Joseph and his multi-coloured coat part company

An overview so far…

Joseph was his father’s favourite son. He was the twelfth child, but the eleventh son. His father favoured him highly and to the resentment of the brothers was given a multi-coloured robe, setting him apart from the others.

Jacob had sent Joseph to see that his brothers who were grazing the flocks in Shechem were well with them and with the flocks and bring back word to him. Genesis 37: 13

When Joseph arrived there, his brothers and the flocks had moved on. A great excuse to go home? No, Joseph wandered around looking for them. (It seems if his father gave him a task, he did it conscientiously.) A man found him and told the young man where his brothers had gone. (See note that this is the angel Gabriel). http://jaymack.net/genesis-commentary/Ja-Joseph-in-the-Pit.asp

Whoever it was, Joseph set off, determined to complete the task his father had set him.

Then it all happened quickly when he arrived. His brothers set upon him, stripped him of his prized multi-coloured robe and threw him in a cistern/pit.

So what did this favoured young man think? Genesis 37: 25 reports that they sat down to eat a meal. Joseph knew his brothers hated him but it is doubtful he imagined this! Did he call out to them? The Bible doesn’t say.  Perhaps as time passed he might have called out to them to let him out. When they finally did let him out… it was to sell him as a slave to traders travelling between Gilead and the coast of Egypt.

What did he think? Did he protest? Again we are not told. The next time we encounter Joseph is in Egypt, being bought by Potiphar. Genesis 39:1

Let’s pause for a moment and consider the brothers. They had sold their brother, had they started to wonder how they would explain this yet? Then Reuben came back to the pit and Joseph wasn’t there. He returned to his brothers and told them that ‘the lad is no more’.

• Did he believe Joseph was dead?
  • It seems he did.
• Did the other brothers not tell him?
  • It doesn’t look like it.

It seems as if they involved Reuben in the plot to fool their father though. They killed a kid of the goats, dipped the tunic in it, and sent it to their father.

Remember how the previous episode finished? However, God had a plan for Joseph that none of the other family members knew, nor indeed did Joseph. We are about to see this start in earnest.

Genesis 39:1, 2, 3 Joseph arrived in Egypt and was sold to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh…  “The Lord was with Joseph and he was a successful man”… “And his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made all he did prosper in his hand…”

It seems Joseph either had a great deal of faith in God, or, over time, he came to see that God had a purpose for all that had happened. He settled down to enjoy the blessings of being the overseer in his master, Potiphar’s house.

But there was more testing to come…

Till next week

Tread softly… you might be treading on someone’s dreams.

Susan

Joseph and his mutli-coloured robe – part 2

Joseph was coming to his brothers, in his multi-coloured tunic, lost in thoughts and dreams perhaps, but not imagining what was being plotted. Jealous and angry, the other sons of Jacob were plotting to kill him.

Let’s listen in to the brothers…

“Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, ‘Some wild beast has devoured him.’… Gen 37: 20 NKJV

In the New International Version and the New Living Translation the word translated as ‘pit’ is translated as ‘cistern’.

Although the brothers saw Joseph coming from afar off, they didn’t have time to dig a pit (or cistern) deep enough to put their grown brother in, and trap him there. It must have already been there. So what could the purpose be? To trap animals that might prey on their sheep? They weren’t there all the time, they were semi-nomadic, following the grazing. So it might be to catch and store water when the flocks were brought there to graze, and find water. (No rain fell in Israel between May to September, so cisterns were hewn in cities, towns and country areas, supplying people and livestock.)

The fact that all the translations, whether they say ‘pit’ or ‘cistern’, state that there was no water in it suggests ‘cistern’ might indeed be what the pit was.

Back to the action. The brothers were going to kill him first, then cast him into the pit but an unlikely ally spoke up for Joseph… his oldest brother, Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn son. It would be fair to think that he had the most to gain by Joseph’s death because Reuben should have inherited the firstborn rights and privileges – ‘The accompanying privileges were highly valued, and in the OT included a larger inheritance, a special paternal blessing, family leadership’ see http://bible.org/question/what-significance-%E2%80%9Cfirstborn%E2%80%9D-bible See section on first-born in the Old Testament, as well as many Bible examples.

The way things were looking… and indeed worked out. Those blessings went to Joseph’s sons.

Nevertheless, Reuben persuaded them not to shed the blood of his youngest brother, planning to rescue him later and take him back to their father. Two sets of plans waiting for the arrival of the much hated youngest brother.

When Joseph reached them, the brothers set upon him and stripped him of the multi-coloured garment, the hated robe that so annoyed them, then they threw him into the pit – and sat down to eat a meal. (Maybe they needed time to think about their next step.)

It seems from the Bible account that Reuben went off then, probably thinking Joseph was safe he may have gone to check the flocks.

While the other brothers were sitting eating they noticed a caravan of Ishmaelite traders travelling along the trade route from Gilead and the coastal plain of Egypt. Watching them, Judah, the fourth son, had an idea. We can make a profit here. After all he is our brother and we shouldn’t kill him. Perhaps he had been thinking on what his older brother had said.

So Joseph was sold, his multi-coloured tunic, which they had taken from him earlier, was covered in the blood of a young goat, and sent to Jacob, to cover his disappearance.

However, God had a plan for Joseph that none of the other family members knew, nor indeed did Joseph.

More next week,

Till then, tread softly because you may be treading on someone’s dreams,

 Susan

Joseph and his coat of colours

Joseph was born into a dysfunctional family. The eleventh son of the patriarch Jacob, whose name was later changed to Israel, Joseph was the son of Rachel, a favoured wife. The other wives already had sons long before Rachel conceived her first child. It had seemed she was barren, a disgrace to a woman in those days, and a cause of great hurt to Rachel in the eyes of the other wives. Then God blessed her and she conceived and gave birth to Joseph. So, with all the undercurrents, tensions and jealousy between the wives, the sons and an elderly father, Joseph grew up.

Jacob’s other sons were rowdy to say the least, vengeful, jealous and soon saw that Joseph, the ‘baby’ of the family, was the favoured one.

Genesis 37:2-4 describes Joseph, having been pasturing the flock with his half-brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah.  What they had been ‘up to’ is not noted in the Bible account, but it added to the hatred they had towards him. So did the fact that his father made him a tunic of colours.

According to Wikipedia, in its discussion on the problem of translation, one possibility was that it was a royal garment. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_many_colors)

If this was true, the gift of such a robe could have stirred up much jealous. Here was the youngest member of the family, the one born of the woman their father loved deeply, and probably their mothers hated… being honoured above them.

Did it mean that their father was going to skip the firstborn and pass the patriarchy on to this young pip-squeak?

One thing seems obvious… with such a robe he wouldn’t be working with the flocks. This seems to be borne out by the later entry that his brothers were looking after their father’s flock in Shechem. Jacob (now Israel) said to Joseph to ‘go and see if all is well with your brothers and well with the flocks and bring back word to me.’ Genesis 37: 14

The brothers weren’t where they were supposed to be but Joseph, dressed in his coat of colours, located them.

The brothers saw him coming from afar off. (Guess there weren’t too many young men wandering the countryside dressed as Joseph was.) The brothers conspired to kill him.

Jealousy is a powerful emotion and these half-brothers had plenty of it. They had grown up with it as part of their lives. Their mothers were always competing for their father’s favour, the sons probably thought it was normal, and Jacob seemed a passive kind of father… noticing the misdeeds of the sons but not correcting them.

So here those jealous sons were plotting to kill the one ‘they hated and could not speak peaceably to him’. Genesis 37: 4

More next week …

Till then,

Tread softly because you may be treading on someone’s dreams.

Susan

Holy Days… continued

Continuing from last week…

We left off with the Day of Pentecost (or Feast of Weeks). Pentecost, the Greek name because 50 days are counted, was fulfilled in Acts when the Holy Spirit was given. So what Holy Days remain and are they to be fulfilled or not.

The next is…

The Feast of Trumpets/Rosh Hashanah – literally memorial of blowing of horns. (The shout of the shofar.)

For Jews it is the first day of the civil year, and falls ten days before the Day of Atonement. What does it mean to Sabbath keeping Christians? It signifies the second coming of Jesus Christ in power to rule the earth. It will be a day of noise (the shofar, the angelic announcement… and all will see Him as He returns.)

The Day of Atonement/Yom Kippur – the most obvious thought of this day… fasting. A 24 hour period without food or drink. For the Jewish people it was the last of the ‘ten days of awe’, days of repentance, days in which people seek forgiveness of those they have offended in the previous year. (When one has offended one’s fellow man, he has offended God. (This is confirmed in the Lord’s prayer – forgive our sins AS WE FORGIVE others.) Yom Kippur, at the end of these ten days of awe, focuses on obtaining forgiveness from God. It is often described as At one ment… at one with God.

Feast of Tabernacles/Feast of Booths – Starts with a Holy Day, but the seven-day festival is a time to enjoy the fruits of the autumn harvest. It remembers the deliverance of Israel from Egypt and their journey through the wilderness. The future aspect is to look forward to the coming Kingdom of God. The time setting is the Millennium when Christ rules the earth and Satan has been bound for those one thousand years.

Eighth day/Last Great Day/Holy Day without a name – receives a small mention at the end of verse 39 of Leviticus chapter 23 “… and on the eighth day a Sabbath-rest”. That is all that is mentioned. After the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles, a final day, a Holy Day, is to be kept. For Christians who keep it, this pictures the Great White Throne Judgement and it completes the plan of redemption.

More reading on any of these festivals can be found by ‘Googling’ them. For the view of Christians who keep them, most of the churches of God have information on them.

My apologies to my readers if the last two weeks have not been as comprehensive as previous posts. I have been recovering from life-saving surgery – and it has been the most difficult two weeks I remember in a long time. I still only manage a few hours out of bed per day and still have a lot of pain. I am improving though.

Thank you for your understanding,

Remember – tread softly… you may be treading on someone’s dreams.

Till next time

Susan