In Genesis 49:1, Jacob gathers his twelve sons together to “tell you what will happen to you in days to come.” And like Jesus describing the seven churches in the book of Revelation, Jacob highlights the strengths and weaknesses of their personalities. 

It seems like a strange thing for Jacob to do, though, having his sons hear about each other so publicly, much of which wasn’t that complimentary either. But here it is in Scripture for us to read, and for millions of people through the ages to read, so is there something jolly useful here, that not only illustrates God’s immense patience with such a crew as Jacob’s sons to fulfill his purpose through, but also – in seeing perhaps a bit of ourselves in the personalities of these twelve sons – realize that God can fulfill his purpose just as well through the likes of us too? 

Take Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn son, for instance. Reuben had everything going for him. As the firstborn male he was entitled to “excel in honour and power,” Genesis 49:3. In Jacob’s eyes his firstborn son was the amplification of his own vitality and strength (3). And on Jacob’s death (or incapacitation) Reuben would inherit a double portion of his father’s estate, making him a rich landowner, along with the high office and huge privilege of being the new chieftain of the growing clan of Israel, with God personally blessing him too. 

He would also inherit his father’s authority and responsibility as priest and king in their family, so by birthright alone Reuben was destined to become a highly respected influence for good, whose name could well go down in history for the noble service he performed. He had great potential, and great opportunity, therefore, to be a really good man. 

Unfortunately, just like his uncle Esau, Reuben “despised his birthright” (25:29-34), and for the same underlying reason too: Esau was sexually immoral (Hebrews 12:16-17), and so was Reuben, for having sex with Bilhah (Genesis 35:22, 49:4). Bilhah was his mother Rachel’s handmaid, given to Jacob by Rachel when she couldn’t bear children. Bilhah then became the mother of Reuben’s brothers Dan and Naphtali, and was treated by Jacob like a wife, which meant Reuben had sex with the equivalent of his step mother, and in his father’s bed too (Genesis 49:4). 

What on earth made Reuben do such a foolish act, that also led to the loss of everything he was entitled to? His father gave us a clue in verse 4: “Reuben: turbulent as the waters”….(next blog)

Joseph’s brothers weren’t good people. Jealousy had transformed them into monsters with no qualms about killing Joseph, or letting him die a slow death in a waterless cistern, or selling him to strangers as a slave with no glimmer of concern as to what might happen to him. They also lied to their father to cover up their brother’s disappearance, with not a twinge of conscience when their Dad “mourned for his son many days,” Genesis 37:34.

Joseph’s brother Judah, meanwhile, married a Canaanite woman (a cultural ‘no no’, Genesis 24:3), and unsurprisingly produced a son so evil that “the Lord put him to death,” Genesis 38:2 and 7. Judah then unwittingly slept with his dead son’s wife, Tamar, who’d deceived him into thinking she was a prostitute (13-26). And several years earlier, Judah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, had murdered an entire town full of men and stolen everything they could get their hands on (34:25-29).

And in so doing they’d put their own families at risk of a revenge attack, which could have spelled the end of Jacob’s entire family too, and the collapse of God’s promise to save the world through Abraham’s descendants. But none of this crossed the minds of these idiots. They had no grasp at all as to what God had called them for. 

And when famine threatened the lives of their families, the brothers were clueless. “Why do you just keep looking at each other?” Jacob angrily asked them (42:1). Not a spark of initiative in the lot of them. Just gormless, stupid dolts. 

But in how Joseph dealt with them we see Jesus. The first thing Joseph does with these cretins is get their attention. He accuses them of being spies and throws them all in jail. That woke them up – especially Reuben who castigated his brothers for what they’d done to Joseph, and now their own lives were at risk (42:22). Joseph then gets them doing some serious soul searching as to what their motives really are, but it works brilliantly because after having their motives severely tested by Joseph they become totally changed individuals, humbly offering themselves to Joseph as his obedient servants (50:18).

And Joseph loves them for it, providing us with a marvellous picture of Jesus loving us despite what our personalities are like, as we see in “The personality types in Jacob’s 12 sons”….(next blog)

In his will before he died, Jacob included a note for his son Joseph to “Please forgive your brothers for all their wrongs against you, and for treating you so badly,” Genesis 50:16-17. 

But that was asking a bit much of Joseph, wasn’t it? His brothers had wanted to kill him. They’d swarmed him as a teenager, stripped off his robe and thrown him into a waterless cistern to die, and only on Judah’s advice did they decide to sell him as a slave to some Ishmaelite merchants for twenty shekels of silver. Then they inflicted years of mourning and distress on their father by telling him that Joseph had been eaten by an animal (Genesis 37).

But didn’t the Father ask a lot of Jesus too? He asked Jesus to become a human and have his fellow Jews hate him so much they’d want to kill him as well. And before they had him killed he was sold too, and for only ten shekels of silver more than Joseph. His fellow Jews also lied about him so he could be cruelly killed by Roman thugs. 

So here was another parallel between Joseph and Jesus. Jesus had horrible things done to him by his fellow Jews as the price the Father asked him to pay, not only for the forgiveness of those who’d caused his brutal death, but for “all the sins of the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter” (Mark 3:28). It was the same for Joseph; he too had horrible things done to him by his brothers, but here was his Dad asking him to overlook what his brothers had done as the price to pay for their forgiveness.

But why did God the Father and Joseph’s father ask this of both their sons? Well, when Joseph’s brothers realized what their Dad had asked of Joseph on their behalf, it created a huge change of heart in them – expressed in a personal plea to Joseph in Genesis 50:17, to “please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” And isn’t that the change of heart we experience on realizing what the Father asked of Jesus on our behalf, to please forgive us as humble, obedient servants of his Father now too? 

And look at Joseph’s response to his brothers’ plea: they made him cry (17). Could that also picture how Jesus responds when it dawns on us why the Father put Jesus through what he did for our forgiveness? Are we “Seeing Jesus’ love in Joseph” too, then?….(next blog)

Imagine being in a family where your Dad makes it obvious that one of your brothers is his favourite. He showers your brother with gifts, turns up to all his school events, talks proudly of just him when people are visiting, and he believes everything the boy says.

Joseph’s brothers were in such a family. No wonder they felt such a deep jealousy toward Joseph – and so deep they even “plotted to kill him,” Genesis 37:18. It was a perfect picture of what would later happen to Jesus, who often talked of his special relationship with the Father and his Father’s love for him (John 5:20), which also created jealousy and resentment in his fellow Jews toward him, to the point they too plotted to kill him (John 5:18).

Both Jesus and Joseph, then, were landed with people who hated them and wanted them dead. Joseph’s brothers even planned a slow and dreadful death for Joseph by throwing him into a cistern with no water (Genesis 37:24), just as Jesus’ fellow Jews demanded the slow and dreadful death of the cross for Jesus. Hate and jealousy had turned ordinary folk into vicious and thoroughly unlovable monsters. 

How on earth, then, did both Jesus and Joseph not hate in return, and instead be able to love the unlovable? Ironically, it was their father’s love that did it – the same love that had caused the hatred toward them in the first place. But now their father’s love would also be the solution. It was a word from Joseph’s father in Genesis 50:16-17, for instance, begging Joseph “to forgive your brothers the sins and wrongs they committed in treating you so badly,” that totally softened Joseph’s heart toward them (19-21). And what the Father inspired in Jesus’ heart toward those who hated him was: “Forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). 

It was their father’s love that enabled Jesus and Joseph to put aside all the wrongs done to them, and to love those who had fallen victim to satanic resentment and hate against them.

And in a time like now, when it’s becoming easy to hate people in government, corporations and media for their lies, fear-mongering and censoring all but their own narratives, we too have a Father who willingly and happily enables us to love the unlovable so we too can avoid becoming hateful with them. Joseph’s story also tells us that his brothers came round eventually, and begged him so humbly for forgiveness that “They made him cry”….(next blog)

Joseph’s brothers were really scared, because with their Dad now dead and buried back in Canaan, “What if,” they worried, “Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” Genesis 50:15.

Joseph had done some pretty strange things to them already too, like threatening them with death for spying (with no proof), demanding they bring their youngest brother to him or Simeon would remain in jail, craftily having their silver put back in their packs so they could be accused of stealing, and then having Joseph’s own special silver cup hidden in Benjamin’s sack so they could be accused of “repaying good with evil” and being “wicked” (44:4-5). “Perhaps (though),” was Jacob’s reaction when he heard his sons’ weird and sorry tale, “it was all (just one huge) mistake” (43:12)

On the other hand, perhaps it wasn’t a mistake, because in Genesis 42:18 Joseph told his brothers: “Do this and you will live, for I fear God.” In other words, “Do as I say because I believe God’s up to something,” which suggests God was actually inspiring Joseph to do all these strange things, and Joseph knew it, but it didn’t bother him. 

And, fortunately, he gives us the reason why it didn’t bother him. It’s on the occasion when his brothers, now deeply worried what Joseph might do to them now their Dad was dead, had thrown themselves at Joseph’s feet offering themselves as his slaves (50:18). And Joseph says in reply, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God?” (19). In other words, “You’ve got nothing to fear from me, because I’m not the one deciding things here.” So, “Yes,” verse 20, “you intended to harm me, BUT God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” 

So all these strange things Joseph had been doing were God’s way of doing a lot of good for a lot of people. And clearly Joseph had no trouble with it, and nor did his steward, who way back in Genesis 43:23 had also told Joseph’s brothers, “It’s all right, don’t be afraid. Your God and the God of your father….” – HE’s the one behind all this. 

Weird and convoluting God may seem to be, then – perhaps in our own lives too – but it didn’t bother Joseph: God knew what he was doing so he didn’t need to. And that freed up Joseph to be “Able to love the unlovable”….(next blog)

Did Jesus include the story of Joseph when showing who he was in Scripture to the two disciples he met on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24?

Because the parallels between Jesus and Joseph are remarkable, starting in Joseph’s teenage when his brothers totally rejected the idea that his dreams were inspired by God, and then out of jealousy they even wanted to kill him (Genesis 37:5, 8, 11, 18-20). The same things then happened to Jesus: his fellow Jews refused to believe God was speaking through him too (John 5:37-40), and in their jealousy they wanted him dead as well (Matthew 27:18, 22). 

Add to that other similarities, like Joseph’s brothers “stripping” Joseph’s robe off him and selling him “for twenty shekels of silver” (Genesis 37:23, 28), just as Jesus’ robe was stripped off him (Matthew 27:28) and he was sold for silver as well (Matthew 26:15). Jesus and Joseph were also falsely accused, and both were condemned with two other criminals too (Genesis 40:1-3, Luke 23:32).

And in their attempt to hide selling Joseph into slavery, his brothers “slaughtered a goat and dipped Joseph’s robe in its blood” (Genesis 37:31) so their Dad would believe Joseph had been killed by an animal. Compare that to Jesus wearing “a robe dipped in blood” too (Revelation 19:13). 

Best of the parallels, though, was Joseph’s own words to his brothers, that “it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you,” Genesis 45:5. And “save lives” in two ways: save his brothers’ lives, but also the lives of all the Egyptians and those in other nations suffering from the seven year famine, just as the Father sent Jesus ahead to save his own people (Matthew 1:21), but also to kickstart the saving of the whole world from its suffering too (John 3:16). So in Joseph we get to see a lot of God and his plan of salvation through Jesus. 

Including what Joseph said in Genesis 45:7, that “God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance” – the “remnant” being Joseph’s own family who would become Israel of old, just as Jesus would have a remnant of people on earth who would become the church.

So God was picturing Jesus in Joseph, in both his purpose and his circumstances. But not so easy to understand “When God seems weird and convoluting” too….(next blog)

Why was Joseph so hard on his brothers? On meeting them for the first time in twenty two years, for instance, he “spoke harshly to them,” Genesis 42:7, accusing them of being “spies” checking out the strength of the Egyptian defences (9, 12, 14), and bluntly refusing to believe they’d only come to buy grain (10-12).

He then threw them all in prison for three days and on the third day he demands that they prove their honesty by having them go back to Canaan and bring back their “youngest brother, so that your words may be verified, and that you may not die” (20) – spying being punishable by death. So Joseph was really going to town to scare the livers out of them, despite knowing they were his brothers. But why?

Well, his brothers had never imagined anything like this happening to them, but those three days in prison together got them thinking. And thinking about Joseph too, in how Joseph must have felt “when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen, and that’s why this distress has come on us” (21). It was their own conclusion, then, that they were getting a well deserved taste of their own medicine. 

And on several other counts too: Joseph refusing to believe their story, for instance, was reminiscent of them refusing to believe Joseph’s dreams (37:8). And being accused by Joseph of lying and deceit was also reminiscent of the lies and deceit they’d told Jacob about Joseph’s demise (37:31-33). So was this, in fact, all God’s doing as his way of getting through to the brothers what they’d done? 

The brothers certainly thought so, because on discovering that the silver they’d used to pay for their grain was still in their packs – as though they’d stolen it back – they were “trembling,” and their immediate question was: “What is this that God has done to us?” (42:27-28). That’s where their thinking went: it went to God. So had God inspired Joseph to act this way to his brothers to bring them to this point of God becoming real to them? Because that’s what happened here. 

Which is super encouraging to know, because of people we know and lying deceitful leaders we know, who at this point in their lives show no interest in God or any respect for him. But they’ve done things to people in their past life that God can have done to them in return to make himself real to them later on. And not only that; he was also “Making Jesus real through Joseph” too….(next blog) 

The last words we hear from Joseph are in Genesis 50:24: “Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I’m about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’” – adding in verse 25, that “you must carry my bones up from this place” when they left for Canaan.

But how could Joseph be so certain that his brothers would end up back in Canaan, especially when they’d “settled in Egypt in the region of Goshen” (47:27) and “acquired property there and were fruitful and increased greatly in number”? Why up sticks and move back to Canaan when living in Egypt for seventeen years (28) had given all of them a very comfortable life?

Well, Joseph had experienced for himself the “behind-the-scenes God at work.” It started when he was seventeen years old (37:2). He had a dream about “the sun and moon and eleven stars bowing down to him” (9), which made his Dad ask angrily, “(Now look here my boy), are you saying your mother and I, and your brothers, will actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” (10). How absolutely preposterous; what on earth was the silly boy thinking? 

And what could Joseph say in reply? Here he was, a mere teenager spouting ludicrous sounding predictions about his family’s future. But give Jacob his due, he “kept (what Joseph had predicted) in mind” (11).

And well he should because behind the scenes for the next 22 years God was at work putting all the pieces in place for the time when his brothers left Canaan for Egypt to buy grain in the second year of the seven year famine. And it was on meeting Joseph (but not recognizing him) that “they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground” (42:6), just as Joseph had predicted – which made him remember his dreams too (9). 

So, on revealing who he is to his brothers in Genesis 45:4, he tells them in verse 5, that “it was to save lives (including theirs, verse 7) that God sent me ahead of you,” and “it wasn’t you who sent me here, it was God” (8). It was God all along, behind the scenes, working all this out for them (41:32), proving he was being true to what “he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (50:24). And the same for us, 1 Thessalonians 5:24, “The one who calls you is faithful,” and behind the scenes he’s putting things in place to prove it, just as he did for Joseph – and for his  brothers too, by giving them “A taste of their own medicine”….next blog

Joseph was given what Christians dream of, the chance to be in charge of the whole world and do things God’s way. And I’ve often wondered what I’d do if that chance was given to me. How would I do things “God’s way”?

Well, how did Joseph do things God’s way after Pharaoh told him in Genesis 41:41, “I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt,” and in verse 44, “without your word, Joseph, no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt”?

Well, what Joseph did next sounds a lot like the communist ideal, in which the abundance of the land and the efforts of those producing it are distributed equally to all. During the seven years of plentiful crops, for instance, “Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain” (49), so when the famine struck and “spread over the whole country, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians ” (56). Everyone was taken care of equally. 

So far, so good. But when the Egyptians’ money ran out, Joseph said, “I’ll sell you food in exchange for your livestock” (47:16). Not only, then, did the people’s personal wealth go into Pharaoh’s coffers (14), now all the people’s livestock belonged to the state too (18). And it got worse, because after their livestock the only things people had left to bargain with for food were “our bodies and our land” (18). And Joseph took them too, first of all “buying up all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh” (20), and then “reducing the people to servitude from one end of Egypt to the other” (21). Are there not echoes here of typical communism, which starts off with what sounds like a great ideal for the benefit of all, but ends up with total state control benefiting just the few? 

On the other hand, losing everything and being provided for by the state was better than starving to death. Wise state control by Joseph had saved the whole country from disaster (25), and when it was all over Joseph made sure that everyone in future had enough seed to provide all the food their families needed (24). Joseph’s aim in all that he did was to save lives and in difficult times see that everyone’s need was met. And on that point Joseph met the ideal of communism, unlike the communism of today that so often ends up leaving people destitute.

But that’s not all that’s going on in this story, because there’s also the bigger picture of “The behind-the-scenes God at work” too….(next blog) 

The quote above was an extraordinary question asked by an Egyptian Pharaoh in Genesis 41:38, when told his country would be hit with a seven year famine that would “ravage the land” (30). 

But before the famine there’d be seven years of massively good harvests, so Joseph’s advice to Pharaoh was to “look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt” to organize sufficient storage of grain during the seven good years to tide them over the seven famine years (33-36). Pharaoh liked the idea, which stirred his question: “Can we find such a man, in whom is the spirit of God?”  

And isn’t that the question to ask in any difficult situation? Whether it be a touchy political decision affecting the future of a country and its citizens, or an upset between any two people, or opposing groups with very different ideas and agendas? What’s needed most is those in whom is the spirit of God. And to think that even a pagan chap like Pharaoh acknowledged that too.

Which makes this story highly relevant for us today, because we’re facing all sorts of global problems that could “ravage our land” too. And maybe, like the seven good and seven bad years in Egypt, this has also “been firmly decided by God” (32). Because Paul did say in Romans 1:18, that “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth.” So are we in such a time today?

“Suppressing the truth,” for instance, has become a global sport. Censoring and shaming people for even daring to suggest an alternative view to the prevailing narratives on science, climate change, vaccines, Palestine, sexual and gender ideologies, Islam and migrants, etc., has reached pandemic proportions. Hiding and covering up the truth on what really happened in residential schools and dozens of other outrageous lies and scandals has also become a terrible virus ripping through governments and their media flunkies.  

No wonder Christians and Jews are being picked on, who make God their source of truth, because God and truth are being dismissed as irrelevant in the frenzied drive for global state control. Please, then, “Is there anyone in whom is the spirit of God” to help us through our famine of truth – someone “discerning and wise” like Joseph that even our pagan “pharaohs” would accept? But, hang on, “Wasn’t Joseph being a communist?”….(next blog)