07. § 5. Joseph
§ 5. Joseph
Providence appears so prominently in the history of Joseph, that it would be superfluous to draw attention to it in detail. It is more important to consider the final object which these providential leadings subserve. Why was it necessary for Jacob’s race to be transplanted from Canaan to Egypt? For this is the centre round which everything in the whole section revolves. If the descendants of the patriarchs were at a future time to be adapted to divine aims, to those institutions which God through Moses wished to establish among them, they must (1) not split themselves up into small tribes, but form one nation, separate from others, and united in themselves. But this was impossible in Canaan. The land was already occupied by a whole host of Canaanitish nationalities. The number of the Canaanites was constantly on the increase. If the number of the Israelites were to increase in the same proportion, the necessary consequence would be, that they would either come to strife with the inhabitants of the land, in which they must necessarily succumb, and in which they would not have right on their side; or else by intermarriage they would become mixed up with them, and so entirely cease to be a nation, as the Sichemites proposed to Jacob; or, finally, they would become separated into single masses in the neighbouring lands. (2) They must be placed in a position in which they would not come into close contact with the idolatrous nations. Until now, God had bound the patriarchs to Himself by direct revelation, who with quick susceptibility had accepted this revelation. But henceforward the direct revelations of God ceased for a long period: time was given to the scattered, noble seed to rise; the Israelites received their knowledge indirectly from God; they learnt to know Him as He who had revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But this knowledge and worship of God was not yet so firmly rooted, that it could not have been lost if their natural proneness as men to sin, and hence to idolatry, had been furthered by strong outward influences. And this would certainly have happened in Canaan, whose inhabitants, as we learn most clearly from the conduct of the Sichemites, had always been most conciliatory towards the strangers, always endeavouring to draw them into nearer connection. Moreover, they were destitute of all religious intolerance, which is explained by the fact that among them false religion had still a fluctuating character, no fixed forms and ruling priesthood; and that material interests preponderated, as was the case in later times. Out of love to them, the Sichemites were even willing and ready to submit to circumcision. (3) They must come into contact with a state whose culture, constitution, arts, and laws would present a pattern for imitation. A shepherd-life was best adapted to the patriarchs; as rich possessors, they enjoyed its advantages without being subject to its disadvantages. The simplicity connected with it must have made them more susceptible of divine revelations, which were still very simple, not requiring to be written down, and therefore demanding no literary education. Not so with a whole nation. Shepherd-life, as the mode of life common to a whole nation, is always connected with rudeness and barbarism: hence even now, the missionaries among nomadic nations use their utmost endeavour to induce those over whom they have acquired influence to make fixed habitations, and to cultivate agriculture. God wished to work upon Israel by settled religious institutions, to penetrate into the very centre of the national life by a complicated, and therefore written, code of laws. A settled religious constitution and developed legislation of this nature can only exist among a nation having settled habitations and a well-regulated civil constitution, and possessing some little knowledge of arts and sciences. Hence Moses afterwards founded the Israelitish state upon agriculture, which partly presupposes such a civil condition, and partly induces it. (4) Already, in the predictions made to Abraham, the object of his people’s sojourn in Egypt is said to be, that they might there be heavily oppressed, and be delivered by God’s mighty deeds; comp. Genesis 15:13. This formed the necessary foundation of that closer relation which God wished to assume towards them. Without the cross, no longing; only in a barren land does the soul thirst after God. Without the need of redemption, there is no gratitude for redemption. The way in which God deals with those nations and individuals whom He will draw to Himself out of the world is always this: He prepares trouble and anguish for them in the world; He arms the world against them. Therefore it must be a mighty nation among which Israel should grow to a numerous people—a nation which there was no human possibility of resisting. A mighty nation also, in order that God’s glorious power in deliverance might be the more visible. This deliverance was to be for all futurity a mirror of the love of God to His people, of His omnipotence, of His righteousness in victory over the world; it was to be a prophecy of all subsequent judgments on the world till the final day of judgment: and how could this be, unless worldly power were represented as concentrated in the type of the world with all its power? (5) The kingdom in which Israel sojourned must also so far be fitted for a type of the world, that it must represent the moral condition of the world, its rebellion against the true God, its obstinate defiance, its foolish trust in that which is not God, in its own power and in idols. Without this, God’s justice, and therefore His omnipotence and love, could not be fully developed. A nation still on the first step of retrogression, in which there were still remnants of the true knowledge of God, would have surrendered on the first attack.
All these conditions were at that time to be found in combination, only in the land of Egypt. In Egypt there was (1) enough of land not only for the descendants of Abraham then in existence, but also to accommodate the great nation which was to spring from them in accordance with the divine promise. Even now, besides the ordinary inhabitants of this prosperous land, who occupy themselves with agriculture, there is another race in Egypt, the Bedouin Arabs. These make use of the pasture land in the neighbourhood of the wilderness, but at the same time often combine agriculture with pastoral life. Since, in Egypt, the state was at that time based upon agriculture, the large tracts available only for pasturage remained unused; and it was to be expected that the inhabitants would readily give them up to the Israelites. (2) In Egypt, the danger of mixing with idolaters, and the temptation to idolatry, were comparatively less. Although the national exclusiveness of the Egyptians was not fully developed till afterwards, it existed even at that time in its main characteristics, as appears from passages which we have already cited in another connection. Herdsmen are an abomination to the Egyptians; and it is necessary for Joseph to be freed from the ignominy of his origin by marriage with the daughter of a high priest. Among all nations of antiquity, none showed such hatred of strangers as the Egyptians, who used the word man solely to designate their own fellow-countrymen. On the very earliest sculptures we find contemptuous representations of foreigners, especially of the Nomads; and in many cases they are represented as suffering the most grievous oppression. Comp., for example, the sculptures on the temple at Medinat Abu, representing the return of Rameses III. from the wars of the east, in Wilkinson, i, p. 106. The inclination which the Israelites manifested towards the idolatry of the Egyptians, notwithstanding the repulsive treatment they experienced in Egypt, and the religious detestation which the Egyptians showed towards them, lead us to infer what would have become of them if they had grown to be a nation among a more humane people, such as perhaps the Canaanites were. Yet in the wilderness, when the Moabites and Midianites invited them to join in eating sacrifices offered to idols, and in fornication, they immediately succumbed to the temptation. (3) Among all states then in existence, Egypt was that in which culture had made the greatest progress, in which the arts were most advanced, and wise laws were to be found. Everything that Genesis tells of Egypt shows a rich, prosperous, and well-ordered state. The whole was founded on agriculture; we find a developed priesthood, an orderly court, high offices of state, a state-prison, numerous and costly works of art, etc. But the Israelites were not slow to avail themselves of the advantages which such a situation afforded. At first, indeed, they continued their pastoral life; but as their numbers increased, they found themselves obliged to turn to agriculture and the arts. That the Israelites on their departure are not to be regarded as a mere shepherd-nation, is shown by passages such as Exodus 3:22, according to which they dwelt in settled habitations in the midst of the agricultural Egyptians; also by the fact that there were artificers among them competent to prepare everything requisite for the holy tabernacle; by the manufacture of the golden calf; the spread of the art of writing; the circumstance that their collective public deeds could be based on a book, and many other things. The nation came out from Egypt entirely metamorphosed, (4) Egypt was at that time the most’ powerful kingdom of the world, the only one perhaps which had already a standing army,—a necessity for which was likely soon to arise, owing to its geographical situation. The fruitful land was surrounded by dreary wastes, whose savage inhabitants, intent on improving their condition, had their greedy glance constantly directed towards this paradise. (5) A Pharaoh could scarcely have been found at that time in any other part of the world; and yet a Pharaoh whom God could set forth to manifest His justice and omnipotence was necessary for the object in view. It was indispensable to such a perfect revelation of the nature of the world, the necessary condition of the full revelation of the nature of God, for such foolish defiance, such hardened obduracy; that the possession of the goods and the power of this world should ripen, evolve, and consummate that disinclination to God which already existed. But Pharaoh cannot be looked at as an individual; in him was concentrated the mind of the whole nation. The proverb, quails rex talis populus, is also true if it be inverted. We have already seen how at that time, in Egypt, apostasy from the true God had reached its lowest stage, the worship of animals. The senseless pride of the Egyptian kings appears from the simple circumstance that they generally called themselves “lords over the whole world;” Champ. Br. 231. The address which King Rameses Meinamun, according to a monument in Thebes, makes to his warriors, is characteristic of this pride: “The strangers have been dashed to the ground by my strength; the terror of my name is gone forth; I seemed as a lion to them; I have annihilated their criminal souls; Ammon Ra, my Father, has subdued the whole world under my feet, and I am king on the throne for ever.” The apotheosis of kings, which probably first originated among the Egyptians, was a result of this pride.
These remarks will suffice for the main point. The author’s aim throughout is to give prominence to God’s agency. He shows how God can cause even the smallest things, the making of a coat of many colours, thoughtlessness in telling a dream which, as the event proved, had been sent by God, to be subservient to the most important ends. He shows how the sins of the chosen race may lead not only to the punishment of the sinning individuals,—even Joseph required purification; the rust of self-sufficiency and arrogance had to be removed,—but also by God’s undeserved grace be the means of salvation to the race itself, by bringing it nearer to its destination; comp. Genesis 45:5, where Joseph says to his brethren, “Now therefore be not grieved that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life;” Genesis 50:20. He shows how God, after having prepared a new dwelling for His chosen people, compelled them by hunger to leave their old habitation, which they would scarcely have consented to do simply at His command: how Joseph, the type of his race, acquired in the house of Potiphar the capacity for his later calling; and how by his residence in prison—foreshadowing the Egyptian slavery of the nation—he attained to this typehood, and so became the shepherd of Jacob. This is the author’s aim; comp. Psalms 105:16et seq., where the point of view from which the whole narrative ought to be looked at is clearly set forth. It does not form part of his plan to judge of the morality of Joseph’s actions. There are always moral and immoral people enough to undertake this. If, therefore, the judgment should prove unfavourable, the Holy Scriptures would remain quite unaffected by it. Since, however, it has become usual to express some opinion on the matter, we are not at liberty to remain altogether silent.
Special blame has been attached to those measures which Joseph, who occupied in Egypt the primitive position in the East of state ruler or grand vizier, made use of to increase the power and revenues of the king. Few have ventured to attack the historical truth of the narrative. For it has been satisfactorily proved from other sources, that the relation whose origin is here given, continued to exist in Egypt long afterwards. In the sculptures, kings, priests, and warriors alone are represented as land proprietors; comp. Wilkinson, part i. p. 263. Diodorus says, i. p. 168, that the husbandmen built on the lands of the kings, priests, and warriors. It appears also from Herodotus that they occupied their lands only in fief from the king. He represents Sesostris (a mythical personage) as distributing the land among the peasants, who were obliged to pay a certain tax for it; comp. Wilkinson, i. 73, ii. p. 2. With reference to one point alone there seems to be a contradiction between Genesis and other sources. According to Genesis, there were only two classes of landowners—kings and priests. Diodorus, on the other hand, names warriors as well as these. But the more accurate accounts of Herodotus, b. ii. chap. 141 and 168, state that the fields of the warriors, though rent-free, were not their independent property, but were lent by the king, and were a substitute for pay. It will suffice to remind these accusers of the judgment of the Egyptians themselves, from whom Joseph received the name, “Saviour of the Land ;” so, for example, the name Zaphnathpaaneah in Genesis 41:45 properly means salvation, or, according to others, the saviour of the world, by which proud name the Egyptians used to designate their country (comp. Rosellini, i. p. 185; Gesen. Thes.); and to point to the genuine sympathy they manifested on the death of his father. But we may also discover some grounds of justification. The power of the Egyptian king before this time had probably been very limited. He received no regular taxes from his subjects, but only presents, or extraordinary imposts, which were no doubt obtained with great difficulty. Under the relations existing in Egypt, this was highly prejudicial to the state; the government had no power; and the most suitable regulations must fail for want of means. By the new arrangement the inhabitants lost nothing of their freedom or honour; only they were obliged to pay a standing rental, viz. the fifth part of the produce of their fields. This tax was very trifling in a land so universally fruitful as Egypt; and by means of it the kings were not only placed in a position to protect the land against hostile incursions which threatened it on every side, by the establishment of a considerable standing army; but were also enabled to meet the enormous expenditure caused by diverting the Nile into canals, and damming it up. They were also placed in a position to undertake one of the greatest of human works, the forming of the artificial sea of Moeris, whose destination it was to receive the superfluous water of the Nile in years of extraordinary rising; and when the overflow of the Nile ceased, to water the land by sewers and canals, by which means the occurrence of a similar famine was for ever prevented. Thus the prosperity of the Egyptians was not diminished, but increased, by this arrangement. Michaud’s treatise on the subject is well worth reading, On Landed Property in Egypt, in his and Poujoulat’s Correspondence from the East, part viii. p. 60 et seq. of the Brussels edition. He has proved that, among all the fluctuating relations of government in Egypt, there has never been the same unlimited possession of landed property there as in other countries; and that the cause of this phenomenon is to be found in the peculiar relations of Egypt, where the fruitfulness of the detached piece of ground depends entirely on the universal measures taken to promote the fruitfulness of the whole land,—measures which can only originate in the supreme authority, since the fructifying power of the Nile, to which Egypt owes everything, can only be imperfectly developed unless these measures are adopted. We see this very clearly from the circumstance that, before the present change of relations, there could be seven successive years of famine,—a case which does not again occur in all subsequent history. Again, Joseph is reproached for severity towards his brethren. But this severity did not arise, as some have erroneously maintained, from a revengeful disposition. The narrative shows how much self-control it cost him. His design was partly to awaken in them a feeling of repentance on account of their shameful conduct towards him, and partly to prove them, whether they cherished a better disposition towards his father and his brother Benjamin than they had manifested towards him. Unless the result of this trial had been favourable, it would have been impossible for Joseph again to have assumed a nearer relation towards his family. When the object was gained; when they had come to look upon the evil which had befallen them as a punishment for the crime they had formerly committed; when they had spoken that great word which the hard human heart is so slow to reach, “God has discovered the sin of thy servants ;” when he recognised their better disposition from the circumstance that, in order to spare their father pain, they would have delivered Benjamin, with the loss of their own freedom,—then he showed himself to be a most loving brother, and sought to take away their fear of his revenge by attributing all that had happened to the divine causality: comp. Genesis 50:19-21. We cannot fail to recognise the divine agency even in the crime of Joseph’s brethren. God could easily have prevented it; but they were purposely involved in circumstances calculated to call forth all the coarseness and bitterness of their minds. This was the condition of their fundamental cure. Finally, Joseph is reprehended for not having sooner given his father some account of himself. But how can faults of this kind be found with a narrative whose whole tendency is such as to preclude the possibility of preventing them. We are able, however, to set aside this latter reproach. For here there was a religious element which served to obviate it. The author’s object is to prove how the divine law of retribution is exemplified in the sons of Jacob—how the prophecy of his own fate is fulfilled in them, that prophecy which every crime done to others contains in itself—how the pain they had prepared for their father is repeated in them. But here Joseph is only to be regarded as an instrument in God’s hand. The light in which his person appears is not considered by the author. The question is only of the personality of Joseph; and therefore we must be satisfied with what satisfied the author, assuming that it was God’s providence which prevented him giving an earlier account of himself; because it was designed that Jacob should drink out the whole cup of sorrow, and that his sons should be punished, purified, and tried; as it afterwards happened. But we must also draw attention to the fact that, although Joseph appears throughout as a blameless, just, and God-fearing man, a noble character, and a peculiar object of the divine guidance and protection, he forms an essential contrast to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in one point. He was not favoured with divine manifestations like these, who were destined to stand at the head of the whole development, and who possessed a special susceptibility for life in divine revelations; but, like his brethren, he consumed part of the capital already gained. It is true that he had significant dreams, and the gift of interpreting dreams; but proper revelations were never granted to him. And there is another difference which is closely connected with this. In the relations of the present life Joseph is far more dexterous and clever than his fathers; he is a man of the world, a statesman. In this representation of Joseph, Genesis is throughout consistent,—a strong proof of the historical character of the narrative. Neither does Joseph appear in any other light in the later books. For it is clear that Psalms 77:16, Psalms 80:2, Psalms 81:16, do not, as Ewald maintains, contain a different conception. The proper keystone of the whole patriarchal time is formed by the prophetic blessing of the dying Jacob, Genesis 49. His twelve sons, the ancestors of Israel, are gathered round him. In them his spiritual eye sees their tribes; instead of the Egypt of the present, he sees the Canaan of the future, rising even to the time when the promises of the blessing to all nations should be fulfilled, when the peaceful One whom the nations should obey would come and raise Judah, the tribe formerly distinguished above the others and from which He was to proceed, to the summit of glory, Shiloh, Genesis 49:10—contracted from
We shall here give a chronological survey of the history of the patriarchs: — From the time that Abraham left Haran till Jacob went down into Egypt, 215 years elapsed. The year of Abraham’s call coincides with the year of the world 2083, B.C. 1922. The year of Jacob’s going down into Egypt coincides with the year of the world 2298, B.C. 1707.”
Abraham was 75 years old when he was called; from that time till Isaac’s birth, 25 years elapsed. Genesis 21:5.
Between the birth of Isaac and the birth of Esau and Jacob there was an interval of 60 years; for Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah; and her childlessness continued for a period of 20 years. Genesis 25:26. From that time till the death of Abraham 15 years elapsed, for Abraham died at the age of 175 years. Genesis 25:7.
Between Abraham’s death and Isaac’s death there was an interval of 105 years; for Isaac was 100 years younger than Abraham, and died at the age of 180 years. Genesis 35:28. From that time till Jacob’s going down into Egypt there were 10 years. Jacob was 130 years of age. Genesis 47:19.
Isaac was contemporary with Abraham for 75 years.
Jacob with Abraham, 15 years.
Jacob with Isaac, 120 years.
We get the sum-total of 215 years, if we reckon up the 25 years which intervened between Abraham’s call and Isaac’s birth, the 60 years from Abraham’s birth to the birth of his two sons, and the 130 years of Jacob when he went to Egypt.
It is important also to fix the date of a few points in the life of Jacob, with reference to which no direct chronological statements exist. First, his departure into Mesopotamia. This took place when he was 77 years of age; so that we cannot speak of “the flying youth,” an expression which we frequently hear in sermons. Neither can he be called an old man; for, owing to the long duration of life at that time, Jacob was only in the prime of manhood. Joseph was only 30 years old when he was brought before Pharaoh. On Jacob’s immigration to Egypt the seven years of plenty were already passed, and two years of the famine. Joseph was therefore at that time 39 years old, Jacob 130. Jacob must therefore have been 91 at the birth of Joseph. Joseph was born in the 14th year of Jacob’s sojourn in Haran; comp. Genesis 30:24-25. Thus we get 77 years. A second point is the event which befell Dinah, in Genesis 34. This belongs to about the 107th year of Jacob. It cannot be placed later; for it occurred previous to the selling of Joseph, when, according to Genesis 37:2, he was seventeen years of age. Jacob must therefore have been 108. Neither can it be placed earlier; for Dinah, who was born in the 91st year of Jacob, about the same time as Joseph, was then a grown-up maiden. Jacob remained six years in Mesopotamia after the birth of Dinah; and before the event of which we speak he sojourned for a considerable time in two places in Canaan, Succoth and Sichem. Genesis 33.