Joseph

Israel had a soft spot for Joseph and Benjamin since they were the children of Rachel, the only woman he ever really loved. In fact Joseph was Israel’s favorite son and he made no bones about it.

This made Joseph’s brothers super jealous¹. One day they were all out in the fields with the sheep and they had the opportunity to kill Joseph. They were going to throw him in a pit and leave him there to die but his brother, Rueben, got cold feet. As fortune would have it, a caravan on its way to Egypt happened to be passing by. So rather than kill Joseph and have his blood on their hands, they decided to sell him as a slave to the caravan and off they went.

To hide the deed, the brothers soaked Joseph’s coat in sheep’s blood and told Israel they’d found it on their way home. Apparently a wild beast had eaten Joseph. Israel was devastated.

I’m not sure why of all the families in the universe, God liked this family so much. Seems like they’re a bunch of lying, cheating scoundrels. But what do I know? Obviously he’s got his reasons.

So off to Egypt Joseph went. To his great fortune, he was sold to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. It turned out Joseph was a very competent dude and before long he was running Potiphar’s house.

But to his great misfortune, Potiphar’s wife wanted to get frisky with Joseph. But Joseph was an upright guy and wouldn’t go for it. There’s a saying that there’s nothing like a woman scorned and Potiphar’s wife certainly proved it. She told her husband Joseph tried to rape her. Potiphar promptly sent Joseph off to prison. Why he didn’t just kill him is anybody’s guess.

But again, Joseph was a competent guy and pretty soon he was the most trusted trustee in the prison and basically ran the joint.

While he was there he met up with Pharaoh’s cup bearer and baker who had recently fallen out of favor and landed in prison. One night they both had dreams and Joseph correctly interpreted them. Good for the cup bearer, not so much for the baker.

Two years passed and Pharaoh had a couple of disturbing dreams that nobody seemed to be able to figure out. But the cup bearer remembered Joseph and told Pharaoh about him. So Pharaoh called for Joseph and he interpreted the dreams. Egypt will have seven years of bumper crops followed by seven years of famine. The dreams were a heads up that it was time to prepare.

Rather than pick one of his trusted men to make the preparations, Pharaoh took this unknown Hebrew slave/prisoner and put him in charge of everything, second only to Pharaoh.

Nobody knows who this unnamed Pharaoh was and there is no written record of any of this in all the archives of Egyptology. But we’ll take the Bible at its word and, for now, agree it’s all true.