Jacob’s son. Gen 37:2-50:26
José (Heb. Yôsêf , “add El ” or “let El add ”; also appears in Fen. and Aram. texts; Gr. Ií‡sef ; Ií‡setos and Ií‡ses ; Ií‡sej ). According to Gen 30:24 the Hebrew word comes from the verb yâsaf, “to add” (that is, Joseph represents Rachel’s desire to receive another son from God). But v 23 would indicate that the author also had in mind a verb of the same assonance, ‘âsaf , “remove” (ie, Joseph specifies the removal of the shame of barrenness). 1. Son of Jacob by beloved Rachel, after a long period of barrenness. When he was born, his father had served Laban 14 years, making him 91 years old (cf Gen 41:46, 47; 45:6; 47:9); that is, 6 years before the family returned to Canaan (30:22-26; 31:41). Since Joseph was the firstborn of his favorite wife, Jacob showed favoritism for him, especially after Rachel’s death, by presenting Joseph with an expensive garment such as that worn by sons of nobles (37:3). The jealousy generated by this increased when Joseph told his brothers 2 dreams in which he had seen all the members of his family, including his parents, bowing down to him (vs 4-11). When he was 17 years old, Jacob sent him to Shechem to visit his brothers who herded his cattle. When he arrived at the place he found that they had gone to Dothan, so he searched for them there. As soon as his brothers saw him, they made plans to kill him, but Rubén, hoping to save him, persuaded them to abandon him in an empty cistern. However, when in Reuben’s absence a caravan of Ishmaelites and Midianites passed by on their way to Egypt, the other brothers sold him as a slave to the merchants. To deceive his father, they stained Joseph’s clothing with the blood of a kid that they killed for this, and showed him the clothing, telling him that they had found it in the field, Jacob concluded that Joseph had been torn apart by some animal wild (vs 12-33). Arriving in Egypt, the young man was sold to Potiphar, captain of the king’s guard (Gen 39:1). Joseph’s faithfulness and ability earned him the trust of Potiphar, who put him in charge of his house. But his good presence created feelings of lust in the heart of his master’s wife. When he persistently refused to accept her advances, she accused him of sensual intentions. As a result, she had him imprisoned. However, he soon gained the jailer’s trust by his fidelity and obtained a position of responsibility. In prison he interpreted dreams and predicted the fate of 2 fellow prisoners: the butler and the baker (Gen 39: 1-40: 23). Two years later, some 13 after he was sold into slavery, Pharaoh had disturbing dreams that his magicians could not explain. Then the royal cupbearer, who had long since been restored to his charge, remembered Joseph and told Pharaoh of his own experience. Called to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph told him that Egypt would experience first 7 years of plenty and then 7 years of famine, advising the king to store grain during the first 7 years for the years of need. Sensing Joseph’s wisdom, Pharaoh appointed the 30-year-old slave as vizier or Prime Minister – the 2nd in the kingdom – publicly giving him all the necessary authority (Gen 41:1-46). Joseph married Asenath, daughter of Potifera, priest of On (Heliopolis), the city where the great temple dedicated to the sun god Ra was located. Two sons were born to Joseph during the 7 years of plenty: Manasseh and Ephraim. In those years he took care to store food for future years of famine, when the Nile * would not flood the country due to lack of rain in central Africa. The drought that followed also affected Asia and created famine conditions in Canaan. Consequently, the sons of Jacob, like other Canaanites, went to Egypt to buy grain. They appeared before José without recognizing in the official – with Egyptian clothes, language and customs – the young man they had sold 20 years earlier. But José recognized them immediately. Remembering his childhood dreams and the jealousy and cruelty of his brothers, he tested them in various ways. At the same time, Jacob’s sons, thinking that his brother would still be a slave in 662 Egypt, suffered from anguish and remorse for how they had mistreated him. Finally, on his 2nd trip to Egypt, at the end of 2 years of famine, Joseph made himself known (Gen 42:1-45:8), convinced them of his healthy intentions and sent for his father and the whole family for them to move to Egypt. He established them in Goshen, perhaps the fertile Wâd§ Tumilât, not far from the Hyksa capital of Egypt, Avaris, Tanis, or Zoan* (Gen 45:9-46:30; cf Psa 78:12, 13). Fearing that his brothers could not withstand the temptations of the palace life of Egypt, he advised them to remain shepherds, * an occupation despised by the Egyptians. This would give them the opportunity to remain separate from the heathen and allow them to live together in a section of the country assigned to them (Gen 46:31-34). Pharaoh gave them a grand welcome when they arrived in Egypt, and granted Jacob an audience. 291. Seti I on his chariot, an engraving on the wall of the temple at Karnak; Joseph probably used such vehicles. During the next 5 years of need the country went through difficult times, and the Egyptian people were forced to sell all their properties and themselves to the royal house to get food; With the exception of the land of the priests and the temples, everything returned to Pharaoh, and then those who occupied it paid 1/5 of the harvest to the king (Gen 47:13-26). José took care of his relatives during that time. Shortly before he died, Jacob blessed Joseph’s 2 sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and adopted them as his own sons; consequently, the descendants of Joseph formed not one but 2 tribes. When Jacob passed away, according to Egyptian custom he was embalmed; he then he was taken to the family grave in Hebron, Canaan, for his burial. Joseph assured his fearful brothers to fear nothing from him after his father’s death (47:1-12, 27-31; 48:1-20; 49:33; 50:1-21) . Joseph reached 110 years of age, which in Egyptian literature was considered the perfect age, and before he died he commissioned his descendants to take his bones to Canaan for burial when they returned to the promised land (50:22 -26). In fulfillment of his wishes, on the occasion of the exodus his embalmed body was taken by the children of Israel to Canaan and buried near Shechem (Exo 13:19; Jos 24:32). Joseph’s account describes a truly Egyptian setting in numerous details, and is best suited to the Hyksos period, when the pharaohs were mostly Semitic foreigners; this is the period to which Joseph belongs, according to biblical chronology. No other time was more propitious for the Semites to occupy an honorable position in Egypt than that of Joseph; the Semitic Hyksos kings would have been inclined to place more trust in officials of related races than in any of the subjugated Egyptians, though they also employed Egyptians as officials, such as “Potifhar, Pharaoh’s officer, captain of the guard.” It is noteworthy that the Bible calls Potiphar an “Egyptian man” (Gen 39:1), a designation that would be superfluous and illogical for a high official of a native Egyptian pharaoh, but noteworthy if the king and ruling class were foreign. It is evident from the records that the change in the economic situation during the Hyksos period could have been due to what is told in the account of Joseph. During the Middle Kingdom, before the invasion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians enjoyed a system of private companies, and the land was private property, as well as the kings and the priests of the temples. The few surviving records from the Hyksos period shed no light on the matter, but in the 18th dynasty, after his expulsion, we find that all real estate was in the hands of the pharaoh, with the exception of those of the two temples. The change of ownership from private hands to the royal crown must have occurred during Joseph’s time. The account explains how all the property passed from the hands of the Egyptians to those of the crown during the famine years. This new system would give the kings of the 18th dynasty an opportunity to give land and other property to their veteran soldiers as a reward for their faithful service during the war of liberation. See Chronology (V, B); Egypt (V, 4). Egyptian monuments and documents also illustrate numerous details of the Joseph account and present many parallel cases: a demotic papyrus, now in the British Museum, tells how prisoners were released on the anniversary of the accession of the pharaoh (cf Gen 40:20) . The Egyptians paid close attention to dreams and believed that they contained 663 divine messages, as confirmed by many ancient records (cf 40:8; 41:8); therefore, professional magicians and fortune tellers were highly sought after for dream interpretation. Before Joseph could appear before Pharaoh, he had to take time to shave, although the order had been given that he be brought before the king with haste (Gen 41:14). In contrast to the Asiatics, the Egyptians wore a shaven face, and the account of the Egyptian Sinhué tells how he, returning to Egypt after a long exile in Asia, first shaved and changed his clothes, as if to be considered again a civilized person. Joseph’s investiture as vizier (Gen 41:41-44) can find parallels in the literary records of Egypt, and there are ancient paintings showing the king in the act of putting gold chains with pectorals on the necks of the high officials of Egypt. the. From the 13th century BC we get a document, the D’Orbiney papyrus, in the British Museum, which contains the “Story of the two brothers” who lived together. The elder’s wife made an attempt to seduce her younger brother while her husband was out in the field. As the young man did not agree to submit to her lust, her wife became so angry that she accused him to her husband of trying to force himself on her. The angry husband immediately went out to kill his younger brother, who, however, warned by a divine intervention, was able to escape. Later the truth was discovered, and the unfaithful wife was killed. The story continues with legendary affairs. Many modern commentators, fixing the origin of the Pentateuch in the 1st millennium BC, believe that the story of Joseph of Gen_39 has its origin in the Egyptian “Story of the two brothers”. However, in the 2 stories there is only one thing in common: an unfaithful woman who tries unsuccessfully to seduce a young man who lives in the house and then accuses him of attempted rape. Dramas like this may have occurred frequently in ancient times, just as they do today,…