Section 1 - Pit to Potipher
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CHAPTER 1 - JOSEPH GOES DOWN INTO EGYPT
CHAPTER 2 - IN AND AROUND EGYPT - 18TH CENTURY BC
CHAPTER 3 - EGYPT - HOST TO GOD'S PRECIOUS CHILD
CHAPTER 4 - JOSEPH IN POWERFUL AND MIGHTY EGYPT
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The next chapters of Genesis introduce Joseph to Egypt, and go on to describe his journey into the unknown. The next four chapters in “Kith and Kin” can be considered as “Comment”, and interesting and possible but speculative. We leave the Scriptural text at Genesis 37:36, and while the story of Judah is told, we travel with Joseph to Egypt, until the Scriptural story takes up Joseph’s tale again in Genesis 39:1.
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CHAPTER 1
JOSEPH GOES DOWN INTO EGYPT
“And the Midianites sold Joseph into Egypt”, Genesis 37:36.
FOCUS:
In this stark lesson of purity for us all, we travel along the road to Egypt. There is no record in the Scripture of how many days that journey took, the journey that began in Genesis 37:36, but now that archaeology is such a fine science, there is much evidence of what would have happened.
1. GETTING THE PICTURE ABOUT JOSEPH'S JOURNEY
These comments are based on the history as we now know it. The journey is considered an enormous factor in the education of Joseph, so it is important that we have some idea of what happened to him over that long period, when he changed from a boy to a man. There is a wealth of material available about nomadic life on the route between Canaan and Egypt, and about Lower and Upper Egypt. As well, in the early 20th Century, a German historical novelist, Thomas Mann, painted graphic pictures for us, in his series about Jacob and Joseph, “Joseph and His Brothers”. Genesis is a wondrous story, and we can create a tale around the events that can be taken or left at inclination and will.
Least among them,
Noted by none,
Named by no name,
Joseph, son of Jacob,
Dreamer,
Came into Egypt.
2. JOSEPH’S USEFULNESS, AND HIS EDUCATION ON THE TRADE ROUTE
Joseph’s education is not yet complete for his arrival in Egypt, where God will use him to prepare the promised seed for their return to the Promised Land. So at the very least, we can learn of that process from history and weave it into Moses’ story. We do know that God prepared Egypt to receive Joseph, and many years later to receive Moses, after his flight to Midian. Moses’ reception was not as easy as Joseph’s for the multiplicity of gods had, by Moses’ time, made it imperative that the Israelites should leave Egypt. That was necessary if they were ever to be allowed to worship the One True God, and to mission to the nations round about them, about the wondrous God of all the earth, and His promises to include all men in the blessings. Egypt, at the Joseph time, was a generous host to God’s child, but by the Moses time it had made itself an enemy of God. The very plagues that were sent upon them by God, were aimed against the false gods, and the oppressive power structures that were revered with fanatical zeal by those who worshipped them. These gods were now impotent to halt the devastation that was being caused by the plagues. The elite deities were shamed out of honour and power. But for now, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph elected this protective crucible for the Israelites, where they were most welcome. Moreover He sent His angel to go with the Midianites/Ishmaelites, as they carried this precious burden to Egypt.
There was a stranger that led Joseph from Shechem to Dothan. Perhaps this angel just never went away, and remained to preserve him, and to guide the trading company, and care for them. In any case God was with the camel train, whether or not He used an angel. He did send an angel to be with Jesus to strengthen him, Luke 22:43.
Psalm 105 talks about, Joseph, “sold as a slave”. They bruised his feet with shackles; his neck was put in irons, until what he foretold came to pass, til the word of the Lord proved him true. The poet here takes the freedom to use a later conventional description of prisoners. Shackles are not spoken of in Genesis 39, and iron came into common use at a later time. Earlier shackles were made of bronze, NIV Study Bible.
So, rather than shackle such a prisoner, it is possible that these consanguineous relatives of Joseph, recognised his trustworthy and reliable nature, and the old man in charge of the caravan, allowed him to be part of the working team. They are descendants of Joseph’s great grandfather, Abraham. These trading people came from the families of Abraham’s union with Hagar, and their son Ishmael, or from Abraham’s marriage with Keturah, now the Midianites. They were the honourable Midianite/Ishmaelite Trading Company
So there was not a place for him within the now slow and more cautious family life, that was Jacob and his sons. He did not fit, he had been tipped out of that, tipped out of the nest, ill fitting bird that he was. His brothers regarded him as an ugly duckling and never imagined the beautiful swan he was to become. He, no longer, had a stake in the family firm, Jacob and Sons, Sheep, Shepherds and Sheep Products. He learned that his destiny lay in the path without paths, where he went ahead into the unknown, with his hand in the hand of God. He was to learn the capriciousness of a life like that, at once, exhilarating, with the terrifying loneliness away from his family, soaring to heights, and then the plunge to the despair of the depressed. His prayers to God, now really His only Father would have been filled with the pleas of those who cry out, “Please make me strong”. Loneliness can crimp the style, and set the stage for depression, and bring on suicidal thoughts, all hopefully now much better understood than in previous years. May our understanding of the condition help us to practise our compassion to the fullest extent. However, Joseph’s loneliness did not bring on the illness of depression.
Joseph was naturally courteous, and had a sweetness of nature, wholly unimpaired by competition, or a desire to escape. This made him an ideal slave. He carried nothing with him, and he was content, for he knew that we all have nothing in the end. We might possess things for a time, but we don’t even own our wedding rings really, or our slave rings, nothing. If he had a slave ring, he knew that it could be changed many times in his life, and so it would never be his. Even his life (like ours) was not his own to keep or lose.
Self effacement was now grafted into the sweet nature of Joseph, and it flourished there. It might have been his brothers who put it there, but God used it to advantage as he entered the next phase of his life in Egypt. We see it later when he appears to us, to be eternally youthful, carrying the crown of Egypt with ambassadorial bearing, with a chronic ability to behave with the clarity of crystal, never jaded, fresh and intent upon the work of God. Perhaps, often we feel jaded in the work of the Lord. That is not the fault of the work of the Lord.
Joseph would help with the selling, and the buying, the saddling and tethering of the camels and pack animals, the cooking and the domestic chores of such a train, which regularly trod that ancient mighty road. The routine would be well established, and Joseph would easily fit in, being an amenable chap. Perhaps he knew to keep busy, while he could, until he mastered his loneliness, for this would help his solitary, sans family state.
Comment:
They carried cottons, spices and precious stones that had come from India, for these trade routes were well established at the time of Abraham, some 270 years before this incident. It is now known that there were tenuous trade routes into China, up into Siberia, and down into Africa. They were hard and soft roads and much of it dangerous as well. The trading routes have already been discussed in the earlier books about this family. The roads centred in great cities north of Canaan, for example, Ugarit, Ninevah, Haran, Mari, Carchemish, and the old man and his band of family men, trod up and down to Egypt, from these great cities, trading as they went. The Times Concise Atlas of the Bible, 1991, provides a fund of information about these ancient trade routes.
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The Talmud suggests that Joseph was sold from one trading company to another, on his travels down into Egypt, but for the purpose of this text he will remain with this one company. So, the old man leader continued with the education of Joseph, perhaps for as long as another year, as they made slow progress, stopping and beginning again, in the profession that they were about. The slow progress is a blessing to Joseph, though he does not know it. He is being strengthened for that which lies ahead.
3. ABOUT JOSEPH - BLESSED ARE THEY WHOSE WAYS ARE BLAMELESS
If Joseph was later to “instruct his (Pharaoh’s) prince as he pleased and teach his elders wisdom”, Psalm 105, it was because he had been, and he still was, a seeker after wisdom, God’s wisdom. Psalm 119:9-16 is about a young man keeping his way pure. Moral behaviour leads to ethical conduct, and all of those, from this time forward, in Joseph’s life, recognised a God blessed, great man. An unexpected, unfair, unusual, momentous occasion leads unexpectedly to a deviation from the established family, recycling, painful pattern. Family dysfunction is at last, by great intervention on God’s behalf, turned into healthy well function for this great dynasty of God loved people. The endemic dysfunction lies dormant, at least in the Biblical record, from the Judah/Tamar incident onward. Joseph, with twenty years absence from the family, thrust into this inimical situation, copes better than expected, and is under God’s guiding hand, “for blessed are they whose ways are blameless”.
The synergy (of all these functions) provides the catalyst for the great exodus out of Egypt and the deliverance of God’s people. At this stage though, of Joseph being sold into Egypt, and the fragmented family state, the limitations seem too great for solving. Assuming the attitude of no knowledge of future events, we are consumed with sadness.
Joseph had been a tale teller, but he did not send a tale (about his brothers) to Jacob, in fact he never contacted him again until God arranged the family assembly in Egypt, twenty years later.
It was to Jacob the silence of the dead, but both Joseph and Jacob, it seems, bore the burden, for Joseph was not dead, and he shared the sadness of the loss with Jacob, though Jacob knew nothing of the sharing.
Consider:
* Was it now more honourable not to tell, with Joseph’s better understanding of God’s purpose, that is, best to remain dumb?
* Would not Jacob’s anger have scattered his children and resulted into a forced march into Egypt to save his prized son, all contrary to God’s plan?
* Did he “forgive them for they knew not what they” did, those deceitful brothers, or, did he think “God is sending me on this journey for it is not their fault, so I will not send a message”?
* Or did God prevent Joseph from sending a message?
Later, when those brothers came down into Egypt and the family trek is proposed, Joseph says to them, “Do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you”.
* Was this realisation born at this time (of the selling)?
* Or did it come slowly over the next twenty years?
* Did he at once (in the pit), realise that it had been blind and deadly to test men beyond their strength (provoking them to jealousy)
* Or did it occur only after the vicissitudes of this journey, and his time in Egypt alone without them?
We cannot tell, but Joseph never sent a message to Jacob, and at this time it would have been quickest and easiest to do so, but he did not.
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4. JACOB’S ACHING HEART
The aching heart of Jacob burned with sadness, in a furnace of sorrow, and he began to weld with Benjamin. He had an incurable misery over Joseph and must have rued the day he ever deceived his father with a hairy goat skin. The similarities for Jacob are too numerous for us to think he is impervious to them. The sorrow simmering with guilt, over his own deceiving, and his fault at loving one of his sons more, and loving his other sons less, led him to a great depression. He had not held the balance evenly. Now he was incapable of functioning in balance, and lost his authority over his family until he was able to function more equitably again.
Our lives are full of tension when both extremes seem right and we must hold the tension between the two. All the players in this tragedy suffered from Jacob’s lack of mature guidance. Great love, coupled with neglect and forgetfulness, is not a natural balance, and so the natural law of evil and embittered hearts resulted. Nature does not forgive; it follows a course, and does not change. Natural consequences we call it.
Joseph,
“Trusting that wisdom underlies,
And worketh in the end - His will”
leaves them all, with only the whispers of God to encourage his departure into the unknown. Jacob’s departing north had been lonely as well, with only the whispers of God, but he had the stone pillow dream, where God’s voice gave loud and strong encouragement. Here God’s euphony for Joseph, the whispers of God for Joseph, is not recorded for us.
But the mourning is left behind, and it continues, and Jacob is hardly comforted. Almost everyone, sooner or later in life, enters the state of mourning. Sometimes, and with the healing of time, most times, the tears of sadness dry. A heavenly light, with comforting words from Scripture, can often lighten that darkness. But there is always a tiny part of misery that never lightens. All of us in life’s experience, must come to realise, that all that we call our own, is only lent for a short time, and to cling to earthly happiness is tenuous. Our comfort is only “in the Lord”.
Comment:
If you love something set it free.
If it returns, you haven’t lost it.
If it disappears and never comes back,
Then it wasn’t truly yours to begin with.
Author unknown.
It is a lesson to any of us who prefer to hold our relationships in such a grip, for fear of loss, that love is stifled. How hard is it to let go, when our children mean us to let go.
Joseph was Jacob’s North and South and East and West,
Joseph was Jacob’s working time and his Sabbath rest,
Jacob thought that Joseph’s love for him would never die,
And that Joseph would accompany his bones to Machpelah,
But now all is lost,
No more dreams,
The stars are nothing now,
“Pack away the moon and dismantle the sun”.
No one will stand where he has stood,
“And nothing now will come to any good”
“Funeral Blues” of the 20th Century poet, W. H. Auden, comes to mind.
The dream stars and the moon and the sun seem to be “put out” and “dismantled” and “packed away” for Jacob, it was after all only a fanciful dream. The love that he had for his son did not after all “last forever” til his death. And now the pall of grief hangs over them all, and the lights are out. It is only the knowledge we have of the future of this family that keeps those lights shining for us, but they did not shine for Jacob.
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5. AND SO TO GAZA - JOSEPH’S PURPOSEFUL JOURNEY
As Joseph and the Ishmaelites move down the coastal route, taking the advice of Joseph’s seemingly honourable and trustworthy brothers, that the parallel hill country route was dangerous at this time, he would look up to the highlands on his left, and think of his despairing father.
Flight would hardly be on his mind. There would be great danger, if he tried to climb the eighty kilometres from the plains to the hills above, before he could reach his father’s arms. Wild beasts, robbers and murderers did abound in the crevices. He resists the temptation, as he resists a far sweeter one later on, and in both cases holy thoughts strengthen his determination.
Joseph says to himself,
“How could I sin against God’s purpose and plan?
How can I escape this purposeful journey?
How can I escape the planned intelligence that takes me from the old, and brings me to the new?”
His time in the pit has shown him his folly of being open and proud of God’s blessings on him, so much so that he over tested his brothers. Now he resists the impulse, strengthens his will, holds his tongue, and strides out of the known way (of his father), steps into the path of his great grandfather, and puts his hand into the hand of the angel of God, and resolves to go to Egypt.
These nomads travelled on, not knowing the truth of the conflict, or that they were all relatives. They were of Hagar’s family and had Egyptian blood, as she had probably come from Egypt at the time of the first say you are my sister incident. This blood had probably been mixed with that of Keturah’s children, and of Esau’s children.
The trading company travelled on slowly, as was their wont, for they were never troubled about time. Their only concern was that their leisurely progress lay in the right direction.
They travelled south, from one Philistine coastal town to the next, Ekron, Asdod, Ascalon, and Joseph could have acted as a clerk, at a little folding table, recording and arranging the transactions, on the road to Gaza.
Comment:
Along the way were forts, fortresses, station posts with walls and battle towers. The soldiers, here, were pleased to trade with the little caravan. The Egyptians had established these posts on their many forays out of Egypt and the local kings were happy to use them now. Gaza, a strong walled city, sat on the edge of the desert and was always the first stage for the wagons and foot soldiers that rampaged through under the Pharaoh’s banner. There were stragglers here, still in Gaza, those who decided to stay instead of going home. They were broad shouldered, high nosed and white clothed, (Egyptians), and they walked the streets. Joseph noted them. After Joseph, these Egyptian excursions grew more purposeful and frequent in their expansion into Canaan. However, by the time of the Exodus under Moses, the Egyptian (north) and Assyrian (south) military excursions had waned, and it was the other smaller nations who tried to pass through. Those in the land had by then gained confidence (for a time), and they required tribute and often captured stragglers for slavery.
Excellent grape vines grew here, so, to the little spicy onions that grew in Ashkelon, and the olives and figs and dried fish, the old man added wine as well - two camel loads. Ashkelon’s ruins, the Temple of Dagon, the city walls running down to the beach, are there today. Recently Gaza was difficult for the soldiers of Israel to defend, from the Palestinians who lived there, and so in the end Israel gave it back. One thousand fishermen in yellow boats, really control that city, smuggling weapons for the men of Hamas, an extreme Muslim terrorist group. It was a moral dilemma, whether to keep the Gaza strip, for it is such an important piece of land, smothered in history, or whether it was circumspect to give it back to their Palestinian relations.
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6. THE LITTLE BAND PREPARES TO CROSS THE DESERT
The inhospitable desert lay ahead of the little trading company, and as well as food and drink added to their trading wares, they needed a guide to keep them safely on the track. They probably waited at the caravanserai for a group of traders going in the same direction. However they needed a special bell camel and guide. Joseph was startled when he saw the guide chosen from those employed to do such things. He was soon mounted up front. Déjà vu – “but where have I seen this stranger before, was it in Dothan?” he asked himself. Perhaps our guardian angel can take this form, unknown to us.
Certainly God’s guiding hand was with them, and they were reassured that this guide could take them safely over the desert. It was through a melancholy underworld, as it were, nine days in breadth, a frightening expanse, accursed and perilous, where there could be no loitering from well to well.
Comment:
It is perilous today, and for those who travel by bus, that now well established highway past the Bedouin tents, carrying the businessmen and the tourists, whoever can afford the fare, it is still a dreaded desert. It crosses from Gaza to the Great and Little Bitter Lakes, part of the now unimportant Suez Canal, known well to those who sailed to, or from, England, in the great ocean liners of the last 50 years. To stand on the deck and watch the desert go by, and know that Joseph’s and Moses’ feet had slid upon the sand there, was a sobering thought.
Recently, in this desert, the Nawamis, incredibly well preserved burial structures, from the Chalcolithic period, six thousand years old, have been discovered by Avner Goren. The studies of these remains give us a new understanding of these desert societies, from the time well before Abraham. Avner Goren is a contemporary Jewish archaeologist who specialised in the Sinai until 1982, when Israel returned that territory to the Egyptians. He founded the Museum of Bedouin Culture, (information from “Biblical Archaeology Review Magazine”).
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6. THE CROSSING - WITH THE GUIDING ANGEL
The bell camel, easily guided by Wisdom from above, found each well station amid the frightful confusion of sandstone - grotesque boulders towering in massive formation above them, - and so it was never an easy path. Bleached skeletons of camel and human would have been then strewn on their path. The dune ridges, ruffled by the wind, produced a sand that whirled in the air and around there faces, and in their eyes. They wrapped their heads, and tried not to look. Fiery pillars, small cyclones, in which whirling dust turned flame coloured by the sun, led them on. As long as the fiery pillars kept on, the dust abubu, thankfully did not follow, to parch their water skins. The leaders kept up with the fiery pillars that were moving on ahead, leading them on. Fiery pillars had moved in the opposite direction hundreds of years later, when they led God’s people out of Egypt. Abraham would have followed the pillars when he went down into Egypt many years before, and when he came out. Joseph may not realise that this is a well known patriarchal path.
Their water skins saved them, for the Midianite/Ishmaelite Trading Company always planned well. (Even today we must carry loads of water). They were not parched, though everything else was. The nine day journey came to an end, and they were out of danger. They had escaped from the desert horror. Pity the Egyptian soldiers who manned the forts along the way. They had passed four Egyptian forts since Canaan and just here there were scattered five more. The gates of Egypt were heavily defended.
The region before them was colonised and administered by Egypt, and the little caravan moved on past the frontier stations, until they came to the barrier, or Sovereign Wall, as it was known, right on the brink of the River Nile.
(See end chapter note for Digression 1)
Comment:
The great wall, connecting all the canals and lakes, of the Delta of the still great River Nile, had been built across the neck of land, between the Great and Little Bitter Lakes as a protection against the savages and sand dwellers who thought to drive their cattle upon the Pharaoh’s soil. It was a menacing precaution and defence, a mighty barrier. It had to be surmounted, passed through, each time the traders went in and out of Egypt, from the East. There was a floating bridge, in the middle of the great wall, with bronze wing gates. Two storey forts rose atop the wall, strong against persistent siege, bristling with defence ledges, battlements, constantly on alert. The fort of Thel was a powerful offence, constructed by the refined and fortunate, and hitherto vulnerable land of Egypt, against the poverty and rapine and necessity of those who lived to the East. It is to this day a gateway into Egypt. A huge figure of a bare necked vulture was graven deep into the masonry and painted glaring colours.
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(See end chapter note for Digression 2)
7. THE MIDIANITE/ISHMAELITE TRADING COMPANY ENTERS EGYPT
The old man, the head of this firm, who passed this way maybe every two years, knew the routine. He held a valuable letter, a scroll of polished goatskin, on which, in Canaanitish script, a friend, a businessman in Gilead, had hand written to another business friend, in Djanet, in the Delta. Of course this caravan would move further south, up the Nile, but the letter would serve its purpose at the gate, and no one would question them. The letter proved that they were traders, and not looters.
The wise old man instructed the party to clean themselves, wash their ears, put oil on their hair and paint their eyes, for their dusty misery and lack of elegance made them look suspicious. The troop leader must stamp the certificate at this point of entry, and so he did. The passport was tucked away, and the soldiers of Thel swung open the bronze wing gates, that gave the Ishmaelites access to the floating bridge, and they entered Egypt.
Least among them,
Noted by none,
Named by no name,
Joseph, son of Jacob,
Dreamer,
Came into Egypt.
8. THE HISTORY OF IT ALL - JOSEPH NAMED BY NONE
Comment:
For all the records, historical and otherwise available, there is no mention of one, Joseph, son of Jacob, passing into Egypt. We can only say the historicity of the Scriptural recordings of the movements into and out of Egypt are authentic, so that the addition of the characters only is the doubting point for some. There is some small internal evidence, when we know the outside historical evidence, like the derogatory reference of Potiphar’s Egyptian wife to Joseph as a “Hebrew”, and the unusual acceptance of the Hebrews by a ruling power, known to be sympathetic to them, in a tiny window of history. However, Joseph is still “named by none”, and that is a continuous point of discussion in magazines like “Biblical Archaeology Review”, and “Diggings”, where the search goes on for confirmation. We need to realise that the effective description of a culture does not in fact establish the Biblical record as authentic, but then again it does not deny it either. Archaeology does not prove the Bible true.
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9. THE STORY WITHIN THE SAGA - JOSEPH’S TOLDOTH WITHIN JACOB’S TOLDOTH
Before we begin to study the narrative with the toldoths, or histories, there are some overall points to consider.
In theory Joseph is not a patriarch, but is one of the eponymic fathers of the twelve tribes, which began in the crucible of the broken family structures, and the resulting familial strife of Jacob’s twelve sons. The period of the four fathers though is referred to in scholarly circles as “The Period of the Patriarchs”. The critical role of the promise theme, with its propensity for a great number of descendants to witness to God’s name, depends on the success of Joseph in Egypt, but the overlaying and somewhat unifying theme is always strife in the family, as it had been in Isaac’s and Abraham’s family. Joseph is really the secondary story, or a story within a story, for it is bound into the saga of the patriarch Jacob. We are told in Genesis 37:1 that Jacob “dwelt in the land of ... Canaan” and in Genesis 47:27, that he “dwelt in the land of Egypt”. Here is a literary device enveloping the Joseph story in eleven chapters. This Joseph story, as controlled by the narrator, leads us through the four great Joseph Egyptian themes of
Firstly, Potiphar’s house,
Secondly, the prison,
Thirdly, the royal court and
Fourthly, the family in Goshen.
We are led by the narrator in surprising directions, where we might think
1. Guilt of selling a family member should be punished,
2. Yet it is not. (Deuteronomy 24:7 later makes provision for such punishment).
3. Next, traps are set and sprung, and tension builds,
4. But the brothers are dismayed at the revelations.
5. They expect the worst,
6. And receive the best.
Seemingly reconciliation is effected, but still in the end one is left to wonder whether the strife ever did fade, or whether the reconciliation is a sham from beginning to end, and only deceivingly affected to gain asylum in Egypt. Esau had fallen on Jacob’s neck, Genesis 33:4, as Joseph fell on Benjamin’s neck, Genesis 45:14, “and kissed all his brethren”. The reconciliation contrasts with the negative of Genesis 37:4. Yes, we can say that there is no reconciliation in Joseph’s sporting with his brothers, teasing them, in Egypt. There are arguments to defend that. However his complete exoneration of them, averring that his move to Egypt was for the good of the coming generations, where not only his immediate family, but all nations can eat of the bread of God, is more than they can expect. The transportation to Egypt represents the reconciliation of this family broken apart by strife, and we accept it as that, and put our doubts aside. Joseph’s integrity as an administrator facilitates the reconciliation, even in the face of their doubts at the death of their father, and their need for reassurance. It moves the family from strife and contention to prospects for the future, linking them to the intimacy of the Garden of Eden, before that strife, and before the strife of the Flood, and before the strife that was the Tower of Babel. They are returned, by Joseph, to God. The bond about the removal from Egypt of Joseph’s bones and the fulfilling of that promise expands the story, with its reconciliation, into the future.
Consider:
* Will a reconciliation restore and keep that intimacy of God’s people in the next generation?
* Do the negatives in the Joseph story, indeed in the whole of the patriarchal stories, anticipate the negatives in the Moses and Exodus stories?
* Is it because of negativism and rebellion that these people are never able to get it all together, and become what God wanted them to be, that is, missionaries for Him to the world so that all nations may worship Him?
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The reconciliation wrought by Joseph, is one of the important keys to the whole Pentateuch story. The story is of a common hope and a future union, where the stories of the tribes of Joseph’s two sons are ranged against the stories of the other tribes, and it forms a bridge between the Genesis and Exodus records. Here at the end of the Genesis story, in Egypt, the mission mandate is set to spring into action as the children of the patriarchs are led out of Egypt, to worship God. This was the request of Moses to Pharaoh, to let YHWH’s people go “so that we may worship Him”, Exodus 5:1-3. The request was preceded by Exodus 3:15, where God explains to Moses about His people, “this is my name forever and this is my memorial unto all generations”. This implies, because of the covenant with Abraham, that “in thee all families of the earth will be blessed”, that at last all nations will come and worship Him, because of the memorial that these people will become. The fact that they failed to do this does not obviate the covenant, for God, later, finds another way.
CONCLUSION:
Joseph was the saviour for all Israel, to fulfil the covenant that God had set up with Abraham. That does not detract from His son the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the ultimate Saviour for the entire world. He had been in the mind of God from before the foundation of the world for God in his foreknowledge knew that man with his free will would chose sin. This servant, Joseph, was only a shadow of the true saviour.
Digression 1:
Winston Churchill in his History of the English Speaking Peoples, in his discussion of the North African Campaign of Second World War, said of this river, that the Nile was the life blood of the lands through which it flowed. It has been the cause of war, and it has also been the means by which the wars have been fought. It has been the end to which the contestants have aimed. The armies camp beside, or in front of its bank each night, knowing that the stream is unfordable, and so they are safe. They offer or accept battle each day, but at night they are refreshed. To its brink morning and evening long lines of camels, horses, mules, and slaughter cattle hurry eagerly to refresh themselves. Emir and Dervish officer and every soldier, “friend or foe, kneel alike to this god of ancient Egypt, and draw each day their daily water” in goat skin, or canteen, or pail. Without the river none would have started their journey. Without it none could have continued their journey. Without it none could have ever returned from whence they went. The Nile River from its source is 6,632 kilometres long.
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Digression 2:
There is a present day description of Nepal.
“This is the land of gods, and here this service is the most common single activity, whereas in other regions, work and human pleasure, the pursuit of human satisfactions and greed, gears the place of all activity. Here worship takes precedence. Here more food is given to the gods than to humans, and although there is always a food shortage in the valleys, the cows and the bulls are fat, and the children go hungry. Here religion is not only an integral part of life; it is the first and foremost energy consumer. All human doing is subordinated to divine interpretation, implicit in all actions. Birth, copulation and death are not the cycle of animals and humans, but the material manifestations of a divine eternal cycle of which all happenings in the universe are a reflection. The reflection of these three functions is portrayed in the images that adorn the temples, every building, every house, any taxi and any wall. And it all has meaning beyond human meaning. Nepal today is already touched by modern progress, and is gradually being invaded by twentieth century strivings, to leap into the eleventh century” Travel brochure, Nepal, 1988
Well, so it is, and we are culturally uncomfortable as a guest in that land. There are books by Thomas Hale and his wife, present day missionaries in Nepal, describing everyday life there, and the struggles to turn the Nepalese to God. This description of Nepal almost fits Egypt, as we may imagine it, as Joseph would have seen it. Everything, there also, was a sacrament to a god. But Joseph did not intend to convert them, as God had another intention.
CHAPTER 2
IN AND AROUND EGYPT - 18TH CENTURY BC
“And Israel dwelt in the land of Goshen”, Genesis 47:27.
FOCUS:
The intent of this chapter is to focus our minds on the cities of Lower Egypt as Joseph travels to Potiphar’s house, Genesis 39:1. It was the Jacob family’s first experience of Goshen, which became their permanent dwelling place, and where “they were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty”, Exodus 1:7
It needs to be said that this chapter is mostly “Comment” on the cities that Joseph encountered as he travelled south in the land of Egypt, so it will not be noted as such.
1. PRESERVATION OF THE HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORDS
There are currently available papyrus records of life in Egypt from 3,000 BC, which show a highly sophisticated and culturally civilised lifestyle there. So to describe the life of the people in 1727 BC, a likely date of the sale of Joseph into Egypt, (The Companion Bible, “Chronological Chart, Appendix 50”), is comparatively easy. Other historians place the Hyksos at 1650 BC. This is a puzzle, for either these dates are wrong by 100 years, or everything must move forward 100 years, or the Hyksos were not ruling when Jacob en famille, came down into Egypt. If they were not ruling then the puzzle is how to explain the sympathetic treatment of the Israelites. However, dates are not that important in these studies, rather the sequence of major events. Even the sequence of minor events in Scripture, are sometimes placed to remove them from disturbing the main emphasis, as has been noted.
Egypt, because they kept papyrus records, preserving them well, has an abundance of historical data available. There is still much more to be uncovered and the historians and the archaeologists feel that those records will double in our time, as more is uncovered. It is like Bible research, it is possible to greatly enhance our understanding of those times, if only we will use what is available for us.
Lists of one large household in 1740 BC (when Joseph was a baby) records 79 domestic servants, among them Asiatics with Sumerian names, but the main source of information, are tombs, as ideal storage conditions. Tombs contain many furnishings for the comfort of the dead and if the tomb was a child’s we learn that dolls, tops, leather balls, board games with stuffed dice were play toys of Egyptian children. Pieces of painted linen shrouds are still in evidence.
It is a privilege to see “Ginger” (for the colour of his hair), preserved in a sand pit since 5000 BC, at Gebeleis, in Upper Egypt, (reclining in a foetal position), in the British Museum, with skin sinews, bone fragments, and hair.
While many Asiatics spent their time in Egypt in humble fashion, they are also known to have reached high office as Joseph did, when he went down into Egypt. The Hyksos Pharaohs (Semitics) had power at this time, though they were not popular, understandably, with the indigenous Egyptians.
There are four intact skeletons of horses, introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos invaders about 1750 BC, at the time of Jacob’s marriages in Haran. They were related to the Hittites, of Asia Minor, they eventually ruled in Egypt at the time of Joseph’s entering in, for about 180 years until the indigenous rulers based in the southern capital of Thebes, defeated them, and drove them out at about the time of Moses birth 1570 BC. After that, the inhabitants of the land of Goshen, the Israelites, also staged an uprising, to be released out of Egypt, under Moses. This is probably how the Moses Pharaoh “knew not Joseph” for he was not a sympathetic Hyksos, and why the Israelites, in Goshen, were treated less sympathetically and indeed with great hardship.
Thomas Mann in “Joseph and His Brothers” calls Egypt “Sheol” and for Joseph it was, though it was not apparent right now on that journey down. Egypt was the pit again, and in the end everyone in his family went down into the pit.
2. HOSPITABLE GOSHEN - HOME FOR GOD’S PEOPLE
But here, where Joseph arrived with the caravan, it was Goshen - the eastern part of the Delta, and fertile. The land of Goshen was the future crucible for the post Joseph generational mix, that were the bulk of the two million mixed multitude, that came out of Egypt, over two hundred years later. This Joseph now 18 years old, died in Egypt, at the age of 110 years, but was never buried there. His bones were carried to the Promised Land with this multitude, 144 years later, under their great eighty year old leader, Moses, to be buried at Shechem. Moses was born 64 years after Joseph’s death, and it was from Goshen that they began their journey.
“In the days of Abram, Canaan was the highway to Egypt, and so large an immigration of men of the Semitic stock found their way thither, that they overspread the whole delta, and finally under the name of the Hyksos, made themselves masters of the throne of the Pharaohs, and retained their supremacy for several centuries”, is a comment from Ellicott.
While the Hyksos ruled, the migration of the patriarchs in and out of Egypt was undisturbed by the bitter power struggles among the wealthy aristocratic southern Egyptian families. This did not hold true for the Israelites under “the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph”. The Pharaohs began the political consolidation of Egypt, about 3000 BC and during the twenty nine dynasties that followed their spiritual supremacy was established. They were God Kings.
Just inside the gates of Egypt was fertile grassland, good pasture land, a great place for sheep and shepherds, away from the main cities of Egypt. Later when the sympathetic Hyksos were overruled and banished, the Egyptians still thought it a good place to banish these shepherds, so Goshen suited everyone.
3. THE MARSHES OF PER SOPD
Our little caravan reached Per Sopd via the causeways that spanned the little canals and water courses, where all manner of long legged birds, storks and ibises stood in the chocked streams, straining for their dinner. Wonderful information about the Nile is contained in Time-Life History of the World, 3000-1500 BC. The mounds beside the canals were formerly called turtle backs, the soil of which had been laid down by millennia of sludge washed down the Nile, in regular supply for unlike the Euphrates, the Nile was regularly flooded yearly, with a passage of water, 6,632 kilometres long, from the source, from streams in mid Africa and Ethiopia. This regularity encouraged agricultural planning and building projects, and in the culture a great sense of harmony. Agricultural taxes were levied according to how much benefit a farmer received from the flood; a “good Nile” was a flood level of eight metres. Duck ponds surrounded the villages and the cone shaped clay roofs of their houses and storehouses dotted the ditches and dykes. The geese flew over the monotonous marshland - and Joseph thought of home where his pasture land had not been so lush and well watered. The shepherds here sheltered from the drizzling rain by stretching papyrus mats above their crooks, and they squatted underneath with the jackal eared dogs. They looked out over the smooth water and watched a flotilla of boats floating eastward taking advantage of the breeze - monstrously tall sails on a swaying mast - water traders.
It was south our friends went, “down”, but really “up”, that is against the flow of the river - to Pharaoh’s palace.
4. THE CATS OF PER BASTET
But wait, nearby was Per Bastet - the city of cats.
(See end chapter note for Digression 1)
As our “stranger” moves “up” Egypt, the inhabitants of the next town would laugh and say, as they did of all the tourists who came south, “You came from Per Bastet, didn't you?”, for they smelt of it.
At Per Bastet, there were cats everywhere, black, white, any colour, any shape, and any size, in the temples, where they were offered the hateful herb among the worshippers in the court. They were stealthy, inquisitive, playful, frisky, persistently charming as is their habit, snoozing, purring in the streets, in the shops, in private houses, on the walls - everywhere. Yet they are always represented as upright sitting cats. They were never gods by themselves, but co ruling gods with other more significant deities. Bastet was the lioness (or cat) headed goddess of war. Lions were prominent in the great houses, but cats represented the poor man’s lion, and were available as pets. Other domestic animals were dogs, baboons, monkeys, crocodiles, sheep and goats, and oxen.
The reputation for gaiety among the people of this town suited the cats, with the drunken feasting and plenty of scraps to eat. The cats approved of the jolly nature of the inhabitants, and of all the tens of thousands that came down river, by land or water, clapping, dancing and singing, whistling, rattling whizzers, and generally behaving with roguish abandon, to worship in the temples of Per Bastet.
The cats enjoyed the three day feasts, with sacrifices and dancing to the dull rolling of drums, always around the street fairs that accompanied these celebrations. Story telling, juggling, snake charming, etcetera, all added to the excitement. The consumption of so much grape wine lulled everyone in their tents, into a great stupor. The human bawling, an inseparable feature of these primitive feasts, sounded not much different from the caterwauling of the cats.
Joseph, not affected by this animal worship, peculiar to Egypt at this time, would have been disappointed to learn that his descendants stooped to worship a golden calf, one of the Egyptian gods, when they left this land, taking animal worship with them, much to Moses’ and God’s displeasure.
Today, the archaeologists are discovering the cat tombs at this place. Rows upon rows of mummified cats have been found under the earth, and in the caverns that acted as their burial grounds. Like the Egyptian human mummified remains in the British Museum, that display so much detail about the bodies, their hair, their sinews, the skin details about them and their clothes, so these remains display their fur, and in some cases, it is possible to tell what colour the fur was, and so many other details about the cats. Cat mummies accompanied the human mummies displayed recently at the Australian Museum in Sydney, as part of the “Life and Death under the Pharaohs” exhibition. With protection and encouragement, the cats multiplied, and by the time per Bastet was finished the cat population had indeed been trillions. There was a lucrative priestly trade selling special cats for worship.
Cats and kittens here, and there, and everywhere. This was Per Bastet; it would be enough to make Joseph twitch.
Today in India, in Rajasthan there is a Hindu Temple. The priests there worship the rat, and after death people hope to come back as a rat. Man has worshipped animals for a long time.
Perhaps the worship of animals had evolved from the known practice of placing animals on altars as part of YHWH's worship. In time as animals were seen to come and carry off the animal sacrifice and the people have seen the animal as representing YHWH, or a deity. In Per Bastet it was cats.
5. THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF ON
The Ishmaelites move on, troubled not about time, generally in the right direction, south, and came to On.
On was the largest place that Joseph had ever seen, and it seemed to be built chiefly of gold. They continued trading as they went. At the well curb, they watched the muddy fluid from the river, being drawn up in the leather bottle, tied to the wooden arm, supported on a fulcrum, with a lump of clay attached to the other end to balance it. It was called a “shaduf”, The water was poured into the channels and ditches, that it may nurture the corn, against the coming of Pharaoh’s scribes, who acted as tax gatherers for the mighty king. The corn was sent to the great granaries of Egypt and made the country prosperous. This was the hated Egyptian house of bondage known by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
The Ishmaelites traded their lamps and resin for necklaces, head rests (made of metal) and the linen, that the peasant women made out of the field of flax, on which they were also taxed. So much of everything they grew and made, was taken in tax, and Egypt grew wealthy - all in God’s plan.
Joseph breathed this vital air, as they traded their way along, but it was not an entirely foreign scene to him. Pharaoh’s campaigns had passed up and down through the Jordan valley, and left many relics of passage and transit. The Hyksos Egyptian rule, (probably beginning before Joseph) may have, at one time, extended as far north west as Joppa, in Canaan.
With this Egyptian influence from the south west, and the Babylonian plain influx, and influences from the Arabian south east, Joseph was quite cosmopolitan in outlook. He had a multicultural perspective, rather like Sydneysiders do, as opposed to folk in other Australian cities.
Apart from the considerable difference, in the amount of blessing accorded to Joseph, and his family, God had not only been a particular advantage to that family, but worked in worldly spheres, showering blessing and cursings on all He controlled, so bringing further blessings on the family.
Abraham, his great grandfather, had discussed this with the man Melchizedek, about the degree of unity between them in their worship of God. So Joseph understood discussions of that sort when, at this time, the priests of On had made pronouncements on the relationship of their sacred bull, Merwer, to the Dweller on the horizon. It is foreign thinking for us to discuss how we link our worship of God, with animal worship, but everyone here talked about it, and every transaction was accompanied by a discussion of the relationship between the two, God, and god, and how others in far off lands reconciled their worship.
On (Heliopolis), situated at the apex of the triangle, at the converging of the rivers, was a city thousands of years old, at this time of Joseph’s coming. It was the university town of ancient Egypt, full of learning. It was the dwelling of the Sun, morning Kheper, midday Re, and Atum in the evening. “He opens his eyes and light arises, he closes his eyes and darkness comes” said the priests about their deity.
6. ON, THE CITY OF JOSEPH'S FUTURE IN LAWS
Joseph would not have remotely considered that he might one day be connected to this great city, for he later married, Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, the priest of On. Because of Joseph’s future intimate connection here, it is important to know about the experiences he may have had here.
On, with its great temples of the sun, was overlooked by a huge obelisk, made of highly polished flame coloured granite. Atop was a gilded four sided cap. The obelisk here, when Joseph saw it, was already ancient. It's no wonder modern day Egyptians are aghast that their statues and monuments and obelisks were carried away, and grace the museums of the world. Still, they hardly cared for them themselves. They fit inside the great halls of those museums with great difficulty, and one stands in awe at the mighty gates and monuments housed in just one building in London - the British Museum.
7. GOLD, GOLD, GOLD
As well as being the largest city that Joseph had ever seen, it was also city unlike any that he had ever seen, indeed it was unlike any other Egyptian city. The temple made of gilded bricks was unlike any other Egyptian building. This Sun Temple of Ra was destroyed by the Persians, but the ruins are still a remarkable sight. The whole city glistened with gold - like the sun. Its citizens had inflamed and weepy eyes, such was the glare, no sunnies in On, but they drew their hoods, or mantles, to protect themselves. The roof of its ring wall was gold, and golden rays darted everywhere, such as we see when the sun catches a piece of our jewellery. This happened all day, every day, everywhere outside, and even inside, where the suns rays penetrated.
The rooves of the dwellings, from the Nile mud bricks huts of the poor, to the dwellings of the rich, all had an emblem of some sort, reaching up to the sun, a serpent, a shield, a snaky spiral, a shepherd's crook, a winged disk, a hooked wheel, an axe, a scarab, a golden ball, an apple, an eagle, lions, sphinx, bulls, goats, eagles, falcons, sparrows hawks, anything made of gold, on the roof on every roof. Every building, private or public, everywhere was the province of the sun, and kissed daily, all day long by it. It was the precinct of the blinking, for every eye was kissed by it, and every skin was shiny, with kisses by the golden rays, and - probably cancerous. Joseph and his friends were more than kissed by the sun, no wonder they wrapped their heads in cotton, like the people around them.
Not only was it so outwardly illuminated, but it was inward as well. The city was concerned with wisdom, a doctrinal scientific wisdom, and discussed the mysteries of the universe and time and space, while all of it, of course, had to do with the worship they made. So here in On, there were more lessons for Joseph to be learned, if only by listening.
The ancient city, built at the triangle apex of the Delta was formed with its houses and streets like an equilateral triangle. Temple courts extended as far as the middle of this triangular city, and at the temple gates, there were banners and passages painted with delightful representations of the seasonal activities on the land, and their fruits. In front of the gates was an open tree planted square, where our Ishmaelites spent all day with the weak eyed people of On. The servants of the god, their eyes running from so much sun gazing, came out too, to do business with this gathering of worldly traders, for they brought news and communications of all sorts from the eastern peoples. Joseph listened, as the old man discussed, with wisdom, the problems of time and space, how they measured time, and divided the calendar, for it was them, or at least their forebears, who had invented the sundial. The priests dressed in their short priestly garments, earnestly propounded their own propaganda, over who was the oldest and most revered Egyptian god, for they had a distinct bias. The Gnostic heresy proponents of 100 BC, and those who surfaced again in the New Testament ecclesias, tried to link their beliefs back to this ancient “wisdom”, where knowledge was the most important attribute.
There has been a recent uncovering of some scrolls, at an Egyptian town, south on the Nile, called Nag Hammadi. Sand is a wonderful preserver, and often, when blown away, even to this day, unexpected finds occur. This discovery explains more about the Gnostics. Amongst the finds there are shopping lists, and lists and descriptions of household members. The Egyptians were fanatical about lists, and Joseph had been trained in the art also. There is, as well, a resume of the Gnostic doctrines, in a letter written to someone here, from someone who lived in Colosse, at the time of Paul's writing to Timothy, at nearby Ephesus. The Gnostics were causing no little trouble in the new ecclesias, and Paul denounced them. “Adam was first formed, then Eve”, he said, 1Timothy 2:13, for the Gnostics, especially the Gnostic women, had other ideas. Some Gnostics believed that God formed women first, that is, “wisdom”, and that they were much more important than men, being God’s partner. Paul advised Timothy to silence them, and later to withdraw from those evil ones, who disputed perversely about these dangerous doctrines. This research on Gnosticism is now readily available in the Bible bookshops.
The Gnostics present in the first century ecclesias, did not believe in the bodily presence of Jesus. They believed in spirit beings. The Gnostics are here today, and hold regular meetings in the suburbs of Sydney. And - they were in Egypt then, and Joseph heard their perversity.
These priests encouraged the traders to approach the alabaster table and offer doves, bread, fruit, and/or flowers according to their ability to pay. The fatherly head priest sat on a golden chair, mild, and smiling, at the foot of the great obelisk, a golden cap covering his bald pate with its aureole of white hair, and white robe flowing about him, a winged sun’s disk at his back. Gold and white. It really was a stunning sight, and Joseph watched it all. Little wonder that the wise and wealthy laughed at the cat people of Per Bastet.
8. THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX
And then the Ishmaelites bent their heads and stepped further into Egypt - up the Nile. Joseph noticed that these were even more religious peoples. This all pervading spirit of Egypt, even on the dung roofed and mud brick dwellings, half hidden among the towering date palms, were stamped with the form and symbols of gods, conditioning the picture.
The reeds and mud of the irrigation canals made passage easy upon the roads skirting the corn and barley fields, the desert not far away. He saw the men standing on little platforms in the fields employed to shoo away the birds, slingers, who drove the birds away, with stones in slings. Cattle and sheep were pastured, as well, upon these blessing zones, that lay between desert and desert. Vultures and white falcons soared above. The causeways among the reservoirs and groves were busy with people and wagons drawn by oxen and donkeys carrying ducks and fish to market.
(See end chapter note for Digression 2)
The people here, Joseph saw, were lean, reddish, flat bellied folk, square shouldered, inoffensive, jovial people, with their face bones projecting behind their ears, noses little and broad. They led frugal and harsh lives, but they often wore a blossom behind their ear, or stuck one in their aprons, worn long at the front, for carrying burdens, and high at the back. Their hair was smooth and cut straight off around under the ear lobes.
The simple people here living on the Nile, loved to see tourists, and laughed, not unkindly, at them. Joseph strained, listening to them, and tried to speak with them in their idiom. The Ishmaelites travelled and traded along this narrow strip of land - Libya to the west, and Arabia to the east.
Near the cities, and around the palaces, Joseph saw the rich and powerful. They were easy to distinguish from the poor and simple. Wealthy women often wore elaborate wigs, with braided additions, of human hair, looped around the head, elaborately plaited and scented, especially for public occasions. But men as well as women decorated themselves quite elaborately for baldness was considered a shame, and grey hair was covered as well. Face paint was first used to ward off sunburn, but later became fashionable for decoration. Jewellery in silver, gold, polished stones, enamel, alabaster, glass (not yet made by blowing though), comprised their anklets, bracelets, necklaces, earrings. Joseph had seen jewellery, but never as profuse as this, worn on every digit and every limb.
(See end chapter note for Digression 3)
7. THE PYRAMIDS
As soon as Joseph saw the pyramids he would be mindful of the hardness of the work. He would know it was all too much for human beings, and yet the work was done by the ancestors of these same folk, who lived there now. These children of Kempt had performed the task, with their bleeding hands, and panting hearts, and lolling tongues. They were the wonder of it all, not the pyramids. They performed it for the sun, for they worshipped the sun, and the wisdom she gave them. It is easy to see how the Gnostics could worship wisdom, like these folk, and turn it into female, and then themselves, as the partners of God. Even the Hebrew in the Old Testament portrays wisdom as female, Proverbs 8:1, 9:1, and we need care to understand the absence of a neuter gender, does not give us license to create male or female attributes for every circumstance. These great piles of death were more monuments to the thousands that died there, more than to the kings buried there. They really were cursed tombs. They stood there, at once, sun monument, and sun tomb. Their vast triangular surfaces polished, and glittering to the apex, adjusted to the four quarters of the heavens. For ten years the people dragged and chiselled, and for twenty years they built and gave away their time and their lives, and as much tax as could be extorted from them. And with all this labour they created this landscape of stone that Joseph viewed around him.
Even now Joseph noted that the people were terrified of the god king Khufu, for they knew that he required more than the superhuman effort they gave. The temples of the dead that leaned against the great pyramids were already crumbling to dust. The people so long ago in Joseph’s day watched the ravages of the desert on the tombs, and comforted themselves with the thought that the pyramids were invincible, and would never crumble. Today, in AD 1999, with the encroaching of the city, Cairo, the exhaust fumes of Egypt’s cars are taking their toll, and now the pyramids are beginning to crumble. Like Stonehenge in England, built about the same time, and monuments in Greece, people will be fenced away, because people of this century, like none before, have caused too much damage.
(See end chapter note for Digression 4)
Joseph, having lived within the Baal worshipping cult of the Canaanites, was familiar with controversial religious practices, but nothing would have prepared him for the monstrous rituals and beliefs of Egypt. We wonder how uncomfortable Joseph felt with all this god worship, living as he did in the glare of the Egyptian deities, with all the magic that entailed.
8. THE SPHINX
Nearby is the Sphinx, with it’s never solved riddle, enigmatic, and the sand mounts up upon it, its face already disfigured. “What does it mean?” Joseph asked himself. The sand blew upon it as he passed by, for desert sand is never still, but the question remains the same.
The Sphinx was uncovered in the 19th century, for then only its head was visible. One paw the size of three houses, (to give an idea of its size) still stands as support for the monster in its regal head dress. Still it is not as big as the pyramids at Giza. It gazes towards the east. Joseph gazes into the eye, eye to eye with the forbidden.
The Sphinx bids him come and worship, but Joseph holds with the Father, and answers, “How shall commit a deed, and sin against God?” and is not enticed. Joseph travelling the road to Egypt, with its enticing sounds and sights and smells, practises at every turn to be a servant of God, and is never enticed.
9. THE CONFUSION OF MEMPI
Along the west bank of the Nile on their right as they faced south - was Mempi. Above it towered the heights, where stone was quarried and where the city buried its dead. 100,000 souls lived in this confusion of narrow winding streets, each one sloping towards their centres where waste water ran into a drain. Reeking of sewage, and seething with trade, it had smiling lush gardened villas for the rich, elegant and distinct, and dirty brick compounds for the poor and the traders. This is the caravanserai where our traders led their group, and the Ishmaelites lived here for a time. It was crammed with specimens from all sides of the human race. Blind beggars played musical instruments, barbers shaved, cobblers cobbled, (making sandals and many leather goods); potters potted, and turned their vessels.
Great wagons rolled along the streets, steeds crowned with feathers, heralded by panting runners calling “Abrek” - “Take care”. The wheels used to be solid, but now they were spoked.
Mempi, or Memfe, or Noph, is now Memphis, and is on the opposite bank to Cairo. Mempi had been the royal city in the time of the pyramids, when it was the end of the first ever trading route, and now in Joseph’s time, the mood of the superseded and outmoded settled upon the people here, and they laughed in pride at their former glory. No wonder we can account for so many name changes, if it is so very old. It was like Per Sopd. The northern Egyptian glory had faded in favour of the south, except for On, of course, where the gold still gloriously glittered.
CONCLUSION:
It was all a confusion to Joseph, he had learned so much on the journey, but God would soon make it plain and clear.
Digression 1:
Cats are here,
And cats are there,
And cats and kittens are everywhere,
“Hundreds of cats,
Thousands of cats,
Millions and
Billions and
Trillions of cats.”
The children’s story, “Millions of Cats” by Wanda Gag, with its repeating metrical pattern, has delighted teachers and children alike, since 1929, now seems not so much like fantasy, and full of magic, but could have been quite possible, in Per Bastet. Gag’s cats lived on grass and water, and there was plenty of that available in Per Bastet.
The smell pervaded everything - it flavoured the food, it lingered in the garments. Some of us may remember the comic strip, “Felix the Cat”, who went berserk every time he was lured with catnip. Catnip, available in the grasslands here in Egypt, is the cat’s favourite herb. It is offensive to anybody else - it can turn a person’s stomach, and it makes a stranger highly identifiable.
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Digression 2:
In the 20th century a series of six cataracts, formed the great dam complex, constructed across the upper Nile, at Aswan, and further south, to service the great cities of Egypt. So much of the beautiful upper and lower river valley of the Nile then lost the rich verdant lush plains and water courses. The ebb and flow of the seasonal wet was destroyed and with it the people and their crops that for millenniums had been there. The anchovy industry, on the Nile Delta much further north, has been destroyed, for the ebb and flow is no more. Joseph saw it, - we cannot now. We destroyed it, like so much of the earth that we have destroyed this century. The industrial revolution has brought us so much advantage, at great cost.
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Digression 3:
There are many pyramids in Egypt (about 80), from metre high constructions, poor, working men’s graves, to massive constructions, for kings, that puzzle us about their construction. Some were step pyramids, and they now began to appear to these travellers. Joseph saw the great pyramids at Giza (near present day Cairo), and with his wise and understanding heart, knew of the sweat of the slave. He knew that they were lashed and coughing, under the weight of those huge stones, brought from the Arabian quarries, across the River - big granite slabs, piled into a triangular shape to sit on a tiny chamber where the king and god lay (with a sprig of mimosa on his heart). Men fell and died there, their tongues hanging out, with the super human effort of it all. People paid their taxes, often, with labour on the great state enterprises, and pyramids like these cost so much in human terms. These mighty structures were built, sometime well before the time of Abraham, and were 1000 years old when Joseph saw them. Even now we don’t know how it was done, except that computers are now helping to unravel the story. They say the architects, (with their plans) were buried inside them. Joseph would look at the awesome, accursed, symmetrical elevations, composed of triangular surfaces, which met at the base in four square corners, and ran together to a point at the top. Today people sit under pyramid shapes to “enrich” themselves, with an energy supposedly encompassed in these converging triangles. They do it for inspiration, and may rig up something in their homes. But now special places are set aside, in some Australian cities, for such activities, where pyramids of glass are constructed.
In these last few years, as Cairo engineers have rebuilt their drainage system, they have uncovered the towns where these wondrous poor workers lived and the tombs where they were buried. Over six hundred multiple body tombs, have been discovered. Not being royal they are not mummified, but buried carefully, with their heads to the north and facing east, in the foetal position. Their bodies show many fractures, properly set, so they were probably splinted, but there are terrible signs of arthritis in the lower back and the knees. They are young, in their thirties or early forties, and show the signs of hard physical labour, arthritis and calloused hands and feet. We know that hard physical work reduces the death age, for it inhibits intellectual and physical development, and makes people vulnerable to infectious diseases and illnesses, (see the World Health reports on the poor in countries, such as India).
At Giza beside The Great Pyramid, commissioned about 2575 BC to house the remains of a fourth dynasty Pharaoh, Khufu, (known later to the Greeks as “Cheops”), excavators have now uncovered boat pits on three sides, with unassembled wooden life-size boats, bundles of wood. These boats were intended for funeral boats and could have plied the waters of the River Nile, - information from Diggings Magazine, January 1999. He reigned for 23 years.
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Digression 4
The “Book of the Dead” is a collection of 200 magical spells, or tomb texts, which enable the dead to overcome death, and take the passage to the afterlife. After dying the people had to pass tests, to be accepted into the afterlife. Firstly they had to stand before a large number of the deities, each of whom assessed a different sin. Then their heart was weighed on scales against the feather of truth. If they passed they could move forward into the afterlife. The whole of Egyptian life was lived in the shadow of these deities who pervaded every day activities, in a most complicated fashion. There is no civilisation today that equals it for religion and practice, but countries like Nepal can give us some ideas.
CHAPTER 3
EGYPT - HOST TO GOD’S PRECIOUS CHILD
“In that day ... the Lord shall smite and heal Egypt”, Isaiah 19:19 and 22.
FOCUS:
The wickedness of Egypt would be punished, but their sanctuary for God loved people would be rewarded. Egypt had been host to God’s loved children before this time, but now a precious child has arrived, “sold into Egypt”, Genesis 37:36.
1. THE WICKEDNESS OF EGYPT
Thomas Mann and others have well fleshed out our story of Joseph travelling in this wilderness of sin, and given us more understanding of how it was for him, and consequently a greater respect for his rejection of it all. It vividly re creates the sights and sounds of the environment and the atmosphere in which Joseph finds himself and this chapter is mostly a “Comment” upon that theme.
Joseph, with God’s help, was able to cope with the enormous changes, and to resist pressures to conform. “Thou shalt make to thyself no graven image” was graven on his heart, and here in Egypt graven images were everywhere. Joseph was not enticed.
2. BY BOAT TO NO - CITY OF THE PHARAOH
They stood crammed in the crowd, at Mempi, watching as the people called for the bull god, Hapi in the temple court. Mann, with an eye on the future, suggests there was a fat bellied man in sandals standing beside them, in the crowd. He had on a knee length apron of coarse linen. His short hair was smooth on his round pate, and his head was covered with a little round cap. His face was shaven. He was the baker, Bata. His wife had gone to take flowers to worship at the goddess. After considering the Ishmaelites for some time, he spoke to them. He did not pound dough, or put his head in the oven, but he employed half a dozen men, journey men and distributors who carried excellent rolls and croissants in baskets through the city, and even to one of the Pharaoh’s residences. Woe to any distributor who did not cover the trays, or wave away the birds who tried to pounce on the bread to steal it, for the thought of it made him jittery, and he was known to dream about it. He was such a good baker that he was often asked to come and bake at the palace. He possessed land outside the city and grew some of his corn, but needed to buy more for his business had expanded. He would need to consult with Pharaoh’s officials about that. How much better he always felt when he had viewed the Hapi - and his “business prospered after that experience”, he told the traders who had come from Dothan.
The Ishmaelites went to the landing place at Mempi (or Memfe, or Memphis), and procured for themselves and their wares passage on the boat “Shining in Swiftness”, Mann calls it, a clumsy freighter with ample cargo space. The pilot was named Thot-nofer and had met the old man at the hostel. He knew about this honourable trading company. The river flowed down to the north but the wind blew more strongly from the north to the south, and the boat was propelled swiftly against the current. Egypt had plenty of stone, but little wood, and by now had begun foreign trade and brought in wood from Lebanon. They were skilled at boat building, but they built river boats, not sea going boats.
Life’s contentment comes from the ebb and flow, the advantage with the disadvantage, from contentment and agitation. One without the other doesn’t achieve a balance. It is useful to have a pot of white stones and another of black stones to remind oneself of the inevitability of the life re occurring pattern. Joseph, living with all of it, continued under God’s care, and doing His will, and was not enticed.
The water journey passed villages and palm groves, nine days in all, along this great highway of Egypt. Nine days was a working week for Egyptians, for then they had one day rest. So they had a ten day week. There were many feast days, and holy days, so there was plenty of time for play.
Boats were sophisticated modes of transport in Egypt, and used extensively. Sometimes narrowing through the curves or widening into a lake, the river was hugely diverting, with many boats plying up and down the river, the oarsmen or sailors, calling to those on shore, trading and passing the time of these nine days. Where they found themselves, they tied up at night, and slept, and each morning they floated on. They rowed when the wind fell - the younger Ishmaelites helping, for there was only a little crew. So advantage and disadvantage brought satisfaction until they came to Amun’s mountains, the heights of No. Another night went by and then they entered the city, still in the boat.
Pharaoh’s famous city glittered with gold as On did, but it shimmered with rainbow colours, as well. Without going on shore they sailed along this wonderful boulevard and flowed between celestial structures of temples and palaces in gardens of delight. Colonnades, gold tipped obelisks, colossal statues, turreted gates, sphinx, and avenues with doors and flag poles. Gilded and painted scenes and inscriptions on the buildings cinnamon red plum colour, emerald green, ochre yellow and azure blue. They all swam together in a great sea of colour - the scene was stunning. Thomas Mann gives us some of his well researched ideas.
Joseph, nearing the end of his journey with these relations of his, will soon be parted from them. He can only think of being where God wants him to be. The old man pleaded for his patience. The customs authorities will make the landing as troublesome as any landing can be - but there were the pedlars of sandals, caps and honey cakes, the music of jugglers, the bleating of herds being unloaded nearby and the splosh as ropes and other inconsequentials fall in the water. It was vast confusion, and Joseph and the Ishmaelites leaned against the lumber at the stern of the boat, waiting until they could be released and go to the hostel. The old man had to vouch for all his party and pay his harbour dues. But because he was so good at establishing human relations and giving little presents, he was able to expedite his business quickly and take his little party, including Joseph, into the city. Joseph - still unrecorded - noted by none - named by no name.
3. NO, CHIEF CITY ON THE RIVER NILE, AND ITS MULTI RACIAL BLEND
There is now a lengthy descriptive section about No, and the Cushites who stood out so significantly in the crowded city. The “comment” continues as the rest of this chapter, but will not be noted as such.
There is no mention of Joseph and his friends in the history of No. But the Wisdom from above has made them “wisdom” as well, whether No knew about it or not it was a blessing for this little band in No, and a great blessing for Joseph.
Weset (Wese), also called Nowet Amun (No), also later called Thebes, and also called Diospolis, chief city on the river Nile, was a marvel to all the world, both near and far. No, as it was known, and what we will call it, was beautiful, beyond word, or measure. True, there were slum parts as well as rich parts; there were the narrow, winding, dark, smelling, poor streets, as in any man made city, large or small. The richer sections, with fewer people, of course, were less numerous than the poor, and were spacious and charming and architecturally beautiful, and endowed with temples and palaces, rich in treasure, so that one could measure the gold with a scoop. Even some houses were enriched by Pharaoh, like the temples and palaces. The Pharaoh did not live in the city itself. His palace, to the west on the edge of the desert, under its red rocks, high in airy grace amid pleasure gardens, was splendid, with a lake and pleasure waters.
A very great city it was also, in its graciousness and intensity and living. It believed itself the centre of the world. Joseph knew it was not, for he knew of Babel (later Babylon) on the Euphrates. The people of Babel said that Egypt’s stream flowed the wrong way that all rivers should flow south. They believed that the rest of the world stood in an admiring circle around their city. The Chinese at the other end of the world, as has been discussed previously, were exhorting their population that theirs was the only country in the world with such advantages. This was all possible, of course, before travel and education and communication became widespread, and it certainly kept a grip of control on the peoples.
Nevertheless, these cities and countries did not have the fullness of beauty in its buildings, as did No. The city, No, was not yet at the height of its fame. It later had a name change (by the Greeks) to Thebai, Thebes. Greece had a city, Thebes. No, now paused in history, on its way to full splendour from its dark and small beginnings centuries ago, and Joseph saw it at his journey’s end, on its splendid way, opulent and already famous. Little did he know at this time of the influence he himself would exert over this city.
Later Jeremiah warned the men of Judah against going to Egypt, to relieve the punishments of the Chaldeans, even though God promised to build them up again, if they stayed in Israel. God promised them death, but they determined to go, and so in Jeremiah 43 and 44, these cities of Egypt are mentioned in the destruction of the men and women of Judah. The Judah women had made cakes in the image of the Queen of Heaven. It was the custom that they had to have permission from their husbands to make vows to the Sun god, so the men were part of the evil behaviour.
On their way to the hostel Joseph saw a multitude of people hurrying up and down the narrow streets about their daily tasks, a multitude from the four corners of the earth. Animals there were too, being led by chains - whining panthers and baboons, greyhounds, a giraffe tall as a tree. What treasures of merchandise swelled the bazaars. Here the merchants and travellers from the ports far north of the Nile Delta and over the seas had come to see the might and power of Egypt. The Egyptians were not a sea faring people (although they traded in ships along the coasts), so these people probably had come in foreign ships. Later these sea peoples tried an alliance with Libya, to overcome this powerful Egyptian influence, which lasted down through the centuries.
During the last years that the Hebrews lived in Goshen, and for 300 years, till 1200 BC, eight Pharaohs made excursions into Canaan and Syria. In the lists of cities conquered and routes of their marches there appears the names of about 90 cities and towns of Canaan many of which figure large in the subsequent history of Israel. No wonder Gaza was a great staging post as they turned from the desert into Canaan. It was Tuth Mosis III, 1504 - 1450 BC (after Joseph and shortly before the Israelites came into Canaan under Joshua) who established Egypt’s control over Canaan by making almost annual campaigns into Asia during his 22nd and 42nd years. The soldiers were highly trained in shooting arrows from swiftly moving chariots. If Egyptians could not pay tax with grain or produce or craftwork or manufactured goods, (that were stored in the great government controlled warehouses), they had to give labour. This helped in the massive building projects, but also supplied soldiers for this mighty army. Annals carved into the walls of the Temple of Amon at Thebes are a memorial to the god who gave him the victories. It is no wonder then that the chariots pursuing the Israelites to the Red Sea, made them quake in fear. It is also no wonder then that these god fearing soldiers plunged their chariots onto the dry water walled track, believing they were invincible.
God against god. We know who prevailed in the contest. Like Baal against God in Elijah’s day, Moses had returned from Midian to save them and he took them this way again across the Red Sea. Not a usual Egyptian excursion route.
In 2 Kings 22 and 23, good King Josiah humbled himself, and responded to the words from God, by Huldah the prophetess, and cleansed the land. Yet God did not turn away His anger, and Josiah was killed by Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, who was coming to support Assyria in her struggle against Babylon. Josiah tried to stop Pharaoh Neco from using the pass at Megiddo. Perhaps he feared an Assyrian/Egyptian alliance, NIV Study Bible, 2 Chronicles 35:20-24.
4. THE CUSHITES
Our bearded Asiatics in their coloured garments contrasted with the white skirted, clean shaven Egyptians, but were not strange enough, nor infrequent enough in number, to cause any remark from others in the streets. There were Moors, with ebony black skins, with incredibly thick, lips that appeared swollen. They had ostrich feathers on their heads. Women bare to the waist followed their men, carrying their children, with grace and skill, in baskets, on their heads. These were the men who led the chained animals, often giraffes, but more often leopards. The men carried valuable presents (obvious, for they were wrapped in gold cloth) probably gold and ivory, as tribute tax for Pharaoh. There were massive deposits of gold in Nubia, (as well as that in the desert between Luxor and the Red Sea). This mission that Joseph saw, was from the land of Kush, south, far up the river. These were the peoples of Cush, one of the four sons of Ham, and grandson of Noah, whose distribution over the world at that time, is recorded in Genesis 10. It was a non compulsory tribute, irregularly sent from the governor of the southern lands of Egypt, the viceroy and prince of Kush. It was sent so that Pharaoh may be pleased, and take joy, and think well of him, so that he might not be recalled. It was a “job for the boys”, and there were boys aplenty bending Pharaoh’s ear. “Surely, now it’s my turn to go south?” they would think, waiting for their summons to represent the king, in the great southlands.
The prince of Kush trembled for his post, while Pharaoh's courtiers plotted and schemed. The prince prepared his presents with great care, for Pharaoh liked to be surprised with gifts.
Kush is known variously as Cush, Ethiopia, Nubia, a country south of Egypt, “up” the Nile. Nubians are still used as soldiers and police in Egypt today for their appearance is still one of great strength with authority. It is interesting to note that the old Nubia, (or the land of Cush, Kush), is under the wall of the largest dam at Aswan, and the Nubian people were relocated by the Egyptians in the 1960’s. 60,000 people were moved away from their long established position on the Nile River, to the flatlands, which is supported by a newly built irrigation system.
Black figures, tall Cushites, are portrayed frequently in Egyptian art. They were beardless, with blunt broad noses, and small tight black curls. They were mostly compliant mercenaries in whatever army they joined, but not always, depending on their sense of justice. There have been many of those armies down through the centuries. They used arrows with particularly long bows, and were skilful with horses and chariots, and used elephants in war. Hannibal’s elephants (3rd century BC) probably came from Cush. The Island of Elephantine, where the Jews later had a synagogue, (5th Century BC), was on the Nile here, so called because the rocks there looked like the backs of elephants, bathing. Elephants were plentiful then.
The Egyptians made many incursions into Cush and were sometimes repelled. When the Cushites were inducted into the Egyptian army they often acted independently and rebelliously, Perhaps they felt vexed towards the Egyptians who gave them no little trouble. They were present in the Assyrian and the Babylonian armies at different stages, and fought against Judah in the reign of Asa, 2 Chronicles 14:9-15.
Cushites are mentioned 54 times in Scripture. In 2 Samuel 18:19-33, Joab chose a Cushite to take news of Absalom’s death, to his father David. It is a casual reference, and probably indicates that Cushite soldiers were not unusual. Moses had a black wife, a Cushite, Numbers 12.
When God sent King Nebuchadnezzar to punish sinful Judah (Jeremiah 38:4), King Zedekiah became irritated with the harping of the prophet Jeremiah predicting doom, and allowed him to be put in a muddy pit to await his death. Ebedmelech, the Cushite, interceded on Jeremiah’s behalf, with Zedekiah, that he might rescue him from the pit.
Interestingly, the prophet had said earlier, Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Cushite change his skin colour or the leopard his spots?” Jeremiah rhetorically points to the entrenched and unchanging sin of Judah. The repetition in Jeremiah of the blackness of the Cushite, might be presenting the irony of his foreignness. We might say there would be no one more unlikely to deliver the prophet, and to trust in God, than the black Cushite, a Gentile of Gentiles.
Maybe the people of that day were colour blind regarding race. Not so today, for the Jewish Ethiopians entering Israel, have to fight for their rights for equal opportunity, which they feel is restricted to them because of their dark colour.
Cush means “outstanding”, so that all the recordings of Cushites, in relation to the prophets and people of Israel could be taken to mean just “outstanding men”. However that would diminish the race. The Greeks did think of Cushites, the Ethiopians, as an outstanding people, with the longest life span, the tallest height, the handsomeness faces, and the most pious actions. No mean reputation.
Jeremiah 13:23, then, can take on a different interpretation. “Is there anything intrinsically wicked about Ethiopians or leopards?”
Cushites were salesmen of live leopards and leopard skins all over the ancient world. No one would buy a spotless leopard skin. The spots are its beauty. The Cushite’s skin is his beauty. Certainly an enlightened way for us to think of non white skins these days. Looking at it, in this light, this could be Biblical verse to support non discrimination on racist grounds, or skin colour, for inclusion of all as servants of God, does not depend on skin colour, or nationality or ethnicity, but on faith. It has been the case that in slavery, men have argued from the Bible, that white skin colour has been given supremacy by God.
Recent Bible research has flooded Bible studies with information dealing with women in the Scriptures. These studies have challenged many traditional views, and we have come to accept many complementary roles in worship for women. This has greatly advantaged our worship.
There are numerous black figures across the pages of Scripture. It is interesting that Bible research has not yet carried over to blacks, another marginalised group. Perhaps when those studies come, they will also challenge many of us. Secular education is leading the way in discrimination issues, certainly in directions that some of us may not accept. However the principle is there and our children will help us to overcome our predilection, and will encourage us to make choices not on any prejudice, but on Scripture alone.
Joseph saw and heard it all in the market place on his way to the hostel, for these Moors - Cushites - caused no small stir. He would no doubt learn much more about these people in future. Joseph was not named or noticed. There were all shades from the human race from this ebony black, through tones of brown and yellow to cheese white. Pale faced, the Libyans were, from the oases of the western desert in coloured woven skirts and plaits standing straight out from their heads. Little did Joseph know that he would be one day in charge of the tribute that came from these viceroys and the taxes from the traders, and that people, later, in a great seven year famine, would even sell their children and then themselves for food. So Egypt gathered under it, great wealth and many peoples. In time it was Joseph who worked out the great interest bearing loans and levied the taxes that filled the coffers of Egypt.
One hundred and forty four years after the death of Joseph, the Hebrews left Goshen, under Moses, with much gold to embellish God’s sanctuary (and to make a golden calf). It was because the Egyptians (under God’s hand) had this great wealth to “throw at” the Hebrews to “get rid of them”. The Israelites did not go empty handed, (Exodus 3:21, 22), as God foretold - they spoiled the Egyptians and took their jewellery and precious stones, and valuable vessels and artefacts and all that they (2 million) could carry with them.
At this stage in history the Egyptians were glad that the pestilence would go, but at the time of Joseph they were busy, extorting much gold and making their wealth and Joseph was educated by Pharaoh to do just that for Egypt.
5. THE PUNISHMENT OF NO
Young’s Concordance tells us that No was a city on both sides of the Nile, the capital of Upper Egypt, also called Thebes and Diospolis; the chief seat of the worship of Amon with the famous temple. It was destroyed (by the Romans) in BC 81.
Jeremiah 46:25, “I will punish the multitude of No”
Ezekiel 30:14, “... and will execute judgments in No”
Ezekiel 30:15, “I will cut off the multitudes of No”
Ezekiel 30:16, “No shall be rent asunder”
Nahum 3:8, “Art thou better than populous No?”
So the yokes of Egypt imposed upon other peoples were finally broken, (compare The Companion Bible, “Chronological Chart, Appendix 50”), 1410 years after Moses left Egypt - a long time before that prophecy was fulfilled. Read the NIV text and verse comment, and the accompanying comments for Ezekiel 30:13-19. Compare the AV as well. It will help with the understanding of the punishment of Egypt, and also with the names and name changes of the cities that have so far been mentioned in Joseph’s journey “up” the Nile. The city names mentioned by Ezekiel are only a literary form of emphasising the extent of the purging, but for us, as students of this ancient geography, we are grateful for Ezekiel’s prediction list.
The mention, in Isaiah 19:23, 24, of Egypt and their bitter enemies, the Assyrians, who had clashed in mighty battles for centuries, crashing up and down, pursuing one another, on that highway through Jerusalem seems remarkable. The three nations will be blessed, under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the whole world will be under blessing. They will be linked in a bond of friendship, sealed by their common allegiance to that Lord (compare Isaiah 25:3) NIV. They “will throw away ... their idols of silver and idols of gold, which they made to worship”, Isaiah 2:20. Note how the Abrahamic promise is divided equally, among the three nations (not only Israel). “Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance”, - the Lord Almighty’s blessing and the healing of them, when He responds “to their pleas”, Isaiah 19:22.
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CONCLUSION:
Now Joseph has come to the end of his journey. He has been blessed by God, and that is the indication that He will continue His blessings.
CHAPTER 4
JOSEPH IN POWERFUL AND MIGHTY EGYPT
“And the Midianites sold him into Egypt”, Genesis 37:36.
“And Joseph was brought down to Egypt”, Genesis 39:1
FOCUS:
Now that we have spanned the journey into Egypt we are poised in the city of No, near to where Potiphar lives, Genesis 39:1.
1. FROM NO TO POTIPHAR’S HOUSE
If our caravan took nine days to cross the desert with all of its dangers, we wonder how the Egyptian army managed with its chariots and horses.
We wonder whether they had their own military road with its stores, and water cisterns, and horse change stables, or whether they used the public roads. It must have been difficult to maintain supplies in foreign countries, but no more difficult than the Americans today, with military bases and rocket facilities in Australia and elsewhere. Perhaps they built the roads and part of the toll for that was safe passage, when ever they needed it. Eventually their confidence knew no bounds and with the scuttling of anything in their way, they began to feel they could overrun if they pleased, and they did.
They would hardly employ runners in this remote territory, to precede the chariots, calling “Abrek”, as they did in the big cities. Besides speed was essential here and they could manage that.
(See end chapter note for Digression)
We often overlook the knowledge that Joseph had in this Land of Mud. His knowledge of Egyptian writing and reading and all things Egyptian was outstanding, but it began with an education in things in Canaan, not Egyptian. His ability to absorb education of things Egyptian began with his entry into Egypt, and as we have come on this journey from Canaan, we know how that education had begun. It was, of course, with God’s intervention. One important aspect of faith is the ability to see God’s will in the opportunities He offers us and our need to grasp them. Joseph had set himself on this course, knowing it was God’s will for him. So now he learns to read and write in Egyptian as well.
2. THE ARRIVAL OF JOSEPH AT POTIPHAR’S HOUSE
At the hostel in No, our little band, of Joseph and his owners, slept fitfully under their cloaks. It was like the inn in Memfe, where they had crammed into the great courtyard, with one of them awake, to guard their valuables. It was the same here. The old man knew the innkeeper at No, for he was a Chaldean from the Euphrates, so all these who travelled from that district (so far, so very far - Abraham had come that far) lodged here. He gave them a Chaldean dish for breakfast, pappasu, prepared from sesame - bed and breakfast.
All the while with this press of humanity the old man, a real salesman, traded and pressed the press for silver or copper or goods in exchange for his trinkets. What education this wise old man crammed into Joseph's already wise head. They waited their turn to wash at the well, for the courtyard and the well and the crowd of people was all that was needed to make Sippar's Inn (named after the Chaldean town), an inn. Then setting out again with their little caravan of packs and animals, through the streets teeming with masters and slaves, rich and poor, the confident and the cowed, the owner and the owned, the little band, the trading company, turned East, out of No, towards the houses of the rich, for the old man had indicated to Joseph that they would go to one of these houses of blessing, and there it would be that God would have him. Joseph, anxious to be where God would have him, strode on, leading the old man’s camel, until they stopped outside a great house. Joseph is now full of mixed emotions and we can only wonder, at this son of Israel standing there, willing himself to fulfil God’s will for him.
3. THE SALE OF JOSEPH
The Asiatics (as they are called - page 18, of “The Times Concise Atlas of the Bible”, in the section “The Sale of Joseph and His Entry into Egypt“, moved into the courtyard at the invitation of the overseer, who had instructed the gate keeper to allow them through. Here was an estate rich in blessing beyond a doubt. Joseph looked it over. Thomas Mann describes what he saw. The courtyard was covered with hard clay, and from it, they could see an inner double gate and another courtyard, beyond where the master’s main house lay in the centre of the complex, surrounded by lush gardens. It had painted columns, and on the roof three cornered ventilators opening to the west. The largest building was facing westward, as they all did, without a wall, to catch the breezes. Through its doors went maidservants with tall jugs and platters of fruit and on the roof other women sat singing and spinning - the harem. The building was guarded by watermen. There was another house from which steam was rising, the cook house - there were vats and grain mills here. Further behind were the orchard and another house where workmen were busy with their tasks of repair and maintenance of garden and building. Further than this, in the North West corner lay the cow stalls, and the granaries filled with corn. Ladders lay against them.
Joseph, though keen to see it all, had to help with the unpacking - they unloaded the camels and set up shop, spreading out the goods. He would soon see it all, as we now have, for before long, he would be head steward of it all. They were soon surrounded by a crowd
There was some previous information about the house of 1740 BC (round about the time of Joseph’s birth) that had 79 servants, 45 non Egyptians, of Asiatic appearance, with Semitic names. Traders would, therefore, be familiar with the needs of some households.
The old man merchant was God guided to this house. Maybe Joseph’s angel whispered it in the merchant’s ear, and told him to come here. The house dwellers were seduced by the goods for sale. The merchant displayed incense resins, goat’s thorn gums, brownish labdanum, eye paint, myrrh, spices, balsams, walking sticks, solid and of the hardest wood, ornaments, chains, necklaces, rings, vitreous paste, and knick and knacks of all kinds. Gold, electrum, and good stones, lazuli, cornelian, crystal made the knick knacks pretty and/or valuable. A monkey or two sat on a shoulder and chattered with the people. There were two dwarfs, in this household, and they stood by to watch the fun. The two dwarfs were on little fat legs, a comic and an intellectual, one named Bes-em-heb, after a foreign comic dwarf god.
“Stay with us young sand man”, he whispered to Joseph as the old man with hand around Joseph’s shoulder presented him as the best buy of all to Mont-kaw.
Mont-kaw, the overseer over all, approached - an elderly man, (in time, to be replaced, we know), beautifully dressed in white, accompanied by scribes who with reed pens behind their ears, bowed before him and wrote down his words on tablets. The servants scattered, and Joseph was exposed to view - and the pricing began. First with the more valuable items on the mats, Joseph helped, advised, added and took the goods for goods, honey for onions, and wine. There was copper and linen and writing paper and beer and bread for hoes and cow horn tweezers, and cow horn spoons. His bearing, his usefulness, his diligence, his preciseness, his cleverness, his attention to detail and his cataloguing, and whatever else God laid upon Joseph at this precise moment, surprised Mont-kaw, so that he looked with admiration upon God’s servant and without knowing why he was so inclined, he desired him for his own. God was working in this house on the minds and actions of the people here, more than anyone could have possibly imagined. The words of Joseph, for a slave, even an educated one, were unusually subtle and shrewd. This young Asiatic Bedouin had a striking and arresting beauty that associated in the steward’s mind with something divine. He was, of course, Mont-kaw noted, not a god, but a human being.
Thomas Mann names the characters, and invents the dwarfs, and spells out some wisdom conversations for us. Together with the immense historical detail, now available, and interwoven into the tapestry, it helpfully fills out the story.
Consider:
* How did the old man merchant know to bring Joseph to this house?
* Did he know these people from past trading?
* Did he have relatives and friends here among the servants?
* How did he receive this feeling of the divine about Joseph?
* God blessed has a bearing, does it not?
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It evoked in Mont-kaw a feeling that he was in the presence of someone blessed. And we know that feeling was quite real, that indeed he was in the presence of the divinely chosen one, and was powerfully moved. The old man sensed this, and when Mont-kaw enquired of Joseph, he was ready.
“My seventh gift” he said - and proceeded with his sales pitch about Joseph being a Canaanitish youth who can bake (pancakes on stone) and write, and has a clear head for accounts.
“His wisdom, intellect and expression are such that he can say goodnight in 365 different ways and still have some left over from his treasure-house of speech, with never a repeat.”
“But we have no vacancy, our numbers are full”, countered the overseer, “but where did you get it - this gift?”
Then in the manner of the uncivilised (to the Egyptians), the old man then broke into the habit of speaking in a riddle.
Guess if you will.
“A barren mother bore him”
(Eastern wisdom at its best).
“How can a woman be both a mother and barren?”
“Why a whimpering soul came from a dry well - and we gave the child milk when we drew him from the well’s belly.”
“Was he there three days?”
“The well was the mother - the pit was empty and had no water in it”, Genesis 37.24.
(This is a Hebrew poetical form, repeating for emphasis, a rhymed thought)
“- and the well was certainly a barren mother”.
“How then did this child come into the belly, the slave into the well?”
How indeed.
Here we must leave the sales pitch, for we cannot guess how much the old man knew - how much Joseph told him, if anything. It would have been a great worry to Joseph to decide how much to tell the old man merchant.
“Tell me some of your wisdom. What would you say to me at the end of the day?” asked Mont-kaw.
Joseph paused before he spoke.
“Rest gently,” answered Joseph,
“After the toil of the day,
May your soles, that are scorched
From the heat of your path,
Move blissfully over the mosses of peace,
And your languid tongue be refreshed,
From the murmuring springs of night”.
This sounds like the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes 5:18, “It is good for man to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labour under the sun - for this is his lot”, echoing Genesis 3:19.
“How so? How are you called then?”
Joseph hesitated before answering,
“Osarsiph”
“The dead one”, dead to his father at least, and he is from a dead pit. This is a foreign sounding name to the Egyptians.
He is still least among them, but now noted by some, named by the old man by the name, Osarsiph, son of an empty pit, for that, or “Sand Man” or “Pit Man”, must have been the name the old man put on the migration entry form at the Customs House at Thel. Joseph, son of Jacob, came into Egypt and was purchased for the house of Potiphar.
The price was high, (30 pieces of silver, or similar, probably), and the old man threw in some Phoenician wine and Ascalon shallots and traded some insults about the snub nosed sand rabbit, while the dwarf whispered encouragement to the overseer,
“Trust me, I know wisdom when I see it. Buy the young sand-boy”,
and was paid 200 deben of copper.
Thus the old man was more than repaid for his trouble and care of Joseph over the long journey, and minus the 20 shekels of silver he paid to Joseph’s brothers on that first slave sale.
“Oh that I had wings like a dove” (Psalm 55:6, and now the beautiful Mendelssohn song), is the prayer of David, when he has the need to be delivered from what he feels is certain death “for then I would fly away and be at rest”. He is confident that God will deliver him. “As for me, I will call upon God and the Lord will save me”, “he shall hear my voice”, and He did.
Our Lord Jesus Christ prayed too, “Father if thou be willing, remove this cup from me, nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”, (Luke 22:42). God answered his prayer too and an angel strengthened him in the garden for what lay ahead.
Joseph coped with this remarkable second sale of him, by putting himself into the hands of God. Apart from the cultural relativity of the custom, which would give him certain immunity, it would all be so foreign to him. For Joseph, like that other prophet (Isaiah 6:8) had unconsciously said, as he searched for God’s plan for him, “here am I, send me”.
“The Lord was with him” is so often repeated in Joseph’s story and so we know for a certainty that God did strengthen him.
Consider:
* Did an angel of God strengthen Joseph as one did Jesus?
* Did he pray for the wings of a bird to take him out of this foreign land, with alien gods, and discomforting customs, where he could not openly worship God, back home to his father?
* Did he use the “never the less” as Jesus did?
It must have seemed to Joseph that he was “down in the pit of destruction” in this alien land, and that it was not his, but God’s will that he be there.
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CONCLUSION:
Sometimes we find ourselves in alien circumstances. It is only the sustenance of knowing God’s word, and His will for us, which sustains us until we are safe again. That’s why continual practice of God’s way, infusing ourselves with God’s word, and nurturing ourselves on prayer to Him, are important when we can, so that when we can’t, our resources are intact. God switches in, onto our case, when we, of necessity, switch off. He will maintain us, if we cannot, for He delivers us from evil, and like a dove on the wing, helps us to fly away, - or, He will give us strength to continue with the dreadful, evil circumstance, whatever He thinks best. “He will sustain thee” (Psalm 55:22) if only we will know Him, and trust Him and cast our burdens upon Him.
Digression:
Leen Ritmeyer, now living in England, worked as an on site archaeologist for Temple Mount Excavations, in Israel, in the 1970’s and 80’s. He has some illustrations and diagrams in “The Times Concise Atlas of the Bible”. There is a reconstruction site at Arad (diagram 2, page 12), a great walled city, to repel such as the Egyptians, with effective defence towers. The Egyptians swung around here, (near Gaza) from the desert, wheeling left, pausing for breath before proceeding up through Canaan, trading at first, and then as they became more powerful, making war.
In the days after Joseph in Egypt, and for 300 years, even when the Israelites had moved into the land, it might have been precarious to live in Canaan. They could never rest easy, as they cannot now. For us though, ease of living is not a blessing, and can be quite perilous, and can often turn people away from God. For them though, in the path of rampaging armies, it was often a matter of life or death.
Not only were the Egyptians passing north on the coastal plain, then south as they returned home, but the Assyrians were passing south, and then north, as they returned home. None of the inhabitants of the land could prevent them. The Egyptians and the Assyrians engaged one another in great conflicts of power. Ruthless nations they were. The minor skirmishes that occurred between tribes and families, for example, the Dinah incident, the Israel family against the Shechemites, would only add to an already precarious life in this little strip of land.
