Mennonite Weekly Review

For all we know, Cinderella and her prince are still living happily in some magical kingdom. But Joseph’s narrator is a realist and, after last week’s emotional climax, must connect the lineage of Abraham to Moses more than 500 years later. The brothers return to Canaan to report to Jacob that Joseph is still alive, whereupon the whole extended family packs up and moves to Egypt (Gen. 45:16-47:12). Joseph and Jacob reunite (46:28-30), and the tribe of Israelites are given the best land in Goshen for their flocks and herds (47:1-6).

On one hand, the main characters do live happily ever after and die in great old age — Jacob at 147 and Joseph at 110 — amid all the dignity and pomp reserved for royalty, including embalming. A huge crowd carries Jacob’s body back to his tomb in Canaan (50:4-14). Several generations later, Joseph dies and is embalmed 50:22-26). (Never mind the remarkable longevity and age discrepancies.)

Does Joseph forgive?

But after Jacob dies, the brothers want one nagging uncertainty cleared up. What if Joseph has been kind to them only because of their father? Will he now take full revenge? When Joseph revealed himself to them, he never outright said he forgave them. So they apparently make up the story that Jacob wanted Joseph to specifically forgive his brothers (50:15-17). Joseph gets the point and tells them not to be afraid. “Am I in the place of God?” he says, implying that revenge is not an appropriate human response (a position Paul picks up later in Rom. 12:19). So everyone is relieved — except Joseph still never uses the word “forgive.”

Joseph’s darker side

We often overlook Joseph’s darker side. Though the Hebrews were the winners in this story, ordinary Egyptians ended up as losers. During the years of plenty, Joseph, with Pharaoh’s consent, took 20 percent of all crops harvested (41:34). The grain was not paid for; the text just says it was gathered and stored, an amount beyond measure (41:47-49).

But when famine struck, Joseph did not give grain back; he sold it (47:14). Since neither Egypt nor Canaan had any grain, he took all their money in exchange. And when that was gone and Egyptians begged for food, Joseph demanded their livestock in exchange. By the next year, all they could offer were their land and their own bodies as slaves for Pharaoh. Joseph did not relent. He “bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh… . As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other” (47:20-21). At the end of the famine he gave them seed to sow, now as slave-sharecroppers on Pharaoh’s land, owing 20 percent to the government of any produce they grew (47:23-26).

A clever administrator indeed! And a not-so-benevolent dictator. We cannot miss parallels to global corporations today, to bankers and traders and hedge-fund managers who gamble with other people’s money on credit-default swaps and subprime mortgages. Joseph might have been quite comfortable on today’s Wall Street!

Why does the narrator include this aspect of Joseph? Court records from Egypt, Assyria and other ancient empires only report glorious victories and noble, mighty rulers. Because, I think, the narrator is recounting the larger story of the Hebrews. Between Genesis 50 and Exodus 1, we find the tables have turned. The Joseph who enslaved the Egyptians has lost favor, and now we know why his people have been enslaved. Happily-ever-after is not, after all, forever.

What parallels do you see between Joseph’s story and our global and national economies today?