of Joseph. God has taken
the brother's hate and turned it into good.
The providence of God operates in ways mysterious to us. Yet, some scholars find the
"remnant" God has preserved through Joseph for his brothers, while
clear in the narrative, is contextually unexpected. The concept of a remnant
(righteous or otherwise) is common enough in later, especially prophetic
literature (e.g., throughout the book of Isaiah), but this is the only occurrence
of the word in the Pentateuch. Even more noteworthy is the fact that the writer
pairs the word with "survivors," as it is in Isaiah 10:20, which come
from the period of Josiah (640-609), 15:9 (Isaiah), and 37:32 (from 598-587
BC). This striking coincidence between
this purportedly early material (the bulk of the Joseph story comes from the
10th-9th century B.C.) and late prophetic idiom has led some scholars to
conclude that the verse is an insertion in an earlier novella.[2]
The idea of a remnant first achieves prominence in Israelite thought with the
rise of classical prophecy, where the Hebrew word becomes a technical term.
Isaiah 37:4 urges prayer for the few who are left. Isaiah 37:32 shows the
determination of Yahweh to preserve a remnant from Jerusalem. In Micah 2:12 the
Lord will gather the few left in Israel. We find a similar them in Micah 4:6
and 5:7. In Micah 7:18, even the remnant can rebel. In Jeremiah 23:3, the Lord
will gather the remnant. In Jeremiah 31:7, we find a prayer for the Lord to
save the remnant. Yet, this is the first and only occurrence of the term in
Genesis, although the idea is found, of course, in the story of Noah (Genesis
6:10). Like the idea of a hidden divine providence, the idea of a remnant
requires a degree of historical consciousness not characteristic of earliest
Israelite thought.
The story of
Joseph is powerful and dramatic. Instead of exacting revenge, Joseph uses his
power and influence to provide his family a secure future in the land of Goshen
in the northeast part of the Nile delta, a land especially suited for small
animal grazing. Joseph has reunited with his beloved father. In its canonical
context, however, it reminds us of the magdalia
dei, the mighty of works of God. The sojourn in Egypt will not end well.
From literary and archaeological records of Egypt, we know that peoples of
Semitic origin were in Egypt from 2200 to 1550 BC. We see the transition of the
biblical story from its focus on the patriarchal founders of Israel to the
story of a people who will experience oppression and stand in need of
deliverance.
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