And his brethren also went and fell down before his face (Gen 42-44)

Once again, no commentary from the SAB on chapters 42 or 43, and I'm not sure I have much to say either. Basically, Joseph is now in a position of authority, and he has a run-in with his (half-)brothers, who don't recognize him. They bow down before him, and he remembers the dream he had had about his brothers' sheaves of wheat bowing before his sheaf; no doubt this is the fulfillment of that dream. For whatever reason, (perhaps to get even?) he pretends not to know them, and makes things difficult for them, accusing them of being spies, throwing them into jail, and sending them back to Canaan with Simeon locked up in prison. He tells them that Simeon will not be released, nor will they get more supplies until they bring back Benjamin. (Possibly, Joseph is worried that they have killed Benjamin as they tried to kill him.) On the way back, they discover that their money has been restored to their sacks, and their father refuses to let them go back with Benjamin. This refusal is actually rather oddly insensitive, as Jacob's wording of the refusal is such that he is suggesting Benjamin is his only son, and he cares not for the fate of Simeon rotting away in an Egyptian prison, nor the nine other sons standing before him.

Eventually, though, they run out of food (although apparently not all kinds of food), and they have no choice but to go back. They decide that they dare not go back to Egypt without Benjamin and double the money they had brought before. When they get there, Joseph invites them to his house for lunch, which makes them suspicious. Certainly it's not customary for every foreigner that comes to Egypt looking for food to be invited to a meal with the viceroy of Egypt? Thinking it might be a chance to pull them aside and accuse them of stealing, they make sure to point out that they have brought back the money from last time. They are assured the money is of no consequence, and Joseph seats them around the room in order of their age, which surprises them since they still don't know he knows them. The author notes that the Egyptians, Joseph, and the brothers all eat in separate groups, as Egyptians find Hebrews to be an "abomination", perhaps a hint of what is to become of the relationship between them in the future.

Finally in chapter 44, they are sent on their way with provisions, but once again, they are given back their money, and Benjamin is given a silver cup as well. Joseph lets them get a head start, and then sends his servants after them to accuse them of stealing, but only the cup, which they are to claim Joseph uses for purposes of divination. (In Robert Alter's notes on 44:1, he points out that there is a sort of nightmare logic in this repeated returning of their money to them. After all, the great burden of guilt they carry is that they sold their brother into slavery in Egypt for some silver, and now they find that try as they might, they can't give their silver back to Egypt!)

The servants catch up to them and insist that they have stolen the "magical" cup. The SAB has issue with divination, and I would too, but there's no indication that Joseph really does perform divination with the cup, only that he wants his brothers to believe he does. The brothers are indignant, and certain that they are innocent, so much so that they insist that whoever holds the cup can be put to death, and the rest can be slaves. (This is another interesting allusion to their guilt over Joseph.) Joseph's servant accepts their claim of innocence, but suggests a lesser sentence: that only the person with the cup should become a slave, and the rest go free. The cup is found in Benjamin's sack, and the brothers are very distressed, because they know they can't possibly go back to Canaan without Benjamin. (Once again, this may be a testing on Joseph's part to see if his half-brothers will show any loyalty to his full brother.)

When they return to Joseph, Judah pleads that all of them ought to be put into slavery. Perhaps this because he knows there's no use going back without Benjamin, but it may also be because he realizes that it's himself and the other nine older brothers who have the real guilt here. Finally, Judah pleads that he himself would be taken, rather than the youngest, explaining the whole story of how Benjamin is his father's favorite child (Yes, as the SAB notes, Benjamin is not a "little" child or "lad", but an adult, however I think Judah is emphasizing the fact that Benjamin is the youngest, and thus the most vulnerable of the lot of them. I'm well into my thirties, and my mother occasionally refers to me as her "baby", somewhat to my wife's distaste.), and to go back without him would cause him to die of a broken heart. Judah, the brother who first suggested selling Joseph into slavery out of jealousy, now suggests that he himself should go into slavery to save his brother. As we will see in the next chapter, all of this finally becomes too much for Joseph.

The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure (Gen 41)

No comments at all from the SAB on this next chapter, so once again, I guess they have no problem with someone having a dream that accurately predicts the future. Actually, if you have no problem with that, you'd probably have little problem with Joseph's interpretation in this instance, as these dreams seem almost obvious.

So, two years have passed since Joseph thought he might get a chance to get out of prison, and the big break comes when Pharaoh has two dreams that wake him up at night. (Another interesting theme that repeats itself throughout the Bible is something important happening when a king finds himself unable to sleep.) Although these dreams seem the most obvious of any dreams interpreted in the Bible, nobody among Pharaoh's staff can explain them. Perhaps God didn't let them, because the time had finally come for Joseph to be moved into prominence?

In any case, the butler remembers Joseph, and mentions him to Pharaoh, so he is sent for. When the situation is explained, Joseph (like Daniel later on) gives credit for the interpretation to God. There are going to be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. Joseph suggests that if food is stored up in the first seven years, the latter seven will go more smoothly for Egypt, so Pharaoh ought to find somebody who can oversee such a project. Pharaoh thinks this is a great idea, and chooses Joseph himself, and gives him some fancy clothes and a royal ring. (Interestingly, whenever Joseph changes his position in the world, he also changes his clothing!)

Joseph carries out his duties, gets married, has a couple of kids, and eventually, the predicted famine comes, and all the surrounding nations come to Egypt for provisions, of course including Canaan.

Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions (Gen 40)

The SAB doesn't have much to say about chapter 40, but let's see what we have here, because it's a bit of a turning point in Joseph's life. One of the things I find interesting here, as I mentioned back in chapter 37, is that Joseph, for being such a supposed expert at interpreting dreams, never bothered to interpret his own (or if he did, it's not mentioned).

While Joseph is spending his time working away in prison, two men come to be interred with him, both servants of Pharaoh. One is the royal baker, and the other, while called a "butler" in this translation is really more of a wine steward or cup bearer, which is clear enough from the context anyway. It's been interpreted by some, and it makes sense, that these two men may be suspects in a criminal matter, and they are being held in jail until the matter is cleared up. Thus they both go in together and come out together, being implicated for the same crime. This is another interesting moment which is often thought as being symbolic of the Eucharist, these two men representing bread and wine.

In any case, the two men each have a dream, and the two dreams are similar. They both involve the dreamer going back into service for Pharaoh in an odd, supernatural fashion, and also both involve the number three. (Note that in each instance of Joseph dealing with dreams, there are two dreams that have an important number (12, 3 and 7) which is the same in both.) The butler/cupbearer's dream is a pleasant one, and the interpretation is pleasant. The baker's dream is an unpleasant one, and the interpretation is rather unpleasant. In both instances, Joseph uses a variation of the phrase "Pharaoh shall lift up thy head"; in the butler's case, the idiom means "Pharaoh will show you favor" while in the baker's case, the addition of "from off thee" indicates that the baker is going to be executed by beheading. When the interpretations come true (which they do), Pharaoh "lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker", which in this case means that he singles them out for special treatment. I love the way the Bible plays with words, in this case showing the flexibility of a simple idiom.

The SAB apparently finds Pharaoh's treatment of the baker to be cruel and/or violent. Actually, the KJV understates it a bit, as it's likely that what is really going on here is not that the baker was put on a gallows, but rather that he was beheaded, and his body and/or head was impaled on a spike for the birds to eat. So yeah, it is a bit violent and cruel. I find it interesting that the SAB has no issue with the fact that Joseph was able to predict the future.

I want to add a final note here about a minor point in language that also covers an issue I have heard elsewhere, although don't see mentioned in the SAB. The butler/cupbearer fails to "remember" Joseph after he's restored to his position. This word for "remember" is used many times in reference to God, perhaps most well-known and notably in Genesis 8:1 and Exodus 2:24. Some people have wondered, "If God is 'remembering' Noah or the Israelites, does that mean he had 'forgotten' them?" Not at all. The word that the KJV prefers to translate as "remember" has different shades of meaning, one of which is the second-most preferred translation: "mention" (v. 14, same word in Hebrew). The general idea is that when one "remembers" something, it is brought to the full attention. Joseph is saying, "Make sure Pharaoh knows about me and gives some attention to my wrongful imprisonment!" In the many cases where the Bible says God "remembered" something, the idea is that God decided to turn his full attention to dealing with a specific problem, because its time had come. Joseph was forgotten for two years, but frankly, his time had not yet come.

It was not you that sent me hither, but God (Gen 37)

I'm sure the legions of regular readers (all three of them) have been wondering when I'm going to post again. Sorry, I've really been busy with a lot of stuff, and I hate the fact that I've gone from posting pretty much every day to about once a week. I'm going to try to be more regular in this, but no promises. After all, I should have been through Genesis by now at the rate I started, and I'd rather not take years and years to get to the relatively easy SAB notes on Revelation 22.

So, as I've been looking forward to, this is the story of Joseph, who is a major character in the Bible, a major player in Israelite history, and the person whose story will see us out of this book into Egypt to set up for the main event of the Torah, the Exodus.

Joseph has a few things going on with him that set him up for trouble. He's his father's favorite son which is no secret to his brothers at all, a bit of a tattletale which never makes for popularity, and he has what may or may not be an inflated sense of his own importance. Due to his dream and due to the way Joseph is generally treated in the midst of trouble, I think the SAB is right in saying that Joseph is also God's favorite among the brothers. Joseph is an interesting fellow, though, in that he is one of the few major characters in the Bible that the Bible never says anything bad about. Well, at least no outright sins are mentioned, we see later that he's a bit of trickster like his father, but he doesn't use it to his own advantage particularly. There seems to be good reason for him to be the favorite.

Joseph has some dreams that seem to be indicating that some day, all of his family will come to him and bow before him. This is pretty much the only time his father gets angry at him, rebuking, "Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?" (This actually brings up a point that the SAB probably should take notice of, at least for the sake of giving us food for thought. Joseph's mother is dead. One might wonder what Jacob means by this rebuke, and whether the dream is fully coherent in its symbolism. I always note, however that despite Joseph's reputation as a dream interpreter, he never attempts to explain these two dreams himself.)

So one day, Israel sends Joseph off to check out what his brothers are doing, and tell on them if they're doing anything they shouldn't be. Turns out they're not where they said they would be, so Joseph has to track them down.

When he approaches them, they see him coming, and get the idea that they should kill him. After all, they will hardly have to someday bow down to Joseph if he's dead, right? The original plan is to kill him, and then just toss the body into a hole in the ground so he won't even have the dignity of a proper funeral.

Reuben, the eldest, seems to have enough of his head about him to realize this is not a good idea, so he tells his brothers, "Let's just toss him in a pit without hurting him," implying that maybe they could just let him starve to death in a hole in the ground and not actually directly cause his death themselves. Of course, he's thinking he'll just come back and get Joseph out of the hole later, either out of pity, or perhaps in hopes that he'll gain some favor with his father indirectly through Joseph. So Joseph ends up in the pit, and the brothers take a lunch.

While they're lunching, some traveling merchants come by. They were either Ishmaelites or Midianites; the story is very garbled about it. In fact, this garbling is a bit of a problem, and part of the problem is that it's not clear exactly what type of problem it is. Is it a contradiction as the SAB says? Is it an anachronism, as any "Ishmaelites" at this time would be cousins, and probably wouldn't be referred to in that way? Or is it a technical inaccuracy due to a tendency to call people from a particular area by a certain name whether they're of that tribe or not? I'm inclined towards the latter, both because it's the least of the three errors (and therefore selfishly the most appealing to the apologist!) and because Judges 8:22, 24 suggests that "Ishmaelites" and "Midianites" were somewhat interchangeable terms even in times far removed to the future.

Judah suggests to his brothers that rather than killing Joseph, they could sell him to the merchants as a slave. Maybe he wants to make some money, or maybe he's thinking, "Well, sure, selling your half-brother into slavery isn't the best thing in the world, but it's not as bad as murder, right?" As a child, I always thought this was a bit of irony in that the brothers as a group wanted Joseph dead, but at least two of them as individuals didn't think he deserved it; failing to speak their minds, Judah's plan to save Joseph unwittingly messes up Reuben's much better plan that he didn't know about. Somehow Reuben is not present when this plan is carried out, an oddity that admittedly leaves the suggestion that some scholars no doubt favor that this story, with its confusion over Midianites/Ishmaelites and Reuben/Judah trying to save Joseph's life in a sneaky manner is actually two (or more) oral traditions woven together imperfectly. I'm willing to admit this is also a possibility, as I discussed way back at the beginning. The essential irony of the story in the end is, in Joseph's words to his brothers, "...ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good..."

Strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods (Gen 28)

Okay, chapter 28 has some more meat to it, although many of these questions are fairly easy to address.

First, the SAB notes as "intolerance" the fact that Isaac didn't want his son to marry a Canaanite woman. This may indeed be intolerance, but it's intolerance with a point. Even people who dislike intolerance tend to be intolerant of intolerant people. In this case, it was very likely the point that Isaac felt all of the local women were too pagan to be suitable for his sons, and was afraid these women would turn his heart from serving God. Apparently, the land of Abraham's youth is still considered a better place to get a wife, although I'm never too sure why.

Jacob goes off to his uncle Laban (Rebekah's brother) to look for a wife. This is a convoluted family tree by this time (Abraham marries his sister, Isaac marries his double-first cousin once removed, and Jacob is heading towards marrying his first cousin/double-second cousin once removed), so I had to sketch it out to track who was who and answer the question of who Laban's actual father is. It's Bethuel. Yes, the next chapter calls him the "son of Nahor", but (and I think I covered this before, but it's certainly not a little-known concept) saying that X is the son of Y is often simply a way of saying Y is an ancestor of X, not necessarily directly. Nahor is Laban's grandfather, and I'm speculating that the reason Jacob calls Laban the "son of Nahor" is that he's choosing a more prominent member of that family or perhaps accentuating the more distant relation that nonetheless is traced through only males by way of Abraham.

After Jacob is sent away, Esau gets married to yet another wife. No, this is not okay; it's wrong on numerous levels. Esau is going against his parents' wishes to marry this woman, he's already got wives, and he seems to be doing it to get some sort of reaction from his parents. As I said before, Esau is not set up as an example of good morality.

Jacob has a dream along the way, and he sees a ladder going up to Heaven, and God reiterates the promises He gave to Jacob's father and grandfather. Did this promise come true? Maybe, it depends on how you read it. He calls the place Bethel or "House of God", which he does again many chapters later. The SAB sees this as absurd, suggesting "I guess the name didn't take the first time." It's funny, because I suggested that as a slight possibility in the case of Beersheba, but here, I'm fairly sure that's exactly what happened. Sometimes it's not clear what the full details of a story are; I, like many no doubt, have a tendency to envision the patriarchs wandering lonely through the desert, but forget that they had a rich possession of livestock and servants. In this case, though, that lonely picture seems fitting. If Jacob was traveling with an entourage, would he be using a rock as a pillow? I think Jacob was traveling alone with the clothes on his back, and at this time he originally calls the place Bethel, there's nobody there. The name didn't stick, because only Jacob knew it for over a decade.

Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil (Gen 12)

Okay, for those who read this blog, and think I'm too long-winded, here's the short version of the commentary for chapter 12: Yes, Abram essentially lied to Pharaoh, and it was wrong for him to do so. See you on Monday.

Now the long-winded version that touches on the finer points. There's a lot that I hear said about the early part of Abram's life that is far less admirable than much of the latter part of his life. Some people tend to think that Abram was this guy who, upon hearing God's word on a matter, just dropped everything and ran off to do God's will. After all, this is the guy who's often referred to by people as the "father of faith". Well, although I've already responded to the question of Abram's age at the time of his leaving Haran, there is something else that needs to be noted about Acts 7:4; the Lord told Abram to leave his family and country, but he waited until his father died to leave. Also, you'll note in Acts 7:2 that Abraham got the message from God before he lived in Haran to leave it all behind, but he went with his whole family to Haran. Then he stayed there for some time, until his father died, and Haran (although it's not real clear from the story) isn't actually in Canaan, but a bit to the north of that land. Assuming Stephen got his story straight, which I haven't heard anyone question except for in a few minor details, then Abram is really dragging his feet about following God's orders. In the end, when his father finally dies and he goes, he brings along his nephew!

Eventually, Abram makes it to Canaan, and God gives him some sort of vision. Now, this is one of those odd sticking points about Judeo-Christian theology that's hard to explain well. The SAB asks here, as in many places, whether or not God can be seen, and it's obviously a tough question to answer, since the obvious answer is "yes and no..." God, in His true form, is a spirit being, and therefore not visible in the normal sense. On the other hand, there are many verses in the Bible, starting with this one, that say that God "appeared" to someone. How does that work? Well, if this is a vision or a dream, there are things that can happen in a dream or vision that don't quite make sense in normal terms. I once met President Clinton in a dream, myself, and have had a few "visions" of Jesus Christ, although not of a prophetic sort like Abram seems to be having here. I think the thing with these sort of "appearances" is that God is not so much physically visible as that He is creating some sort of physical manifestation of Himself as a physical representative of Himself on earth. Although men cannot see God, He does make Himself known in various ways. Really, this sort of "appearance" of God, although hard for me to put into words well seems less of a difficulty to reconcile with claims of God being invisible than the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus. Jesus Himself said that, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;" yet also had said, "Not that any man hath seen the Father..." Jesus is being very cryptic, no doubt about it.

So after Abram spends so much time dragging his feet getting to Canaan, he ends up leaving there shortly after he arrives, and heads down to Egypt. Apparently, Abram hasn't yet learned to trust that God will see him through the famine, nor to keep him safe in Egypt. He also may have made the mistake of assuming that the Egyptians were men with no moral scruples, and he asks his wife Sarai, well, not so much to lie as just hold back a little part of the truth. Really, though, holding back such an important part of the truth is no better than flat-out lying, and certainly when they came to take Sarai away to Pharaoh, he should have told the truth at that time, at the very least.

So "the Princes of Pharaoh" (I assume his sons) take Sarai away to Pharaoh, and he apparently thinks she's pretty hot, because it appears he's getting ready to marry her. He gives Abram a bunch of stuff (a bride-price?), gives her a place to stay in his house, and in verse 19, says that marrying her was a high likelihood. (I think this shows that Abram should have thought higher of the Egyptians than he did, but too late for that!) Of course, she's already married to Abram, and God is apparently not happy this is going on, so He sends some plagues on Egypt. Now, it may seem very unfair, and I myself think that Abram should have been punished more than simply being thrown out of the country, which seems to be what happens at the end of the chapter. However, I think in this case it's less about fairness than appropriateness. God is sending a message to Pharaoh that despite Abram's reluctance to stand up for what's right, He's not going to stand for this going forward. The nature of the plague is not specified, and I'd suppose it was just enough to get Pharaoh's attention, and it worked. Pharaoh gives Sarai back, and kicks the couple out, so they go back to Canaan where they belong.

That's pretty much the facts of the story, but there's an interesting hidden agenda that's more in the area of speculation, and worth noting. There's an interesting overarching theme that runs through the Old Testament in a subtle fashion, and we see a facet of it in the life of Sarai and Abram. In chapter 16, we have the odd incident of Sarai giving her maid Hagar as a concubine to her husband, but God rejects Hagar's son Ishmael as the rightful heir. Later on, after being renamed Abraham, and his wife dies, Abram has more children, but he sends all of them (including Ishmael) away from Canaan, knowing that eventually it will belong to the descendants of his true heir born of Sarai, Isaac. God is manipulating the events of the lives of the patriarchs so that the right heirs will be born at the right times in the right places; He's got a plan, and His plan involves some timing. For whatever reason, it was meant to be that Sarai's one and only child would be Isaac, and that Isaac would be born when Abraham was 100 years old. Why? All of this sets up for the maneuvering of the nation of Israel to be carried away into Egypt for a time to grow strong, until God could judge Egypt at the right time, and send the nation of Israel back to judge the Canaanites at the right time. Also, in the midst of all this, God is setting up a proper lineage specially selected for the future king of Israel, David, and his eventual descendant, Jesus Himself. This, as far as I can see, is the reason for the Bible setting up strange stories like not only this one, but the story of Judah and Tamar, and the story of Ruth and Boaz.