For Jacob, there is a personal confrontation at the ford Jabbok of the River Jordan. With all of his sense of abiding values, Jacob is nevertheless a man who needs to be brought up short by God. Earlier he experienced God at Bethel in an act of great mercy. Now he meets God as an enemy with whom he must contend. He leaves the scene limping but transformed. Many of us see Jacob in this story as our spiritual kin.
And then there is Joseph. We like to see his story as an instance of virtue rewarded, but the biblical writer is more impressed with the fact that God was with him (Genesis 39:2, 21, 23; 41:52). The achievements are a result of God’s blessing, not of Joseph’s considerable talents. And providence is at work. Joseph has a remarkable way of being in the right place at the right time. His is a guided life, often without his really knowing it.
The Sum of It All
“God sent me [Joseph] before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:7-8).
| GENESIS 46–48 | Week 4, Day 1 |
When you see Jacob and his family setting out for Egypt, you are also laying the foundation for the book of Exodus. This move to Egypt is seen as a step in the making of “a great nation,” and Jacob is assured that his family will return in time (46:4).
But the seeds of eventual trouble are already present. This family of seventy will become to the Egyptians a threatening nation; they follow an occupation that the Egyptians despise (46:34); and because of Joseph they are given “the best part of the land” (47:11), which in time will anger the native peoples.
Joseph’s policies in 47:13-26 do not appeal to me, since they reduce the people to slavery, completely controlled by Pharaoh, but I am imposing the standards of another time; to the people of Joseph’s day, he was a savior from starvation. And, of course, the tax he imposed—20 percent—would seem hospitable today, especially since it really was nothing other than rent on the land.
The blessing of Joseph’s sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, brings them officially into Jacob’s family. But they come not as Jacob’s grandsons but as his sons, so that they will be listed among the tribes of Israel and Joseph’s name will be removed (Numbers 1:10, 32-35). Ephraim is preferred over Manasseh, following a consistent pattern in which the younger is chosen over the older (for example, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau).
PRAYER: Lord, may I have faith to see you at work in all of life. Amen.
List several pros and cons of Joseph’s policies in the fourteen years of feast and famine.
| GENESIS 49–50; PSALM 25 | Week 4, Day 2 |
Jacob’s last words to his sons are not only “a suitable blessing” (49:28) but also a prediction of “days to come” (49:1). The most interesting, of course, is the section on Judah (49:8-12). It is this tribe from which King David eventually comes, and it is this tribe that later gives its name to all that remains of the people of Israel. And especially, it is from this tribe that the Messiah, Jesus, comes. Themes are established here that will reappear even into the New Testament.
Joseph’s humane quality, his consistency of character, and his belief in God’s purposes come through magnificently both in his love for his father and in his generosity toward his brothers. Though Joseph had told them years before that they should not be distressed over the evil they had done to him because it was part of God’s purpose, nevertheless they are consumed with new fears now that their father is gone. They construct a story to convince Joseph, still not realizing that he needs no convincing. The shame of their long-ago deed still clouds their lives. After God and others have forgiven us, a harder task is to forgive ourselves.
“Am I in the place of God?” Joseph asks. Then, again, he reiterates what he said so long before: Though your intentions may have been for evil, “God intended it for good” (50:20).
That kind of faith gives all of life a quality of hope, dignity, and beauty.
PRAYER: Help me, O God, to believe that you can use even the darkest issues of life to my eventual good and to your honor. Amen.
What insights do you receive regarding the nature of guilt in the attitude of Joseph’s brothers?
| EXODUS 1–2; PSALMS 26–27 | Week 4, Day 3 |
When Jacob and his family came to Egypt, they were only the size of a good family reunion. As such they were welcome, particularly since one of their number, Joseph, was already established as a national hero. But when both Joseph and the generation that knew him died, and the family took on the proportions of a small city-state, their Egyptian neighbors began to fear them.
So the government set out to destroy Israel by killing each newborn baby boy. But the midwives frustrated their effort in general, and then one family in the house of Levi frustrated it in a particularly dramatic case. By faith and courage they saved the baby’s life; then, by God’s providence, the baby ended in Pharaoh’s palace, adopted by his daughter. So it was that the king who intended to destroy all Israelite male babies ended up preserving the very one who would one day deliver the Israelites from slavery, a man named Moses.
But it was not going to be easy. Moses received the best of training in his setting of preferment, yet somehow kept a heart for his own people, and apparently a sense of justice too. One day, while trying to protect an Israelite slave, Moses killed an Egyptian.
Just that suddenly the prince became a fugitive. He fled to Midian, where he could live in obscurity. There he became a shepherd, married, and started a family. End of the dream? Not with God.
PRAYER: Help me to see, dear Lord, that you are at work at all times and in all places, always and unfailingly. Thank you! Amen.
As you consider the down, up, and down again of Moses’ life in these two chapters, make a comparison and an application to your own life.
| EXODUS 3–4; PSALM 28 | Week 4, Day 4 |
As chapter 2 ended, we learned that God saw the pain of the people (2:23-25); but how is deliverance to come? God’s purposes are almost always achieved through persons. In this case the person is a likely/unlikely one, but this too is pretty typical of God’s working. This man was miraculously saved as an infant and raised as a prince, but he had spent most of his adult life on the back side of a desert, tending his father-in-law’s flock of sheep.
No wonder, then, that when God calls him, Moses has little self-confidence and quickly explains to God that he is not qualified; he has to be convinced and restored before he can be useful for any purpose. Yet see a marvel and an irony in this encounter. The marvel is that God allows the shepherd to argue with him, and the irony is that this man who says he is afraid to plead a case with Pharaoh is nevertheless bold to state his case before God.
And see the quality of God’s patience. Instead of giving Moses an ultimatum (“Shape up and do it my way or else”) or instead of simply overpowering him with divine reasoning, God cooperates with Moses’ feelings of inadequacy and provides help through his brother, Aaron.
“Two are better than one,” a wise one said, “for if they fall, one will lift up the other” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Moses and Aaron will