Theopedia

Joseph the patriarch

Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob and the elder of his two sons by Rachel. Sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers, he rose from slave and prisoner to Pharaoh’s chief administrator, and in that office preserved his family, and with them the covenant line, through a severe famine (Gen. 37, 39-50). His story closes the book of Genesis and forms one of its longest continuous narratives.

Life

Joseph was born in Paddan-aram to Jacob and Rachel after years of Rachel’s barrenness (Gen. 30:22-24), and Jacob “loved [him] more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age,” a favoritism marked by the ornamented robe Jacob gave him (Gen. 37:3, ESV). His brothers’ resulting envy deepened when Joseph reported two dreams portraying his family bowing down to him (Gen. 37:5-11), and at seventeen they sold him to a caravan of traders bound for Egypt (Gen. 37:2, 23-28).

In Egypt, Joseph served in the household of Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, until Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of assault after he refused her advances, and he was imprisoned (Gen. 39:1-20). There he correctly interpreted the dreams of two fellow prisoners, Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker (Gen. 40), and two years later interpreted Pharaoh’s own dreams of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh set him over all Egypt to administer the resulting grain storage, “for there is none so discerning and wise as you” (Gen. 41:39, ESV); Joseph was thirty years old (Gen. 41:46).

When famine reached Canaan, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt to buy grain and, not recognizing him, bowed before him, fulfilling his earlier dreams. After testing them, Joseph revealed himself, forgave them, and brought the whole family, seventy in number, to settle in Goshen (Gen. 42-47; 46:27). He died in Egypt at 110, asking that his bones be carried to the promised land when God brought Israel out (Gen. 50:22-26), a request fulfilled at the exodus (Exod. 13:19; Josh. 24:32).

Joseph and the wisdom of divine providence

Genesis records Joseph’s own verdict on his brothers’ betrayal: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Gen. 50:20, ESV). Stephen Charnock cites Joseph’s story, alongside Judah and Tamar’s sin and Jonah’s flight from Nineveh, as an example of divine wisdom turning human sin toward a good end without excusing the sin itself:

“The patriarchs’ selling Joseph to the Midianites was without question a sin, and a breach of natural affection; yet, by God’s wise ordination, it proved the safety of the whole church of God in the world, as well as the Egyptian nation.”1

Loraine Boettner lists Genesis 50:20 among the standard proof texts for the doctrine that “even the sinful acts of men are included in the plan and are overruled for good.”2

Joseph as a type of Christ

John Gill reads Joseph’s separation from his brothers as foreshadowing Christ’s own human nature being set apart for union with God the Son and anointed with the Spirit beyond any other:

“this was sanctified, and set apart, and sent into the world; in which Joseph was a type of it, who was separated from his brethren: and hence this human nature of Christ was anointed with the Holy Ghost above his fellows.”3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. William Symington, 2 vols. (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853), vol. 1, “Discourse IX: On the Wisdom of God.” ↩

  2. Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1932), 20. ↩

  3. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book II, chap. 2. ↩