To The Reader

Joseph brings 5 of his brothers and Jacob to meet Pharaoh. I want someone to find some ancient Egyptian artifact that records this meeting. Wouldn’t THAT be cool?! I wonder what Jacob looked like. Pharaoh seems to be rather astonished at his age of 130 but Jacob lets Pharaoh know that his age is nothing…

This is the fourth and final encounter between Jacob and Yahweh. Let’s recap the times that Jacob has met with the Lord: The first and last are dreams with 2 face-to-face meetings in the middle. It’s touching that Jacob stops at Beersheba. I know a lot of water has gone under the bridge since we…

These are such heartening, encouraging chapters aren’t they? To quote the fairy Fauna from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty… Joseph sets up his brothers with a test. Basically, Joseph frames Benjamin for theft so he can see how his brothers respond. Would they defend Benjamin or were they jealous of him too? Would they take this chance…

Joseph’s brother’s visit to Egypt #2… It’s been a while since the brothers returned from Egypt. (Minus Simeon). Long enough that they have used up all the grain they brought home. Jacob wanted to smack the boys upside the head for offering the information in Egypt that they had a younger brother. As the only…

Joseph’s brothers visit to Egypt #1… The famine is in full swing when Jacob hears that Egypt has grain for sale. Here’s a link to an episode of Tasting History about ancient Egyptian bread. You can watch it now or later. (Or not at all. I’ll never know. ) It will give you a better…

Two new guys move in to the cell block, the Matitre d’ and the Chef de Cuisine. Joseph gets assigned to “wait on them.” Think of the irony of that. They are the ones who usually wait on Pharaoh. In fact, they’re each in charge of a whole team of servers and chefs. Joseph waits…

This is an interesting pairing of chapters. Both pivot around a woman seducing a man- but for very different reasons and with very different results. You may be asking yourself why Joseph’s story gets interrupted by a kind of random account of Judah getting his daughter-in-law pregnant. There is a reason. But first… To better…

The story of Joseph being sold into slavery has multiple levels of meaning. At the most basic level, it is the story of a very dysfunctional blended family. If we “zoom out,” on another level it is a picture of the future family Israel. They are chosen and favored by God above all the other…

Of the many things that happen in chapter 35 I’d like to focus mainly on the Lord making Himself known to Jacob. We don’t know how God called Jacob to return to Bethel, (dream, encounter, vision), we just know that He did and Jacob’s immediate response involved a family-wide cleanup. Remember those teraphim (the household…

Oh… 😞 the incident with Dinah…ugh. Remember how I mentioned that Dinah was probably the little princess of the family? She has 11 big doting brothers. Well, the little princess is a teenager now (probably), and like all clueless teen girls thinks she needs to get out there and see what the big wide world…

Ok… right outa the gate we have another totally wild statement just nonchalantly dropped in the text: “Now as Jacob went on his way, the angels of God met him. And when he saw them, Jacob said, “This is God’s camp.” So he named that place Mahanaim.” Genesis‬ ‭32‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬ What. On. Earth just happened?!…