Podcast

Jacob dies and Joseph embalms him and buries him in Caanan. Joseph’s brothers beg him to forgive them, stating that they are the servants of God, and Joseph forgives them. Joseph dies and is embalmed and buried in Egypt. During the Exodus, his body will be returned to the land of Israel.

Jacob, nearing his death, begins to bless his sons. Jacob claims Joseph’s Egyptian-born sons as his own, incorporating them into his heritage. This doubles Joseph’s tribal allotment. Jacob also blesses Ephraim, the secondborn, more than Manasseh, the firstborn. Jacob also gives Joseph a mountain slope, and all the blessings on Joseph’s children will be remembered in Heb 11:21.

Jacob remembers Reuben as powerful and unruly, and because he took up with Bilhah, he is no longer given preeminence. Simeon and Levi are divided, and their tribes will be scattered, because they are weapons of violence. Levi is not given a region in the tribal allotment, and Simeon is given a region entirely surrounded by Judah.

Judah will be praised, and rulers will come from him, and we look to the eventual coming of Christ through this. Zebulun is given the crossroads from the trade coming over the sea. Issachar is also given an area of trade, but will have to labor for it. Dan is given his portion, but will eventually be dispossessed from it. Joseph is given many blessings.

After all of this, Jacob dies.

Israel goes to Egypt and sees Joseph, his son once again. When he meets with phararoh, Israel identifies himself as a shepherd, which means that the Egyptians will set them apart in the land. Joseph buys all the land in Egypt for pharaoh in exchange for feeding the people, and the people are grateful.

Israel begins to prepare for his death and makes Joseph promise to bury him outside of Egypt and in the land of his forefathers.

Jacob sends his sons (except Benjamin) to Egypt to buy grain during the famine. Joseph is shocked to see his brothers and accuses them of being spies as part of a plan to test them. Joseph consents to give his brothers grain, but keeps Simeon to ensure that they prove that they are not spies.  Joseph gives them their grain but secrets the money that they paid into the sacks of grain.

When they return to Jacob, they discover the money and fear the retribution of Joseph for the appearance of theft. Reuben rashly promises to return Simeon over the lives of his own sons, but Judah takes the lead and convinces them to return together, with Benjamin.

Joseph contrives to implicate Benjamin in a theft, this time of his silver cup. When he threatens to carry Benjamin off to slavery, Judah and his brothers do not abandon Benjamin, as they did with Joseph. When Joseph sees this, he reveals himself and together the brothers make plans for the family’s future.

Joseph was purchased by Potipher, but God was with Joseph. Joseph was entrusted with the matters of Potipher’s house, and Potipher’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph, but he refuses because it is wicked. When he refuses, she falsely accuses him and Potipher throws him into prison.

When he is in prison, Pharaoh’s butler comes to Joseph and asks him to interpret a dream. Joseph tells the butler that interpretation of dreams come from God, and gives him a very positive interpretation, asking the butler to remember him when he comes into power. When the baker hears this, the baker asks him to interpret a dream, but this is a dream that foretells that baker’s death.

These things come to pass, but the baker does not remember Joseph to Pharaoh until Pharaoh has a dream, and then Joseph tells Pharaoh that his dream indicates years of prosperity followed by years of famine and that they should take from their prosperity to prepare for the years of famine.

For this, Pharaoh sets Joseph over his house and all of Egypt. Joseph assimilates into the culture, takes a wife, Asenath, and has the children Manasseh, for forgetting his hardships in his father’s house, and Ephraim, for the fruitfulness that God has given Joseph.

Joseph’s brothers did not take kindly to him, but even more so after he has a dream in which they bow down to him. The brothers conspire againt Joseph, but Reuben convinces them not to kill Joseph, but rather to trap Joseph in a well, and sell him to Ishmaelites, who sell Joseph to Potipher, a functionary of the pharaoh. The brothers convince Jacob that Joseph had been killed by an animal.

Judah marries a Canaanite woman and has three sons. The first, Er, marries Tamar, but the Lord puts him to death because he is wicked. Judah instructs his next son, Onan, to take Tamar as his wife, but he refuses to consummate the marriage, and leaves Tamar in a precarious state in relation to the family as a childless daughter-in-law. God also kills Onan for this act. Judah promises Tamar Shelah when he grows up, but when this does not happen, she pretends to be a prostitute and conceives twins by Shelah. Tamar will be one of the women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ.

Dinah is raped by Shechem, who seeks to make her his wife. When his father, Hamor, pleads on his behalf, the sons of Jacob convinced Shechem’s family to be circumcised so that they could slay all of them while they were laid up after the surgery. When Jacob discovers this, he rebukes them but says nothing more until he is on his deathbed. Similarly, when Reuben takes up with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, Jacob says nothing at the time.

God tells Jacob to go to Bethel and make an altar there, and so he tells his family to put away their idols, purify themselves and change their clothes (similar to Ex 19:10-11). After this, God tells Jacob that his name is now Israel and promises him the land.

Rachel has her second son, whom she names Ben-oni, which could mean the son of her sorrow or the son of her strength, but Jacob calls him Benjamin, son of my right hand. Rachel dies, with her eyes toward Bethlehem. Jer 31:15 refers to this in a prophecy that would be fulfilled with the slaughter of the innocents.