An Exegetical and Theological Study of Judah and Joseph
The story of Joseph, as commonly told, is the kind of story that resonates with a modern western audience. An ambitious, young boy who has dreams of grandeur overcomes the obstacles of jealous older brothers, slavery, and imprisonment to become the second most powerful man in the kingdom and saves his family from famine. The moral of this story might be that with hard work and perseverance dreams do indeed come true! While this telling of the story does not explicitly contradict the biblical account we are given, it neglects enough of the details in the text so as to misunderstand how it fits within the broader story of the Torah and of Scripture. Genesis 37 to 50 is a story about how God in His Providence used Egypt to provide for the family of Israel amidst famine and how God turned injustice into blessing and restoration. What Joseph’s brothers had meant for evil, God had meant for good (Gn. 50:20). However, upon a deeper reading of the text we find that there is a twist in the story. While it is the young Joseph who dreams of stalks of wheat and the sun, moon, and stars bowing down to him, it is Judah whom God has chosen to be the rightful leader of the emerging nation promised to Abraham and through whose line the curse on Adam’s race will be broken.
From the point at which Yahweh called Abraham in Genesis 12 to leave his country and promised to make him the father of a great nation, it was clear that He would be the one to protect the promise. Abraham and his generations, left to themselves, would do their best to endanger the promise or attempt to channel it through their progeny as they saw fit. Abraham jeopardizes the promise immediately after it is made to him by giving Sarah to Pharoah as a concubine out of fear that Pharoah would kill him if he told him the truth that she was his wife (Gn. 12:10-16). Abraham later makes the same mistake of compromising Sarah’s integrity again with Abimelech (Gn. 20:1-2). Isaac imitates his father by claiming that his wife, Rebekah, was only his sister, risking the possibility that she might be taken as another man’s wife (Gn. 26:7-8). Furthermore, in each generation, the father’s plan for the next generation must be thwarted so that the nation could be properly formed. When Abraham was promised an heir from his own body, he attempted to produce that heir with the slave girl, Hagar, because his wife was elderly and barren (Gn. 16). Yahweh had to remind Abraham that his son would be a child of promise, not a child of nature, and would come through his wife Sarah (Gn. 17:15-21). Isaac’s fondness for Esau’s game caused him to favor Esau, the elder of his twin sons, though God had revealed to Rebekah that Jacob was the chosen one and would receive the blessing (Gn. 25:23). The pattern continues in the third generation as Jacob favors Joseph, the son of his beloved second wife, Rachel, over all his other sons. In this case, it is not a matter of simply picking the younger over the elder. Unlike the previous two generations, Jacob had been blessed with twelve sons. The nation was starting to take form. The twelve sons would become the twelve tribes of a nation. It is now a matter of choosing who the rightful leader of that nation will be and keeping this family together rather than allowing it to be torn apart by rivalry. Jacob is convinced that Joseph is the one who will receive the blessing as the leader of his sons, but like his father and grandfather, he has picked the wrong son. Careful attention to the narratives of both Joseph and Judah help to explain why on second reading, it will be the tribe of Judah who will bear the scepter for Israel and not the sons of Joseph.
Joseph’s Story
At the very least, the Joseph narrative when read carefully paints an ambiguous picture of Joseph’s character that raises questions about whether he is fit to lead his brothers or rule this emerging nation. Joseph’s journey from favorite son of Jacob in Canaan to prime minister of Egypt can be summarized in four major episodes marked by a series of successes and falls. Though Joseph comes out on top in the end and is used in God’s providence to preserve his family amid famine, the details of his story help to explain why despite his genius, ambition, and skill, he is not fit to receive Jacob’s blessing to be the royal tribe.
The first episode in the Joseph narrative involves the conferring of a royal robe to Joseph by his father and Joseph’s descent down to Egypt. The narrative begins with the words, “these are the generations of Jacob” (Gn. 37:1), which situates the Joseph account in relation the toledot of Esau presented in the previous chapter. Unlike the lineage of Esau where the reader is supplied only with a list of names, the lineage of Jacob has stories to tell. Moreover, in contrast to Esau’s generations who were settled and ruled over their land with kings and chieftains, Jacob still lives as a sojourner in Canaan just as his father and grandfather had for the iniquities of the Canaanites were not complete (Gn. 15:16). This raises questions about when Jacob’s family will finally be settled in the land and who will be the king or chieftain of this great nation that God had promised Abraham. Joseph steals the spotlight from the start as he is introduced as a seventeen-year-old little brother who works as an apprentice of his older brothers in the field tending his father’s flocks.[1] Joseph’s first act in the story is bringing “an evil report” about his brothers, but the reader is not told the nature of this evil, which allows for some speculation. St. Cyril of Alexandria takes this evil as referring to the brother’s treatment of Joseph as if he had been bullied from the beginning.[2] However, Jewish commentator, Robert Alter, sees this first action of Joseph as the behavior of a spoiled child acting as a tattletale[3] while Allen P. Ross interprets it as an act of faithfulness to his father despite the wrath he would incur from his brothers.[4] Further complicating the interpretation of Joseph’s actions, Gary Schnittjer points out that the word for “evil report” in 37:2 can refer to evil acts performed by the brothers as well as an evil motivation in Joseph for bringing a bad report. This same term is used in Numbers 13 when the ten spies bring a bad report about the land of Canaan with the evil motivation of discouraging the Israelites from attempting to take it.[5] Given this linguistic connection to Numbers 13, Alter’s interpretation of Joseph’s actions seems to be more likely. In verse 3, further context is added to Joseph’s “evil report” in revealing that Joseph is the favorite son of Israel, provoking the jealousy of the brothers. Jacob’s favoritism is manifested with a gift of an ornamented tunic, such as would be worn by royalty, further signaling that Joseph would be the chosen one to rule. Ross ties the gift of the tunic to the faithful act of Joseph in bringing the evil report,[6] which seems to be an interpretive leap from the text. Just as likely, the evil report, the favoritism, and the cloak paint the picture of a spoiled child who took a certain pleasure in bringing bad reports to the father who would give him an audience.
Joseph then has two dreams. In the first dream, he and his brothers are binding sheaves in the field and all their sheaves bow down to Joseph’s. Many Christian commentators are quick to attribute Joseph’s symbolic dreams to God. For example, Ross correctly points out that it was through dreams that God had “informed Abraham of the sojourn in Egypt…promised Jacob protection and prosperity with Laban in Paddan Aram…spoke to Laban and kept him from harming Jacob.”[7] However, unlike any dream that has come to any of Joseph’s predecessors, Joseph’s dream includes no communication from God, but consists only of symbols in need of interpretation. It is not unreasonable that Joseph, knowing he was his father’s favorite and having been gifted with a tunic fit for royalty, would have enjoyed such dreams of receiving glory in which his brothers would bow down to him. Commentator Leon Kass insightfully notes that the word order in the Hebrew text “and dreamed Joseph a dream” is characteristic of Egyptian dreams in Genesis 40:5,8 and 41:15, not the dreams where God spoke to Joseph’s forefathers.[8] The reader only knows the content of Joseph’s dream because Joseph felt the need to reveal it to his brothers in the most earnest of terms. Alter observes that the standard Hebrew word for presenting a dream, hineh, which may be translated as “look” or “behold”, is used not once, but three times in Joseph’s one-sentence narration of his dream.[9] Young Joseph is adamant that his brothers pay attention to every detail of this short dream and understand that they are to bow down to him. In case a single dream about sheaves was not enough to visibly anger his brothers, Joseph again feels the need to share a second dream in which the sun, moon, and stars bow down to him. This dream provokes more than a jealous reaction from his siblings, but a rebuke from his father as well. Though Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son, Jacob still publicly criticizes Joseph, raising the rhetorical question, “Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?” While Jacob may have privately continued to consider Joseph’s dreams, he also recognized the imprudence of Joseph’s boastful dreams and felt the need to put Joseph back in his place, even if only to diffuse his sons’ jealousy. Perhaps he realized that Joseph’s description of kingship was foreign to anything that the family of Abraham had experienced before. Thus, Kass profoundly concludes:
In Joseph’s dream, the heavens do not declare the glory of God but instead bow to the superiority of Joseph, the exemplary human being…this vision of cosmic mastery is part of the meaning of Egypt, the place where man, through technology, magic, and administration, tries to force nature to her knees. Joseph, from his youth, has Egyptian dreams.[10]
Joseph becomes the victim of his brothers’ jealousy, whose hatred has grown to such a degree that the mere sight of him approaching in the field in his ornamented tunic evokes a desire to murder him. Reuben acts to save Joseph by convincing his brothers to throw him into a cistern rather than kill him. In Reuben’s absence, Judah convinces the rest of the brothers to sell Joseph to the Midianite traders on their way to Egypt, in effect both sparing Joseph’s life from the hands of his more aggressive brothers and removing Judah’s main competition to receive his father’s blessing. With Reuben disqualified as heir for his act of defiling his father’s bed by sleeping with his concubine (Gn. 35:22), Simeon and Levi, the second and third sons, disqualified for their violent act of slaughtering the men of Shechem by using the ritual of circumcision to incapacitate them (Gn. 34), and Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob, sold into slavery in Egypt, this leaves Judah, the fourth son, as the likely next choice.
The second major episode in the Joseph narrative is his rise and fall in the house of Potiphar. In chapter 39, Joseph descends into Egypt where his privileged status in his father’s house is of no use to him. By Yahweh’s providence, Joseph quickly rises again to become the chief steward of the captain of Pharoah’s guard. Like his father, Jacob, in the house of Laban, Yahweh blesses and prospers Potiphar’s household on account of Joseph’s presence there. While Joseph no doubt had a keen mind and was a competent steward, the text indicates that favor that Joseph gains in Potiphar’s eyes is due to God’s blessing of Joseph’s hand and not primarily because Joseph was unusually gifted (Gn. 39:5). Joseph is entrusted with the care of everything that Potiphar owned.
In Genesis 39:6, the narrator transitions to the story of the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife with a striking description of Joseph’s physical appearance that is used nowhere else in Scripture to speak of a man: handsome and beautiful in appearance.[11] Potiphar’s wife, driven by lust, tempts Joseph by uttering a short phrase borne of animal like impulse “lie with me.” In response, Joseph provides a long answer in a speaking style that is completely at odds with Potiphar’s wife. In contrast to the animalistic sexual urge manifested in the imperative, “lie with me”, Joseph’s reply is “a voluble outpouring of language, full of repetitions that are both dramatically appropriate and…and thematically profound.[12] Joseph logically thinks out loud why it would not be in his interests to sleep with his master’s wife as it would jeopardize his position and violate his master’s trust. However, it is not clear from Joseph’s reply whether his rejection of the wife’s advances is rooted in a desire for holiness or mere self-interest. Up to this point in the narrative, Joseph has not once made reference to God and there is no indication that in his reply to Potiphar’s wife he is speaking of the God of his fathers or an Egyptian god in his use of the ’elohim.[13] The persistence of the seductress continues day after day, culminating in her laying her hands on Joseph and insisting that he lie with her. Joseph’s defiance in running out of the house with his cloak in her hand sparks her anger as lust turns to bitterness. She accuses Joseph of attempted rape, playing on his ethnic difference from the Egyptians that would add greater shame to the offence for her husband. She further implies that it is Potiphar that is to blame for bringing Joseph into their house: “This is what your slave did to me” (Gn. 39:19). In so doing, Joseph is set to experience his second fall from privilege as Potiphar seems to have no choice but to send him to his prisons.
The third episode of the Joseph story takes place in the pit of prison where he had been thrown for his alleged crimes. However, the reader quickly gets the impression that he will rise again as the narrator speaks of Joseph’s position in the prison in a way that parallels the opening verses of chapter 39 where Joseph’s responsibilities in Potiphar’s household are described. Through the high drama between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, Yahweh is with Joseph even if Joseph may be unaware of his presence. Chapter 40, which recounts Joseph’s interpretation of the dreams of Pharoah’s cupbearer and baker, is altogether strange and provides a link back to the beginning of the Joseph narrative in chapter 37 when Joseph dreams himself a dream of greatness in which his brothers bow down to him. There should be real doubts in the readers’ mind about whether these dreams or their interpretations are from God. The interpretation of dreams is not a practice of the Hebrews in Israel. There is only one other figure in Scripture who acts as an interpreter of dreams, and he does so only in the context of captivity in the foreign land of Babylon. There are significant differences between the account of Joseph in Genesis and the account in Daniel, however. In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and insists that his magicians and astrologers tell him the content of the dream and provide the interpretation. Failure to accomplish this impossible task is punishable by death by the king’s decree. Daniel requests that the king grant him time to discern the content of the dream and its interpretation before carrying out the execution. In that time, Daniel and his three friends pray to the God of heaven for mercy and wisdom to carry out the task. Yahweh answers Daniel’s prayer and reveals the answers to the inquiry he made. In contrast, Joseph never asks for God’s mercy and wisdom, but presumes to be an interpreter of dreams though the text does not indicate that he has ever had any ability to do so nor that God has authorized him to do so. Once again, Joseph appeals to a generic term for god or gods without a reference to the God of heaven in Daniel or the God of his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Furthermore, Joseph equates himself with God in his remark to the cupbearer and baker in saying, “do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me” (40:9).
There is no indication from the text that either the cupbearer and baker’s dreams nor their interpretation is from God. However, John Calvin, representative of the approach of many traditional commentators on this passage, argues that while many people dream many things that are forgotten, there are certain dreams that God gives to people that are prophetic. “For unless the mark of a celestial oracle had been engraven upon then, the butler and the baker would not have been in such consternation of mind.”[14]. This argument is not convincing as it assumes a premise in the conclusion: the dreams were from God because they troubled the butler and baker and therefore, we can conclude they were from God. While it is certainly the case that God is working providentially through Joseph’s circumstances and is with him in Egypt and causing him to prosper, this should not be construed as if the content of the dreams or the interpretation is from God.
Leon Kass presents a compelling case that accounts for both Joseph’s interpretation of the dream and his accurate predictions. It is significant for Kass that Joseph is appointed by the captain of the guard, who in chapter 39 is identified as Joseph’s former master, Potiphar, to be “put in charge” of the chief butler and chief baker and to “take care of them” (40:4, NASB). The job of a butler and a baker would not only be to serve Pharoah his wine and bread, but also to ensure the drink and the food were safe to consume. Given that the chief butler and chief baker were thrown into prison, it is reasonable that they may have been suspected of some disloyalty, act of treason, or perhaps even an attempt on Pharoah’s life. Derek Kidner lends credibility to this notion by noting that a better translation of verse 1 is that the butler and baker did not merely offend Pharoah, but committed an “offense against” Pharaoh, indicating that Pharaoh’s displeasure was justified.[15] The fact that Joseph was given charge of these two men by none other than the head of Pharaoh’s security suggests, according to Kass, that Joseph may have been serving as a spy within the prison and responsible to report any information from the prisoners that might provide evidence of their guilt or reveal further conspiracies against Pharoah. While this theory is somewhat speculative, it provides an interpretive context that makes sense of Joseph’s conversation with his wards about their dreams that follows.
Upon closer examination, the dreams are not particularly hard to interpret. Alter notes that “like Joseph’s pair of dreams, both these dreams are stylized, schematic, and nearly transparent in regard to meaning.”[16] The text provides another interpretive detail in verse 20: “Thus it came about on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday” (NASB). Kass observes that Pharaoh’s birthday is the only birthday mentioned in the entire Hebrew Bible. This, considered alongside the fact that Pharaohs were worshipped as gods in Egypt, explains the three-day period symbolized by vines and bread baskets in the dreams. Everyone in Egyptian society would have recognized the significance of this day as a day “on which Pharaoh makes a feast for all his servants and bestows favors…a day on which they can expect to have their merits rewarded and their petitions considered.”[17] It is not hard to imagine why the butler and baker would have dreamt about this approaching day as it would have loomed heavily in their minds. Thus, both dreams revolve around the number 3 and present images associated with the vocation of each dreamer.
The butler is eager to share his dream upon Joseph’s offer to interpret. In his dream, he sees three branches that bud, blossom, and ripen into grapes. The butler presses the grapes into Pharoah’s cup and delivers the cup to Pharaoh’s hand. The butler’s dream is simply about returning to work in the presence of Pharaoh, whose name he mentions three times in the space of three sentences. Joseph could discern from the details of this dream that the butler has no shame or guilt and identifies with him as an innocent who has been falsely accused and thrown into jail (40:15). The baker, however, only speaks up to share his dream after he saw that the interpretation of the butler’s dream was favorable (40:16). In the baker’s dream, he carries three bread baskets on his head. The bread in the top basket intended for Pharaoh is eaten by the birds. Such a dream evidences a guilty mind. In the words of Kass,
Taken as a projection of the baker’s state of mind, the dream indicates both an incapacity for proper service and an unwillingness to return to Pharaoh’s presence. A guilty and fearful mind has revealed itself to anyone who knows, as Joseph surely does, how the dreams one dreams reveal the secret thoughts and emotions of the dreamer.[18]
Having discerned the guilty party through their dreams, Joseph is now positioned to ensure his interpretations of the dreams and his predictions for the future prove to be correct. Such information would be passed on to Potiphar, the captain of the guard, and would be acted upon. The butler would be restored to his former post and the baker executed for his complicity or negligence in any treasonous actions against Pharaoh. Rather than serving as evidence of special revelation given by God to Joseph to interpret dreams, Joseph’s interpretations can reasonably be understood as self-fulfilling prophesies given the details provided in the text about Joseph’s position within the prison, his job description, and his relationship to the captain of the guard.
The fourth major episode in the development of Joseph is his elevation from the pit of the prison to the service of Pharaoh on account of his ability to interpret Pharaoh’s dream. After two years, the butler, whose dream Joseph had interpreted in prison, finally remembers him to Pharaoh when Pharaoh has a troubling dream in need of interpretation. Joseph is called from the prison and before appearing to Pharoah, the text says that Joseph changes his clothes and shaves his beard (Gn. 41:14). While we might interpret these actions as nothing more than cleaning himself up before he presents himself to the king, there may be more going on. Kass mentions that it was the Egyptians alone in the ancient near east who shaved their faces. By shaving his face and changing into presumably Egyptian dress, Joseph is becoming more Egyptian in his appearance and identifying with that culture. When Pharaoh tells Joseph that he has had a dream that none can interpret, Joseph responds by saying that it is not he, but God, who is the interpreter of dreams. However, in saying this and in proceeding to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, he implies that he has a unique connection to God. Joseph quickly interprets Pharoah’s dream and then immediately proceeds to offer his unsolicited advice as to how Pharoah must act in light of the interpretation he has received. Pharaoh is to choose a wise and discerning man to execute a plan of exacting one-fifth of the produce from the people during each of the years of plenty to be stored “under Pharaoh’s authority” (NASB) for the years of famine. Interpreting the dream is arguably the least important thing that Joseph accomplished in this meeting with Pharaoh. He has provided an actionable plan for organizing the economy in anticipation of famine and has presented himself as just the man for the job. Pharaoh asks rhetorically, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is a divine spirit?”[19] Joseph not only receives his ticket out of prison, but the keys to the kingdom as well. John Calvin sees Pharaoh’s choice of Joseph as an act of humility wherein he recognized the superior wisdom of a foreign prisoner over his own advisors and courtiers.[20] However, he fails to appreciate the shrewdness of Joseph in taking on the appearance of an Egyptian and providing Pharaoh with an answer to his dream that would appeal to Pharaoh’s vanity and desire for greater power and control. Kass is more perceptive when he writes that,
…the plan Joseph proposes is music to Pharaoh’s ears: a prime minister, loyal only to him, backed by an army of bureaucrats, will centralize control over the entire land and its food supply. A silent implication is not lost on Pharaoh: during the years of famine, the central administration will use the dispersal of food to further augment and consolidate Pharaoh’s power, weakening all possible rivals among the Egyptian nobility and making the people entirely dependent on Pharoah’s rule and deed.[21]
Joseph is rewarded not only by receiving a position of high rank but is also given an Egyptian wife. It is this position as Pharaoh’s prime minister that Joseph is found by his brothers thirteen years after they sold him into slavery in Egypt.
Throughout each of these episodes of his life, Joseph demonstrates an undying ambition to rule as well as an extraordinary competence to do so. The Sunday school lessons on Joseph tend to focus on Joseph’s sufferings and mistreatment at the hands of his brothers, Potiphar’s wife, or the butler, but it is also true that Joseph was placed in charge of his peers in every context in which he operated. Though he does not always possess the wisdom to avoid situations that lead to his downfall, there is no denying he is a shrewd and gifted leader.
Furthermore, Joseph serves as a type of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria sees in Joseph’s descent into the pit at the hands of his brothers a picture of Christ’s incarnation in which he was rejected by his fellow Jews, suffering death on the cross and descent into the pit of Hades.[22] Jesus, like Joseph was raised up again from under the earth and went out to the Gentiles. Those who carried the gospel of Jesus to the nations were often persecuted, but through their faithfulness to the doctrine and life of Christ, kingdoms were brought under the rule of Christ and the gospel spread throughout the world. The suffering of the martyrs proved to be the means by which the church grew and extended its influence over kings and kingdoms. This typology could be extended to the end of the story where Joseph, the Hebrew turned Egyptian saves the family of Israel. Likewise, the gospel of Christ goes out to the Gentiles, and the true Israel is saved.
Judah’s Story
Judah’s story begins in Genesis 33:26 with a suggestion that the brothers should sell Joseph to the Ishmaelite traders heading to Egypt rather than kill him in Dothan. Judah then schemes to trick his father into believing that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal by bloodying Joseph’s ornamented coat. His actions parallel those of Jacob decades before. Through an act of deception, Jacob secured the blessing from his father that belonged to Esau and then fled to Paddan-Aram to find a wife among his mother’s family (Gn. 28:1-5). Likewise, Judah, after deceiving his father by convincing him that his favorite son and likely heir was dead, abandons his family and lives among the Canaanites where he finds a wife. At this point, Jacob’s family is quickly falling apart, and it is unclear who is to receive the birthright and to serve as the ruler of this nation. With his Canaanite wife, Judah produces three sons. It is in this context that Judah will undergo the trials of suffering the loss of two sons and being thoroughly embarrassed by his sexual relationship with his daughter-in-law. After God had taken his oldest two sons, Er and Onan, from him for their evil deeds, Judah sought to preserve his youngest son, Shelah, from the same outcome that Judah believed was due to their association with Tamar. Kass identifies Judah’s action of withholding Shelah from Tamar a failure to allow his third son to fulfil his duty to serve as his brother’s keeper. Tamar is deprived of her ability to bear children due to the actions of Judah’s first two sons and is left to remain a childless widow in her father’s house. She is in effect treated like a prostitute, someone with whom Judah’s sons may have intercourse, but not to be a mother. Tamar then dresses the part of prostitute and uses her disguise to turn Judah’s lust against him. Tamar becomes pregnant by Judah who remains unaware of her identity. When Tamar is found to be pregnant three months later, Judah calls for her to be executed immediately. However, before the execution can be carried out, Tamar springs her trap and presents Judah’s cord and staff that had been given to her as assurance of payment for her services on the night they had intercourse. Tamar repeats the same exact phrase that Judah had used when deceiving his father about Joseph’s death: “Recognize, pray, whose are these seal-and-cord and this staff?”[23] Judah is stunned in recognizing the cord-and-seal and the staff were his and was likely equally convicted by her words that echoed his deceitful question of his own father.
In this moment, Judah learns his duty to family and the necessity of children for passing on the faith to future generations. He had tried to spare his son by neglecting his duty as a father-in-law and in doing so had left Tamar childless. Unlike Joseph at any point in his story, Judah speaks the language of justification in regard to Tamar, recognizing his own unrighteousness in the whole affair. “When confronted with his own treachery and double standards, he humbled himself. This self-humiliation, something like repentance or confession of guilt, changed Judah. When he finally saw himself and humbled himself, he became a new kind of person.”[24] While Joseph resisted the temptation of Potiphar’s wife, Judah succumbed to the temptations of a prostitute. Yet, Judah’s failure occasioned an opportunity for repentance evidenced in two ways. First, Judah did not have relations with Tamar again (Gn. 38:24) and we may presume, he did not with any other prostitute either. Second, Judah demonstrates a renewed commitment to his family that will manifest itself later in Egypt. No such transformative event takes place in Joseph’s life. Though he was brought down, Joseph was never humbled. He never drifted from his aspirations to exercise power like an Egyptian. Judah, humbled by this embarrassing revelation by his daughter-in-law, becomes the kind of servant and sacrificial leader befitting the people of Israel.
Judah’s story is not picked up again until chapter 42 when the sons of Jacob are sent to Egypt to buy grain during the famine. Joseph recognizes his brother, but they do not recognize him. Joseph takes the opportunity to test them rather than reveal his identity. After supplying them with the grain they had purchased, he insists that the next time they come to Egypt for grain, they must bring Benjamin, Jacob’s favorite son, with them (Gn. 42:20). When the brothers return with Benjamin for more grain, Benjamin is falsely accused of stealing Pharaoh’s silver cup and Joseph threatens to arrest Benjamin and make him his slave (Gn. 44:17). It is Judah who offers himself up as a substitute for Benjamin on account of the grief that would consume Jacob were he to be separated from Benjamin. Judah had led the conspiracy to lie to Jacob about Joseph, but now says, “let me see not the evil that would find out my father!”[25] Judah would lay down his life for his youngest brother to spear his father the grief of losing him. According to Kidner, Judah’s intercession for Benjamin demonstrates “a selfless concern proved to the hilt in the plea not for mercy but for leave to suffer vicariously.”[26] Jacob has truly changed. He is now the leader of his brothers, not by selling a brother into slavery and lying to his father, not by dominating them and insisting they bow to him, but by giving his life to protect his family, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and his father, Jacob. Seeing that Judah has changed, Joseph holds back no longer and reveals his identity to his brothers. Jacob comes down to Egypt to join his sons, bringing all that he had with him, and lived in the land of Goshen until his death.
Epilogue
The story of the generations of Jacob does not end with the reunion of the brothers and the resettling of the family in Goshen. Although the questions about whether Jacob can keep his family together and whether that family will survive the famine to grow into a nation in fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham are important questions that have been resolved, the larger question about who is fit to lead the sons of Israel in posterity and who is to receive the blessing that carries with it the hope of redemption and blessing for the world remains. The latter half of Genesis 47 tends to be passed over in the Genesis account by many commentators and feels like an epilogue to the climax of the drama that culminated in Joseph’s revelation of himself to his brothers and the reconciliation of Jacob’s family. However, the narrator’s intent beginning in 47:13 is to prepare the reader for the twist that is to come in Jacob’s dying words for each of his sons at the end of the story. Even though Joseph’s childhood dream of his brothers bowing down to him has been fulfilled in his brother’s obeisance before him, he is not to be the leader of Israel. Thus, the remainder of chapter 47 highlights the reality that Joseph has truly become an Egyptian ruler and to explains how the subsequent Pharaohs of Exodus would come to dominate their kingdom.
Egypt is not merely a nation or territorial region in Scripture but serves as an archetype of tyranny that is fundamentally at odds with what Israel is supposed to be. The perennial temptation of Israel as a nation is to rely on Egypt for protection and for this they are judged by God and sent into exile (Isaiah 31:1-9). In Genesis 47 then, we learn that it was Joseph that serves as an instrument whereby the Egyptian state comes to dominate and enslave its people. Joseph is a model of a king like all the other nations that the people of Israel wrongly desire in I Samuel 8.[27] Whatever Joseph’s virtues and however God providentially used Joseph to protect his people during a time of famine, Joseph is not the model leader for Israel, nor are his sons, born to an Egyptian woman, fit to be the princely tribe. Rather Joseph, much like Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon or Cyrus in Persia, is used as God’s instrument, to accomplish a greater purpose. In this case, God uses Joseph to raise up the kings of Egypt that He might demonstrate his power and be glorified in delivering his people out of their hand.
The twist of the story is revealed in Genesis 49 as Jacob prophesies over his sons on his death bed. In verse 8, Joseph’s dreams in chapter 37 are reversed as it is to Judah that Jacob says, “your brothers shall praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow down to you” (NASB). Long before there will be a king in Israel, Jacob says that the scepter will not depart from Judah’s hand. When it comes time for the twelve tribes to take the land of Canaan, it is Judah that will go up first and lead them in battle. But this is not an Egyptian description of a king. As Judah demonstrated what Israel’s king was supposed to be by giving himself up as a substitution for Benjamin, so also an allusion to a future sacrifice is made in Jacob’s prophesy: “he has washed his garments in wine and his venture in the blood of grapes.” St. Cyril of Alexandria makes a powerful Christological connection to Isaiah 63:1-2.
That he would make his flesh red with his own blood when he was nailed to the tree and pierced by a spear, it makes manifest when it says, “He will wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of grapes.” And so, the divine Isaiah also, in speaking of Christ ascending into heaven, says that the holy angels, the powers on high, ask, “Who is this that comes from Edom, with red garments from Bozrah?” And again he says, “Why are your garments red, and your robes like those of someone who has trodden the winepress?”[28]
Like Judah, Christ would be exalted as king, but only after his humiliation.
Joseph receives arguably the second-best blessing from his father in Genesis 49:22-26. He is blessed with fruitfulness. Indeed, Joseph receives a double portion among the sons of Israel as his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, will become adopted sons of Jacob and each become a father of a tribe. It will be the tribe of Ephraim, the second of Joseph’s sons, who receives the blessing of Abraham’s right hand and will produce great leaders in Israel that stand along the Judahite warrior kings. The Ephraimite Joshua stands beside the Judahite Caleb as the only two spies that give a positive report about the land of Canaan in Numbers 14. It is the Ephraimite Samuel who anoints the first king of Judah in I Samuel 16. However, it will also be the Ephraimite Jeroboam that will challenge the Davidic monarchy and lead ten tribes away to form a separate kingdom. It is the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat in erecting two golden calves to worship from which the northern kingdom will not depart leading to their ultimate destruction by Assyria. The tribe of Ephraim would ultimately be lost. Judah’s tribe alone would carry on as heir to the promise until the coming of the Messiah through whom Abraham’s family would be a blessing to the world.
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Notes
[1] Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 208. “{T] Hebrew for ‘lad,’ na’ar, has a secondary meaning, clearly salient here, of assistant or subaltern. The adolescent Joseph is working as a kind of apprentice shepherd with his older brothers.”
[2] St. Cyril of Alexandria. Glaphyra on the Pentateuch, Volume 1: Genesis, trans. Nicholas P. Lunn, of The Fathers of the Patristic Church Series (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 275. This is possible given that Joseph will say in Genesis 50 that what the brothers had meant for evil, God meant for good. He could be speaking narrowly of their act of selling him into slavery but also could be speaking of the entirety of their behavior toward him when he was young.
[3] Alter, 208.
[4] Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1997), 598.
[5] Gary Schnittjer, Torah Story, Second Edition: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023), 132.
[6] Ross, 598.
[7] Ross, 599-600
[8] Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 516.
[9] Alter, 210.
[10] Kass, 518-519.
[11] Kass, 541. Kass notes that this description of Joseph is identical to the description of his mother, Rachel, in Genesis 29:17. As Jacob was overwhelmed with Rachel’s beauty, so will Potiphar’s wife be overwhelmed by Joseph. For Kass, this raises a question about how beautiful people like Joseph present themselves. Was Joseph, even in his faithfulness, flaunting his attractiveness and toying with Potiphar’s wife? While the text does not outright say this, the linguistic connections raise questions worthy of discussing Joseph as a character more deeply.
[12] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 137.
[13] Kass, 544. Kass points out that though the narrator uses the name Yahweh, Joseph uses the generic name for God that may be translated in either the singular or plural. There is an explanation for this that Kass does not consider as the name “Yahweh” would not be revealed to His people until the Exodus. However, Kass still makes a valid point here in that Joseph does not speak of the ‘elohim of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, either.
[14] John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis: Volume Second, trans. John King (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library). https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom02/calcom02.xviii.i.html. Accessed May 7th, 2025. [on Genesis 40:5]
[15] Kidner, 204.
[16] Alter, 231.
[17] Kass, 560.
[18] Kass, 560. Alter agrees: “The baker executes a kind of bizarre parody of his normal function, balancing three baskets of bread one on top of the other. This precarious arrangement may imply…a sense that the baker has been negligent in his duties (232).
[19] Augustine, “Questions on Genesis” Q. 134 in Writings on the Old Testament, part of The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Brooklyn, N.Y: New City Press, 1990), 67. Augustine observes that this is the third time in the Torah in which the spirit of God is referenced. The first time was in Genesis 1:2 where it hovered over the waters. The second time is Genesis 6:3 when God says that his spirit will not remain with men forever after seeing the wickedness that prevailed over the earth. The third time is here out of the mouth of Pharaoh. The question remains whether Pharaoh is acknowledging the true God here or if he is elevating Joseph to the position of a god. Joseph receives a new name in 41:45, which identifies him with the creator and sustainer of life. Kass, 569.
[20] Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis [on Genesis 41:40].
[21] Kass, 566.
[22] St. Cyril of Alexandria. Glaphyra on the Pentateuch, Volume 1: Genesis, trans. Nicholas P. Lunn, of The Fathers of the Patristic Church Series (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 301.
[23] Alter, 222. In Gn. 37:32, Judah had said to Jacob, “Recognize, pray, is this your son’s tunic or not?”
[24] Schnittjer, 136.
[25] Alter, 265.
[26] Kidner, 217.
[27] I Samuel 8:15. Samuel warns the people that the king will take ten percent of their grain and vineyards and give them to his officers and servants. Joseph takes twenty percent of the grain from the people during the years of plenty to stock Pharaoh’s storehouses (Gen. 41:34) and sells it back to them in times of famine in exchange for their money, livestock, and land.
[28] Cyril of Alexandria, 329.
