CHAPTER
X
Joseph
Gen. 37 to 50
Agnes M. Lawson
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to Bible Study
The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
Every youth
should be familiar with the history of
Joseph. King Midas had conferred on him
the power of transforming everything he
touched into gold; but had this gift not
been changed, Joseph would have starved.
In the modern Midas do we not behold the
shrinkage of the soul, it being unfed?
How much more desirable the gift of
Joseph, the power to transform every
event of life into good. What so easily
could have been evil in the life of
another, he turns into stepping stones
and mounts upon them to a position of
great power, saving the nations about
him, and feeding them through the years
of a great famine. “Perfect
adjustment to our environment would be
eternal life;” as long as human
life exists, the story of Joseph will
stand out as the symbol of direct
purposefulness.
With the
perspective that history gives us, how
easily we read the intents of the
Creator, and all His guidance of man.
Here is a family grown from a great
ancestor, Abraham, the product of a great
civilization. Another powerful
contemporaneous civilization exists; this
too must be in the consciousness of a
race who can transmit to succeeding
generations what is in its consciousness.
So this family must be transported to
Egypt, and Joseph is the bridge over
which they must be safely carried.
Joseph has
the inheritance that every child has a
right to have; he is the son of a woman
whom his father loved. Early in life he
develops the power of imagination, thus
imaging a great life. It is just as easy
to image a great life as it is a small
one, and it is far more interesting.
Joseph is a dreamer, i.e., he thinks
visions, images. It is Whitcomb Riley who
says,
”The dreamer lives
forever,
But the toiler dies in a day.”
It is the
mind that we put into our lives which
makes them, and those who use their
thoughts in this definite, constructive
way, are, in the language of the Bible,
Dreamers of Dreams.
Until French
soldiers, who were digging at the mouth
of the Nile, discovered the Rosetta
stone, which enabled us to read the
hieroglyphics of Egypt, this story of
Joseph seemed most improbable. How could
a foreign-born youth, one of an alien
race, enter into the land of the proud
Pharaohs and so quickly ascend to
political heights? The stories of this
great Book are amply verified. The
characters of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
Joseph are too valuable to reduce to
mythology. We are reading Egyptian
history now and we read that the Hyksos
or Shepherd Kings conquered Egypt and
reigned for several hundred years. These
kings were of Asiatic origin and would
gladly place one of the Semitic race in a
position of power provided he had the
fitness. It requires extraordinary
ability to rule a conquered people in
their own territory, and the prime
minister is the real ruler, so we know
that Joseph was a great statesman.
Joseph’s brethren were jealous of
him. His father had given him a coat of
Oriental embroidery; and this favored lad
of his father dreams his dreams of future
greatness, and with youth’s
indiscretion tells about it. They will be
rid of him, so he is sold into slavery
and deported into Egypt. Does he waste
time or energy in resentment or self
pity? Not he; that is no way out of the
dilemma. Joseph is a practical dreamer.
The one man in life who cannot be kept
down is the practical mystic; life
to such a one is a fascinating game and
he pits his own resources against
anything that can happen to him. Man is
always greater than any circumstance or
condition will he but hold fast to his
own God-given Mind.
Sold by his
brethren he enters Potiphar’s house
and his ability soon makes him chief
steward. Well favored, as well as
brilliant, he attracts the attention of
an unscrupulous woman. He will waste no
more time on vice than he will in anger,
self pity or revenge. Joseph is a man of
values and vice has no value. True to his
employer, he refuses to betray him and is
falsely imprisoned. Joseph does not know
how to stop, so he keeps right on; and
whatever was done in that prison, Joseph
was the doer of it.
Always
alert, he makes friends there and is not
daunted if they forget him, he will make
more and he will continue to do so until
he succeeds. The way out of that prison
is by friends and he will continue to
make friends. The friend and the
opportunity never fail to come to the one
who steadfastly looks for them in
faith.
The power of
Joseph comes from dealing with God only.
He harbours no revenge for any of those
who have injured him, they might mean it
for evil but God meant it for good. How
easy it is to forgive a fellow-being for
anything done to us if we but look
through the individual to the forces at
work for us. All nature is in league to
place us where we belong; and behind all
individuals whom we contact is a Power
that is not of themselves, and It is
working out Its purposes through them.
Holding this Power responsible for all
that occurs to us, we find that it always
measures up to the responsibility and we
have neither praise nor blame for our
associates.
We glory in
the innate goodness of mankind when we
find that the men who sold their brother
Joseph will protect Benjamin with their
lives. If this were a fairy story or a
melodrama, the wicked brothers would all
be punished; but this is true life in a
world watched over by Divine Love. A
father like Jacob, a brother like Joseph,
must of necessity redeem them. The only
punishment for sin that God desires is
correction of the sin; and man, when
touched by the God love, desires for his
enemy nothing but that he SEE.
Nothing that
anyone ever does to us really injures us,
only our own attitude of thought can do
that. All injury is actually
self-inflicted. Joseph’s brothers
did not injure him when they sold him
into slavery. Potiphar’s wife did
not injure him when she falsely accused
him; for the very simple reason that he
did not invest that power in them. If God
be all-power then there is no other
power, and the power of Joseph is seen to
be the reflection of the Power that he
believed in.
The families
of each of the eleven brothers become
eleven of the tribes of Israel.
Joseph’s name is not given to a
tribe, but the two half tribes of Ephraim
and Mannasseh, sons of Joseph, become the
twelfth tribe. The Hyksos Pharaoh would
welcome to Egypt and give to the twelve
sons of Jacob the fertile valley of the
Nile delta, the land of Goshen; for it
was greatly to their interest to invite
and give choice lands and positions to
all that were of Asiatic origin, thus
gaining cohorts that enabled them to keep
the conquered Egyptians in subjection.
Thus they strongly entrenched themselves
in the land, and securely held this
kingdom for five hundred years.
Again we
have the two brothers. Joseph brings his
two sons to Jacob that they may receive
the blessing of Israel. Although Jacob is
blind with age, and Joseph places the
first born on the right hand of his
father and the younger on the left, the
hands of the old seer cross over and it
is Ephraim that receives the blessing.
The younger brother is a fruitful one,
and it is his name which lingers.
Mannasseh (one who forgets) is forgotten.
Nowhere in the Bible is the elder son
blessed. Symbol of mortal man, whose
“days are as grass; as a flower in
the field so he flourisheth, and the wind
passeth over it and it is gone; and the
place thereof knoweth it no more.”
All mortality is thus destined to go, but
the younger brother, the Spirit of man,
abideth forever; yea, and he shall be
blessed.
* * * * *
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