Genesis 37
RileyGenesis 37:1-36
JOSEPH. GOD’S Gen_36:1 to Genesis 50:26IF we began our study with the 36th chapter of Genesis we should have to do with the generations of Esau, who is Edom. It is a chapter filled with hard names of men, many of whom wore the title “Duke”, but like many of the lords and dukes of the present day, did nothing worthy the pen of inspiration. The men whose history God passes over with the mere statement of birth, name, title and death, we may be excused for skipping in our search for the more important characters and the more impressive lessons of the sacred Word.The 37th chapter introduces us to such a character in Joseph, and launches us upon a study which has engaged the most serious thought of Scripture students for thousands of years. According to the reckoning of John Lord, in his essay on “Joseph”, this great-grandson of Abraham was born at Haran about 3701 years ago. The most distinguishing feature of his early life was his peculiar and prophetic dreams or visions.
He comes before us in the blush of seventeen summers, nicknamed by those who knew him best, “this Dreamer”. Already in the visions of the night, God had vouchsafed to him the earnest of his coming supremacy and power.
The eleven sheaves of his brethren had made obeisance, while Joseph’s sheaf had stood upright and received their homage. The sun and moon and eleven stars had gathered at his feet. And, when the dreams were known, his father gently reproved, but his brothers resolved and agreed to watch for a chance to act. The favorite of the household was to be put out of the way. The beauty of face that had made him a subject of parental partiality was to be despoiled. The jealousy-breeding coat was to become all crimson; the tattling tongue was to be silenced, and this business of first dreaming and then interpreting to his own profit was to be brought to a deserved end!Such were the resolutions; and their chance came.
Joseph is at last within their grasp, and with a shout of triumph they cry, as they lift their eyes to his sweet though envied face,“Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreamt (Genesis 37:19-20).The remainder of the story is ‘familiar to every one of you, and I do not propose to give time to a rehearsal of its incidents, but rather to a consideration of its fundamental lessons.DIVINE FAVORS DO NOT INSURE AGAINST HUMAN HATRED.Joseph had, indeed, almost a monopoly of the favors to be coveted in this life.
Through his veins there pulsed no common or unclean blood. Four of his brethren were of the meaner extraction of slave mothers, while six others were born to the “tender-eyed” Leah. It was Joseph’s good fortune, and doubtless his pride, to be the elder son of the beautiful Rachel, the only lawful wife of Jacob, because the woman of his selection, and the only one to whom he was bound by love. It may be a sin in the child to love his father and mother less because they are those in whom he can take no special pride, but I am sure that his joy is as commendable as natural who loves and delights in them the more, because they are virtuous, honorable and superior in every way. Such a pride was Joseph’s possession. Who of us are as grateful as we should be for godly and noble parentage?Again, providence had favored this child in his own person. “Joseph was a goodly person and well favored” (Genesis 29:6).
Doubtless that fact accounts for some of Jacob’s inexcusable partiality. He saw in the beautiful boy those princely features which called for a royal tunic as a natural complement.
Beauty of person is one of God’s better gifts, and it has played its part in the role of human history. It was that charm and that alone that saved the child, Moses, and opened to him the princess’ nursery and put him in the splendid Egyptian school from which he graduated unto the great work of saving his people and serving his God. It was beauty of face and grace of form that brought Esther to the throne at the very time when the interests of Israel were trembling in the balance, and God’s people were waiting for just such a friend. The prominent role that Cleopatra played in the world is assigned almost entirely to the solitary circumstance of her personal charms. I have often wondered why the great artists have not made more of Joseph as a subject fit for the choicest marble, and worthy the best skilled brush.In his spirit also, Joseph was divinely favored. So far as the record of his life goes, it would be dangerous to affirm that the splendid child, or the saintly man, Samuel, was ever possessed of sweeter temper than that which Joseph discovered in all the changing and trying experiences of his life.
Not a single indictment against his conduct can be successfully sustained. If it be said that his brothers hated him on account of his intolerable pride, let it be remembered Eliab hurled at David this sentence, “I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart”.
In each instance the bigger brother was voicing the naughtiness of his own heart instead. If he be charged with tattling because he brought unto his father “the evil report of his brethren”, let us answer with a question, “Is silence at the sight of sin a virtue?” If a report is to be made, to whom other than the father, the rightful authority? His behavior toward the woman whose unholy love his beauty had excited discovers at once a righteousness of personal character, a keen sense of others’ interests, and a splendid sensitiveness to sin against God that all right thinking people must admire. His dealing with the butler whose freedom he secured, to be rewarded by base neglect for two long years, proved his patience with forgetfulness and ingratitude. Toward his fratricidal brothers, whose lives eventually fell to his disposal, he discovered only the bosom of love, treating with all tenderness those who had attempted his destruction. Blood may be a good thing, and “beauty a joy forever”, but that magnanimity of soul which can forget a wrong, be patient with a weakness, and treat with affection those who have subjected you to contempt—that is divine!
To do that is to prove one’s kinship with the Son of God.Finally Joseph was favored with dreams of a wider and nobler life. The most promising youth is the one who enjoys such visions of the night.
Guizot once wrote to his son who was contesting for a university prize, “You are ambitious, my boy; you have a right to be. A man at forty may be too ambitious, but at 20, never”.Now and then the world is astonished by the sudden awakening of some sleeping Samson who discovers unsuspected powers at the attack of the Philistines of opposition; but the rule is that Longfellows, while still beardless, dream of being laureates and write to their mothers asking, “Do you not think I may one day write books that will be read all over the land?” I think that Dr. Hillis has called attention to an important truth when, in his book “A Man’s Value To Society”, he emphasizes “the imagination as the architect of manhood”.But let no man conclude that such Divine favors will insure against human hatred. Jealousy is the blindest of passions, and envy never sees anything save through the green glasses which convert all virtue into vice, and all merit into excuses for murder. We have already seen that Joseph’s conduct toward his brethren was commendable and in every instance meant for their good. But as the belligerent Israelites resented Moses’ plea for peace between brethren, so these sons of Leah and the concubines interpreted Joseph’s just report of their behavior as bad tattling.
How many a noble Christian man has been insulted and cruelly criticised because, forsooth, he tried to get people to live right and when they would not, reported their sins to the church!The modern martyr is that noble Joseph who keeps out of fights himself and says to his brethren, “You must behave or I shall be compelled to report you to our spiritual mother”. Yes, it is one of the most significant suggestions of the sham of modern profession that it will brook no correction from the brother of tenderest love, yea, even from the officials of the church of God elected for the very purpose of counsel and, when needful, of correction.Again, how many, Joseph-like, are hated because they have had some dream of position, influence and real worth?
You have heard it said, “There is one black sheep in every flock”. Yes, and the converse is equally true, “In a black flock one white sheep appears”. In most families there is one child that early comes into possession of that broader view of character, conduct and life. How often his first utterance of the hope for the future, that has grown big within his breast, is met with some expression of contempt for such pretensions, or scorn for such pride of heart! Joseph’s experience and David’s has been known to the bleeding heart of many a precocious boy. An education has been resolved upon, and he begins the long climb of attainment’s ladder alone.
It would seem enough that he should struggle single-handed, and without assistance or sympathy, but how often he must make his way upward, carrying in memory the bitter reproaches and keen sarcasm of his brothers who see nothing in his dream save concentrated egotism and vain conceit!If any reader has suffered at one or more of these points, I come to say, Be not discouraged! Retrace your steps in nothing!
Be slow to conclude you are wrong, or that it is of no use to labor against such opposition. Christ experienced it all boiled down to its last bitterness and yet, when it did its final work of lifting Him to the cross, it only hastened His crown. Joseph’s brethren can sell him, but if he is always right the Lord will be with him, and the sale into slavery is only an additional push toward the waiting throne.Now for our second suggestion,“And Joseph’s master took him and put him into prison. But the Lord was with Joseph” (Genesis 39:20-21). CANNOT BE .People sometimes make the mistake of affirming that an innocent man cannot be injured. On the contrary, history is rife with illustrations of the fact that no character is so easily sullied as that of the purest and best of men and women.
The principle is easy of explanation. The whiter the sheet of paper the easier it is for dirty fingers to leave their track.
Some people have the impression that after all preachers and other religious people are about as capable of immoralities as are the members of any other circle. Alas! for the poisoning power of a sensational and truthless press! Many a Joseph has been silenced, and even banished for a while by such confessed lovers of the profession. They know the ease with which that lord, “Public Opinion” is excited to jealousy and cruel judgment. They know, too, the inability of the best man to defend himself when accused of the meanest crimes, and so they clap their hands and “seek” on the spotted hounds of slander. Let us ever be slow in believing charges that are calculated to humble the best reputations to the dust, and wrong the most innocent by robbing them of their good name, and opening for them the door into some dungeon of shame!Joseph may submit to the inevitable, and under the ban of the law, languish in silence, but God has a reckoning to make, and then the Hamans will swing on the gallows, and the Mordecais ride in the royal chariot and dictate to the throne.Innocent men, however, can best afford to be lied about and wronged, since truth has wonderful powers of coming abroad.
So far as the record of Scripture goes, Joseph complains in never a word. Who doubts that by faith he saw his final triumph; and said in his heart of that prison what the three Hebrew children, of a later time, said of the fiery furnace, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us, and He will deliver us”.
The innocent and righteous man, and he alone, can employ such words and give to them their weight. I come more and more to think that no enemy can effectually injure him who walks uprightly, loves the truth and obeys God.Dr. Talmage tells how, some years ago, two professed temperance lecturers speaking in Ohio, and taking the unusual course for that class of men, maligned Christians and preachers. Among other things they claimed to be well acquainted with Dr. Talmage and declared that their former drunkenness began with drinking wine from that clergyman’s table. Talmage, indignant over such a charge, went to Patrick Campbell, then chief of the Brooklyn police, and requested his company to Ohio to effect the arrest of the libelous orators.
Campbell only smiled and said, “Do not waste your time by chasing these men. Go home and do your work, and they can do you no harm”.
The advice was taken, and the falsehood died of weakness, if indeed it was not stillborn. There is not a scandal in the power of the tongue strong enough to blight the life that loves innocence and clings to God. Joseph may be imprisoned and never entertain the thought of breaking jail, and yet there are not doors enough in all the dungeons of Egypt to keep him in the narrow cell. Butlers will need his help, the king will require his wisdom and God will bring him forth. This brings us to a third lesson.“And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Thou shalt he over my house and according unto thy mind shall all my people be ruled, Only in the throne shall I he greater than thou” (Genesis 41:39-40).PRISONS WILL NOT HOLD THE MAN FIT TO BE PREMIER.I know of few things that will so certainly effect recognition as merit. You can’t sell into slavery the man who has it.
You may set a price on him and be paid it, but you can’t enslave him. There was an old colored man who trotted me on his knees the year the Civil War began.
He never was a slave. He was always free! He would have been free on the southern plantations where masters rode with revolver in pocket and whip in hand. You can’t enslave the man who makes himself needful to you at every turn. You can put him in prison but an hour later you will need him and bring him out again. Darius once had Daniel put into a lions’ den.
But Daniel was still freer than the king. He curled himself up in a corner of that cage and slept, while God’s angel watched with his hand at the hungry mouths. “But the king went to his palace and passed the night in fasting, and his sleep went from him”, and very early in the morning he made haste to see if the Hebrew was yet alive, without whom the kingdom could not run; “and so Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign ofCyrus the Persian”.
The city authorities at Philippi tried imprisoning Paul and Silas, but next day they came and let them forth and gave them full permission to depart in freedom. You may bind the body of Zedekiah with fetters of brass, and carrying him away to Babylon, imprison him for life; but he, in whom the spirit of Joseph is, must yet rule in the throne.“Moreover he called for a famine upon the land; he brake the whole staff of bread. He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant; whose feet they hurt with fetters; he was laid in iron. Until the time that his word came, the word of the Lord tried him. The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. He made him lord of his house and ruler of all his substance; to bind his princes at his pleasure and teach his senators wisdom” (Psalms 105:16-22).Men are slow at times to discern merit, but even jailbirds will feel its power and witness to its presence.
The incidental remarks in Acts, which say of the midnight song of Silas and Paul “and the prisoners heard them”, is not more significant than the sentence which informs us of Joseph that “he was in favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison”. Let no man flatter himself that he has great virtues but the world is ignorant of them.
Goodness is power and will be felt, and the world’s wise men will be discovered, though a very prison seek to both hide and silence them. God knows the nooks of the universe and when there is need of a man he will find the fittest one in some corner and bring him forth.When Saul has uncrowned himself, there is a shepherd youth known to God upon whom the mantle will fall. When Eli is old and his family are an offense to heaven, there is a boy in the temple trained, though the great outside world has never heard his name. When famine threatens Egypt and the king is unequal to the task of averting it, Joseph is lying in wait, ready to take the place by Divine appointment.