Proper 15, August 16, 2026
Genesis 45: 1-15
Joseph in Egypt
Donald M. Seekins
WHEN I WAS A YOUNG BOY IN SUNDAY SCHOOL, many, many years ago, our teacher told us the story of Joseph, the favorite son of the Patriarch Jacob, and his sojourn in Egypt. It made a big impression on me, but perhaps not the one our Sunday school teacher wished to convey. What stayed with me was the generosity and good judgment of the Egyptian pharaoh, who because of Joseph’s talents and integrity promoted him to the second-highest position in the Egyptian kingdom and allowed his family to settle in the delta of the Nile River. I even imagined how much fun it would be to be Joseph, treated as a V.I.P. by a magnificent king in a spectacular, exotic court.
The story of Joseph as related in the Book of Genesis starts out almost as a soap opera. He was the favorite of his father Jacob, from whom he received the famous “coat of many colors,” and was hated by his ten half-brothers and one full-brother because the Patriarch loved him more than them. They plotted to kill him. However, they refrained from doing this and instead sold him into slavery to a passing caravan which was going from Canaan to Egypt. The caravan master paid them 20 shekels, which seems to have been the standard price for an adult slave at the time. The brothers took away his coat of many colors and smeared it with goat’s blood, telling Jacob that he had been killed by a wild beast.
Joseph became a slave of Potiphar, a high-ranking official in the Egyptian government. Eventually, he was promoted to the post of superintendent of Potiphar’s household. Unfortunately, Potiphar’s wife, Zuleika, tried to seduce him but he rejected her. She then made a false accusation which landed Joseph in jail. But Joseph had a special talent, which was the interpretation of dreams. The ancients believed that dreams were messages from the gods, or God. For example, a king in ancient China had a terrifying dream in which he was being killed by his enemy. He was sure this foretold his death, but his dream interpreter – who was none other than Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War – advised him that, in fact, the dream foretold that he would conquer and kill his enemy in a neighboring kingdom – which was what actually happened.
The point is, the interpretation of a dream is very important. To interpret it unwisely might be to make a fatal mistake.
Joseph showed his rare talent on several occasions, but the most important one was when the pharaoh had his famous dream of seven lean cows which devoured seven fat cows, and seven withered ears of grain which ate up seven fat ones. As we all know, Joseph, taken from jail to the throne room, told the pharaoh that this was a forecast of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. He advised the king to make sure of keeping plenty of grain in storage in order to have enough food to cover the bad years.
Incidentally, you may know that the Egyptians loved cats. They even had a cat-goddess named Bastet and punished anyone severely for harming or killing a cat. Cats were even mummified, like important people. Why? Not because cats are cute and cuddly, but because cats hunt rats and mice which otherwise would eat up the grain supply.
Impressed with the good quality of Joseph’s advice, the pharaoh appointed him vizier, which perhaps can be translated as prime minister. He also gave him a wife, the daughter of an Egyptian priest, by whom he had two children. When the famine came, people from many neighboring countries came to Egypt in order to purchase its surplus grain and Joseph was placed in charge of its sale. In order to obtain food, the people of Egypt sold their property, their land and themselves (as slaves) to the state.
As our passage from Genesis tells, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt to buy grain, and were eventually reconciled with him. The Patriarch’s entire family, including Joseph’s father Jacob, were permitted to settle in Goshen, which is the eastern part of the Nile Delta.
The pharaoh appears to have been a good judge of human nature. He said to Joseph: “foreasmuch as God has shown thee all this, there is none so discrete and wise as thou. Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled. Only in the throne shall I be greater than thou.” (Genesis 41: 38-40).
There is non-Biblical historical evidence for the veracity of the story of Joseph in Egypt. Scholars estimate that it took place around 1,700 BCE, more than two centuries before the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. At that time, a neighboring, possibly Semitic people known as the Hyksos took over parts of the Nile Delta and the Egyptians were forced to move their capital south, to Thebes. Joseph’s pharaoh may have been Merneferre Ay of the 13th Egyptian dynasty.
Practically nobody nowadays knows about the Hyksos, but they are credited by historians with developing the technology of the chariot drawn by two horses, which revolutionized warfare in the ancient world – as far away as ancient China.
In our modern world of competing nationalisms, it might seem strange that a powerful ruler would include foreigners among their top advisors and officials. But in the past, this was quite a common practice. In the 4th century BCE, Philip, king of Macedon, retained the Greek philosopher Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander. At the time, the Greeks and Macedonians were separate peoples. The Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci served as an advisor to Wanli, Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, in the early 17th century, teaching his officials about Christianity and western science. It is well-known that Ricci attempted to explain Christianity in terms of traditional Confucian ethical and social norms. Most famously in the west, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo claimed that Khubilai Khan, the ruler of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, made him the governor of Yangzhou, a rich Chinese port city in the delta of the Yangtse River. Many of Khubilai’s top officials were non-Chinese, which caused considerable resentment among the local population.
Among the responsibilities which the pharaoh gave Joseph was governorship of the Nile Delta, from which, apparently, the Hyksos had been expelled. As mentioned, he generously allowed the Israelites to settle there, in the land of Goshen.
The idea of a king allowing a large number of foreigners to settle in his realm may also seem strange to us in the 21st century, when the issue of immigration has caused so much controversy. In fact, until around the 17th century, most of the world had a chronic labor shortage, which not only inspired a more liberal attitude toward foreign residents in some places but also the less savory practice of taking slaves. Slaves were essentially ultra-cheap labor, and their availability explains the magnificence of ancient monuments like those which still can be seen along the Nile in Egypt today.
The history of slavery is the history of human civilization, East or West.
Over the generations the Israelites living in Goshen became wealthy and powerful. When they posed a threat to the power of the pharaohs, a war broke out between them and the indigenous Egyptians. The Hebrews lost, and were enslaved. This is the basis of the story of Exodus.
Around the time I was learning about Joseph in Sunday School, during the mid-1950s, Cecil B. DeMille released his super-spectacular epic The Ten Commandments. The movie opened with the famous movie director giving a prologue: “Should men be ruled by God’s law or be ordered about by the whims of a dictator? Are they the property of the state or free souls under God?”
Its theme was “freedom” and it was a seductive fable for America during the early years of the Cold War. Americans could imagine they were the children of Israel, struggling to liberate themselves – and the whole world – from the grip of the evil pharaoh – Nikita Krushchev. Yul Brynner, who played the role of the cruel and arrogant Pharaoh Rameses II (who historically had nothing to do with the Exodus), was born in Russia and spoke on screen with a Russian accent. The Ten Commandments was one of the most profitable films in Hollywood history, and is still screened today at Easter time each year on American TV.
Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, released the seven deadly plagues against the Egyptians to force the pharaoh to “let our people go.” This was a form of biological warfare in which, among other things, all the first sons and daughters of the Egyptians suddenly died. On Passover night, the streets of the Egyptian capital were filled with the wailing of the Egyptians while the Hebrews dined in peace, their houses marked by lambs’ blood. Another unsettling part of the film shows the pharaoh holding his dead first son in his arms, driven mad with grief because the old Egyptian gods could not bring him back to life.
The lesson of the Exodus – that our freedom can be won by destroying the freedom of others in the name of God – is very popular nowadays, especially in Washington and Israel. Sadly, the generosity and open-mindedness of the pharaoh of Joseph’s time is largely forgotten.
