Wednesday Bible Study: The end of all things- Genesis

Once again, I want to take our chapter- Genesis 50- in a different direction than usual.  Hopefully this will fall under the aegis of "Looking with God's view, not man's".

I guess I need to start in Proverbs- where I have been starting my Bible reading every day for the past few months.  And a pair of verses struck me as I read before taking on this task:

Pro 14:20  The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends. 
Pro 14:21  Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor. 

These two verses as simply as possible express that principle- Man sees the rich as blessed- but God sees you as blessed in blessing the poor.  It shows the complete 180 between looking our way and God's way.  Now, let me look at today's chapter that way.


Genesis 50 is neatly divided into three sections.  First is the aftermath of the death of Jacob.  Then comes the brothers of Joseph pathetically coming to him for mercy against the wrath they expect from him now that dear ol' dad isn't there to stop him- and Joseph's response.  Finally, the first book of the Bible closes with Joseph's own death.  And I think the first two parts are an enlightenment of the 2 verses from Proverbs.


In the first section, Joseph asks to take Jacob's body back to his original home.  Now, one thing to keep in mind here is that there was a connection between this Pharaoh and Jacob, if we go back a bit:

Gen 47:7  Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 
Gen 47:8  And Pharaoh said to Jacob, "How many are the days of the years of your life?" 
Gen 47:9  And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning." 
Gen 47:10  And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh. 

Jacob showed genuine concern for Pharaoh; in return, Pharaoh showed genuine interest in him.  Now, extend that for the seventeen years Jacob lived under Pharaoh in Egypt.  Then come back to the extreme respect Jacob was shown in death:

Gen 50:7  So Joseph went up to bury his father. With him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, 

Gen 50:8  as well as all the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's household. Only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen. 

Gen 50:9  And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company. 

Gen 50:10  When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation, and he made a mourning for his father seven days. 

Gen 50:11  When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning on the threshing floor of Atad, they said, "This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians." Therefore the place was named Abel-mizraim; it is beyond the Jordan. 

To look at this as the Canaanites did, there was no difference between Jacob and someone very high in the world of Egypt.  In other words, this poor old shepherd was treated as if he was a son of Egypt.  He was, in essence, one of them.

Now, let's look at a second case of, "He's one of us":

Gen 50:15  When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him." 

Gen 50:16  So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, "Your father gave this command before he died, 

Gen 50:17  'Say to Joseph, Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.' And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father." Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 

Gen 50:18  His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, "Behold, we are your servants." 

Instead of treating Joseph with respect born of they way he had treated them for these 17 years, now they pictured what THEY would do if they were him- and it scared the crap out of them.  What would Joseph do first?  Throw us in a hole?  Have us literally torn apart by wild beasts, as we had told our father of him?  Maybe sell us into slavery?  So they tried to scare him with the one thing that scared them in the past- their father.  "Your father gave this command before he died," they said in their defense.

Difference?  When you treat someone with honor and respect, "He's one of us" means something different than when you treat them with dishonor and disrespect.  They weren't looking at Joseph as he had earned it, they were looking as THEY had earned it.  Also, Jacob and Joseph had lived lives that earned them that respect.  On the other hand, the brothers had lived lives of arrogance at first, and fear in the end.  As a result, they became a self-fulfilling prophecy- just as Joseph's dream had long ago predicted, they ended up bowing before him.