Lecture

In this lecture, the eleventh, the patriarchal scene shifts from Paddan-Aram back again to Canaan. Remember how Laban had overtaken Jacob and had searched for the teraphim and did not find them, and finally Jacob and Laban had sworn a covenant and had set up a pillar, a marker, which would serve as a boundary stone? They promised that they would not go over that boundary stone to do harm to the other one, and they called it Mitzvah, which means “watchtower/watch place,” and they gave the what is often called the Mitzvah Benediction, “The Lord watch between me and thee.” We use that Mitzvah Benediction sometimes for a blessing, but actually it was in original form given as a warning, so that one would not do harm to the other.

So Laban said goodbye to his family then and went back, and Jacob went on, but Jacob had the problem yet before him. Perhaps a bigger problem yet of meeting his brother Esau who had vowed in previous years to kill Jacob. And the question was now had Esau’s wrath pacified or not?

It appears that Jacob had not had much word from his brother. They didn’t correspond back and forth the way we do now, and so when he got into that territory, he sent messengers ahead to find his brother Esau. And the messengers found him and told Jacob the unwelcomed news that Esau was coming with four hundred men. What that meant, Jacob did not know, but he knew that his brother was a war-like man and it seemed as if these four hundred men were soldiers. Jacob was totally unarmed and unprepared to resist, and Jacob had good cause for fear that the brother would come and actually kill all of Jacob’s people and take the goods for himself. That sort of thing had surely been done, and Jacob knew the possibilities, and Jacob was afraid.

However, the Lord had told Jacob to return, and Jacob realized that, and so Jacob did the best he could under the circumstances and, as it were, cast himself upon God in prayer. He arranged his entourage so that the animals and the servants would go first, and then finally there would come the household and he thought possibly Esau might be satisfied, if he were going to kill and rob, he might be satisfied to take the goods and the people could escape. He put the two handmaids first and then Leah and Rachel. In chapter thirty-two it tells how he stayed behind as he first had put them over the Brook Jabbok, a little tributary of the Jordan on the eastern side just north of the Dead Sea, and then he stayed there alone that night.

There is then the remarkable story of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel at the place called Peniel. Peniel or Penuel. The word Peniel would mean the “face of God.” The place, as I have said before, would probably have been called Penuel originally, and Jacob gives this play on the word Penuel and calls it Peniel because of his experience of meeting God face-to-face and being preserved.

Now there isn’t too much that we need to say about the theophany. The Lord spoke with Jacob that night and Jacob, at first, did not recognize Him. And we usually picture angels as having wings, and there have been many times when angels have appeared to men in the Old Testament and the men did not know they were angels. Angels do not normally have wings. They don’t need wings to fly. Angels are pure spirits, and they fly and they go in an instant of time from heaven to earth and back again. There is no such thing as distance for the angels. They are not creatures of the space/time universe. They appear wherever God wants them to appear and in whatever form God wants them to take. So Jacob met this man and at first he had no idea who the man was, but the man attacked him and Jacob wrestled back and it appeared, however, that it was more than just a man. As the wrestling continued, it appeared that there was nothing that Jacob could do, and yet the man did not injure Jacob, and finally Jacob realized that he was wrestling with a supernatural appearance.

In Jacob’s fear, the Lord met him at night, and the Lord showed him through the wrestling and through the experience that the Lord was more powerful than Jacob, and the Lord was able to damage; the Lord was also able to preserve. And so, finally, Jacob asked him for his name, realizing that if he could find out who it was, that he would then be confirmed in the thought that it was a supernatural being that he was meeting that night. The angel said that he would not give him his name, but he told Jacob that he would change his name from Jacob to Israel. Israel includes the word [sare], or a form which would mean “God will make you a prince.” There is a play on words of the word [sare] meaning prince and El, of course, is the word for God. And so he would be as a prince who had power with God and with man and had prevailed. And so that morning when Jacob had finished wrestling with the angel, he knew, again, something more of the power of God and could go to meet Esau with more confidence.

It is rather interesting that the angel touched the sinew of Jacob’s thigh and he limped the next day. I note that when Saul was changed to Paul and the conversion experience on the Damascus Road, he saw the blinding light and God saved Paul on the road to Damascus. Notice that when the experience was over, there was an actual physical result that Paul could know about the next morning. For three days Paul was without sight, and it was only when Ananias in the name of the Lord Jesus laid hands upon Saul, and Saul received his sight. It was not just a psychological experience; it was an actual visitation from God for Saul. And so it was with Jacob. It was not just an experience of the night. It was not a dream. It was not a nightmare. There was a messenger from God who wrestled with Jacob and who taught Jacob the lessons that God was powerful and Jacob need not depend upon his own strength, but to depend upon the grace of God who had told him to come back, and God would be with Him, and God gave him the message that Jacob, who would be like a prince and would have power with God, and notice also, power with men and would prevail. And Jacob’s power was not the power of military might. Jacob’s power was the power of the presence of God. And so Jacob was able the next day to go forward and meet Esau, and the Lord gave him favor in Esau’s eyes, and the different animals that Jacob sent ahead as a present for Esau were probably part of the reason why Esau was favorable, but Esau was willing to let bygones be bygones. And so the brother’s met and then later on separated and Jacob went over to Palestine and Esau went back to the territory that he had come to occupy, which would be the territory east of the Jordan River and probably south of the Arnon Gorge and perhaps south also of the Zered Gorge. The Zered is a tributary that flows into the small wadi, I should say, or creek that flows into the southern end of the Dead Sea and the mountains are south of that on the western side, as well as on the eastern side of the Valley of the Dead Sea; the Arabah, as it is called. So that territory south and southeast and southwest of the Dead Sea was traditionally the home of the Edomites and the Israelites had contact with them through the years of Old Testament history.

Jacob then went to Canaan, and we do not know too much about the life of Jacob there. There was an incident when the boys had grown up and Dinah, the daughter of Leah, Jacob’s first wife, was molested by one of the men of the land Hamor who changed his attitude and wanted to marry her then, and the sons of Jacob, her brothers, refused to let that be. He said they took it that he had dealt with their sisters with a harlot and by ruse they went into the place of Shechem and we would say “cleaned up the city.” All the men were killed and Jacob was, of course, angry at his boys because they had done this. Jacob was himself not a war-like man, and he was not prepared to defend himself against hostile Canaanites around, and so he felt that they should not have taken vengeance so severe and it is probable that they should not have. But at least Jacob felt it necessary to move. He went up to Bethel and there he worshiped God again in the place where he had made a vow on his way to Paddan-Aram. So the family of Jacob was growing up and had, of course, many experiences, most of which we cannot trace in the brief record here in Genesis.

The next thing of consequence is the sale of Joseph when the brothers sold him to go down to Egypt as a slave. The last part of this third section of Genesis that we have been speaking of, the history of Isaac and Jacob, deals with the generations of Esau. And in chapter 36, we might remark that according to the general custom of the narrator of Genesis, Moses here, and deals with the genealogy of Esau, and we would say gets it out of the way. He follows the genealogy of Esau down quite some little distance. It’s hard to tell how far, and then no more is said about Esau and the Edomites, and he resumes the history of Jacob in chapter 37.

Chapter 37, “Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a sojourner and stranger in the land of Canaan.” And then comes the word “These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren.” Joseph now is a grown boy and yet seventeen years old, the others were older and he was not in the position of having a flock of his own apparently. He was sent by his father to take a message to the rest of the sons. Benjamin, of course, was the small one. He was at home. And Joseph went to see how the brothers with their flocks were doing and to bring back word to his father.

In the meantime, it turns out that Joseph had been given two dreams of significance. He had dreamed that he was binding sheaves in the field and the other sheaves fell down in reverence to his sheave. The brothers caught the meaning of the dream right away, “Shalt thou indeed reign over us?” they said, and they hated him for his dreams. He was beloved of the father, but hated by the brethren, partly because the father indulged him, I suppose, but also we may note that the envy and wickedness of the brothers was partly because of their own evil hearts.

Joseph had another dream, and this time he dreamed that the sun and the moon and the stars would bow down to him. He told it to his father, and his farther rebuked him. He said, “Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?” And the brethren envied him. But notice in verse eleven, it says, “his father observed the saying.” The father should indeed have observed the saying. Of course, the brother should have observed the saying too. Here we have a revelation from God. There’s a tendency to feel that Joseph should not have been pampered so much. There’s a tendency to feel that Joseph should have been more humble and should not have told these dreams to his brothers, and yet I think we must realize that these dreams did come from God and we know that they were fulfilled and fulfilled to the very letter. I’m not so sure that we should object to Joseph for telling these dreams. I think we really should object to the brothers and, indeed, somewhat to the father because they did not pay more attention to the dreams.

The result, at least, was that Joseph was hated more and more. And when Jacob sent Joseph up to see how the brothers were doing, they had gone all the way up to Dothan, which is a town north of Shechem a good bit, so he was some forty-five, sixty miles away from where Jacob was at the time. And the brothers there said, “Behold this dreamer cometh, and what shall we do?” And they thought they would kill him and say the word to the father that some animal had killed him. Well remember that first of all Rueben said, “Let’s not kill him. Let’s put him into a pit.” Rueben apparently went off about his business with the flocks and in the meantime the brothers saw a company of merchants coming on the caravan route going to Egypt. The caravan route would go right through the valley of Jezreel, often would pass Dothan, and there was a fine well there at Dothan for such caravans to stop at. It would be a very logical thing of the Medianites or Ishmaelites, as they are also called, to come right past this place. And Judah got the idea, that instead of letting their brother die in the pit, that perhaps at least he could see that he would be kept alive and that he would be sold as a slave. So Judah suggested that he be sold to the Medianites and they took him off to Egypt.

When Rueben came back and saw the boy was gone and he could not rescue him, as he apparently had intended to do, he cried and said, “Wither shall I go?” Well, they fooled the father then and took his coat of many colors that the father had given him as a mark of special favor and dipped it in the blood of an animal, took it back to Jacob and said, “Look what we found.” And Jacob thought that his son must have been torn to pieces and he knew nothing more about it.

The rest of the book of Genesis deals with the history of Joseph in Egypt. It’s a very beautiful story and a very important story, but also one that is very familiar to all of us. He was first sold to Potiphar, an officer in Egypt, and there the Lord prospered him. But as the Lord prospered him and the boss knew less and less about the affairs, the boss’s wife, Potiphar’s wife, cast eyes on Joseph and tried to seduce him. He refused and finally, when she was scorned, her heart turned the other way, and she accused him, and he was put in jail.

In jail, again the Lord was with him, and the keeper of the jail put everything in his hands. He was evidently industrious. He was evidently capable, and most of all, the Lord was with him and also, he trusted in God. And Joseph certainly has been a model to many people. Here was this young man, away from home, unjustly sold, and then unjustly accused, and now in what we would think would be the worst possible situation, and yet he, like Job, maintained his integrity and trusted in the Lord for deliverance with no earthly expectation of ever getting out of this jail, away from home and everything else, yet trusting in his God.

Well, the Lord’s trust always pays off in due time. We do not know the details of God’s providence. He doesn’t always put us on the throne as He did Joseph. Of course, He doesn’t always put us in jail either, but Joseph there was just in the place where God could raise him to far higher things. Pharaoh’s butler and baker were thrown in the same jail. He got to know them. They dreamed. Joseph interpreted the dreams. Interpreted them right. And the one of the two, the butler, was put back in his office and the baker was hanged, but the butler forgot Joseph, and this, too, was in God’s providence. If the butler had gone back to court and said to them, “Say, I have a friend down there in the jail who would certainly like to get out.” It is possible that Joseph could have gotten out. He would have gotten out, and he would have made his way in Egypt and never been heard of in the biblical record or in the secular history. But God kept Joseph in jail for another couple of years until his time was just right, and then Pharaoh had a dream. And when Pharaoh had a dream, then the butler remembered. He said, “I do this day remember my sins,” and the butler remembered that Joseph could interpret dreams. And so Joseph now did not get out of jail because of pity. Joseph got out of jail because there was an opportunity to get next to the Pharaoh and to give the Pharaoh some very wonderful information.

So the Lord used the timing exactly right and Joseph was hurried out of jail, shaved, and washed, and changed his garments, and came before Pharaoh and Pharaoh said, “I’ve had a dream.” You can imagine the trepidation that this young Hebrew slave who had gone through all these things and now stood before the King of Pharaoh, probably the most powerful man in all the world. What would he say? What would be his attitude?

Pharaoh said, “I have had a dream. Can you interpret it?” And notice the answer of Joseph. Joseph said, “God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.” Joseph did not claim that he had the ability to interpret dreams of his own, but he told Pharaoh that there was a God in heaven and he gave, in short, all glory to God. Well God as a result gave glory to Joseph, and when the seven years of plenty came, Joseph was the vizier, equivalent at least to the position of the Vizier of Egypt, second in command that did the work for the king. He gathered the corn and the grain in abundance. The word corn in the King James Version is the old English word for corn which means grain. They don’t raise what we call corn or maize in Egypt; it is wheat, also other grains like barley, but wheat particularly, and Joseph stored the wheat. And then when the years of famine came, Joseph was in position to save the people of Egypt.

But although Joseph was in a position to save the people of Egypt, God had higher design for Joseph and higher designs for his people. It says in Isaiah that God gave Egypt for the ransom of His people, Ethiopia, and Seba for you. And so God was more interested in the little patriarchal family in Canaan than he was in the Pharaoh of Egypt and there came a time when he sent Jacob’s sons down to Egypt to buy grain to sustain the father’s household in Canaan. Well, the providence of God again; these ten boys, ten men now, of course, came to Egypt and Joseph saw them. It would have been possible, I suppose, for them to get their grain from some underling. They could have gotten grain and gotten back and Joseph never known that they were there. But in God’s providence, Joseph saw them, recognized them, and then put them through these two severe testings. He kept Simeon and sent them back and when they came a second time, they must have Benjamin, so he arranged it that Benjamin would suffer on a trumped up charge, and he would keep Benjamin. And then the test was, would these brethren go back and leave Benjamin a slave in Egypt as they had been willing to leave Joseph, Benjamin’s whole brother, a slave in Egypt. But this time, no. Judah, who had spoken up in favor of Joseph years before, Judah offered himself instead of the boy as a hostage. This was a noble offer for Judah to offer himself as a slave. Who would want to be a salve in Egypt? But he said how could he face his father when the young boy Benjamin was not with him.

And when the boys had passed the test this way, Joseph broke down and said everybody should leave him, and he was alone with his brothers while he made himself known to them. And so it was that the brothers, of course, first were overcome with fear because they knew what they had done to Joseph and they knew that Joseph had all this power. He could have put them all in jail and easily could have seen that they were all executed, and he could have saved Benjamin and brought the father down. But Joseph was God’s man; Joseph was not looking for revenge. And as the life of Joseph is a wonderful example for us in adversity, so the life of Joseph is a wonderful example for us also in his exaltation.

Joseph was the second in command of Egypt, but it didn’t go to his head. And as he had told Pharaoh that God would give Pharaoh an answer of peace, so now he said to his brethren that it was not you who sent me down here, but it was God. And he had given the glory to God and now he ascribed even the hard times to God’s providence; and here we have some of the best words in the Old Testament on the subject of divine providence. Here and also in Isaiah 10 perhaps we have the best examples of the fact that God directs even the wicked wills of wicked men to His glory. Now God does not direct us the way he would direct sticks and stones; we are free moral agents. Nonetheless, in accordance with our free will and not violating our free will, God does direct even the wicked wills of wicked men.

In Isaiah 10, it says that God would use the Assyrian the way a carpenter would use an ax or a saw, and yet it says the Assyrian did not think so. He did not intend to fulfill God’s will. And, therefore, it says that when God is through with using the Assyrian as His tool, God would punish the Assyrian. The Assyrian had done God’s will, but he had not done God’s will willingly. The Assyrian had done God’s will in his own way; therefore, God would punish him when he had done what God intended him to do, because the sinfulness of the Assyrian’s heart was not due to God. And so we have the providence of God shown here in the book of Genesis in very remarkable ways and Joseph states it again and again. But he not only states it in words to his brothers, he also states it and affirms it by his actions and deeds, and if we remember that we are in the positon that God has put us, we will not blame other people. We will not take revenge against other people; we will not seek to injure them because they perhaps have injured us. Instead we will say, “We are here in the will of God, and we will trust God to take care of us.”

Well, Joseph sent back to his father, Jacob, wagons and all for their coming and said, “Come down to Egypt, the good of the land of Egypt is before you.” And to make the story brief, he settled Jacob and his family there in the land of Goshen, the best of the land of Egypt, and took care of him as long as the famine was in the land and for some years after. And Joseph was in control and a favorite of the king and the children of Israel began their time in Egypt under the best auspices and they grew and multiplied. There was abundant food and the Lord preserved them from the diseases of Egypt, too, and they multiplied and became a nation there in Egypt. They never would have been the great and prosperous group in Canaan that they became in Egypt. And so it was necessary in God’s providence apparently for them to go down to Egypt to become a nation and then God would take them out of Egypt as a nation and this would be the work of Moses when they would be made into not a patriarchal tribe, but a nation of God’s people with its laws and its government and everything that Moses would give them years later.

So the story of Jacob ends, and after that, briefly, the story of Joseph, also. It is said often that the book of Genesis ends with a coffin in Egypt and then Exodus begins with the deliverer, Moses. Jacob, however, before he dies, blesses Joseph, blesses the boys, and blesses also the two grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and we must say just a little something about here a transfer of the birthright again, and the great Messianic passage that is found in Genesis 49:10.

Between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, we have the Egyptian bondage. In Exodus 12:40, it says that “The sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” If we take this four hundred and thirty-year period and add to the date of the Exodus, which we shall shortly be speaking of which would be about 1400 BC, we have a figure of 1830 BC as the date when Jacob and the Israelites went down into Egypt. The trouble with this date is that it is sometime before the Hyksos conquered Egypt, and we have argued that Joseph and his going into Egypt and elevation to position of Vizier, fits best in the period of the Hyksos kings. One answer to this problem is to adopt the Septuagint reading of Exodus 12:40, which says, “The sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, and Canaan was four hundred and thirty years.” By the way, this reading is supported by the Samaritan Pentateuch and also by Paul in Galatians 3:17.

If we take four hundred and thirty years as the inclusive period, we have to subtract from it the period of the patriarchs in Canaan. Figuring up from the lives of the patriarchs, we find that they lived in Canaan a total of two hundred and fifteen years, which leaves two hundred and fifteen years, also, for the period of the Egyptian bondage. This we would call the short bondage, and this would allow the date of the going down of Jacob into Egypt to be in the Hyksos Period for two hundred and fifteen, plus about fourteen hundred would give you 1615 BC, which would be a reasonable date for Joseph. I may say that it is perfectly proper to have this short Egyptian bondage. The Israelites, if they tripled every generation, would have eventually a population of just about two million people, which is just the size of the nation at the time that Moses was sent by God to deliver them from Egypt, because it must be remembered that the patriarchs themselves were strangers in the land of Canaan for that period.