Joseph's cup
Author: A.A. Leenhouts
Date: 2020-02-05T23:08:22+00:00
Keywords: prophecy
Description: In “Joseph’s cup”, the ancient story of Joseph is presented in a perceptive and sometimes confronting way. Dr. A.A. Leenhouts sees the events of Joseph’s life as a prophetic parable of the Messianic future. The characters appearing in the Joseph story are as ‘living hieroglyphs’ written on the ‘wall’ of history. Notably the ‘theft of the cup of prophecy’, and the related ‘course of action’ which Joseph followed with his brothers as well as the ultimate nature of the measures he took are aptly ‘applied’ to the current state of affairs of the Church and Israel. Furthermore, he is wondering if it
Publisher: Jilco Ministries

JOSEPH’S CUP

A PROPHETIC PARABLE OF THE MESSIANIC FUTURE

Rev. Dr. A.A. Leenhouts

______

SHOFAR SERIES

VOLUME III

______

PRIMO VERE BV

THE HAGUE, (2012)

Copyright © 2012 Primo Vere BV.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Primo Vere BV, P.O.Box 82411, 2508 EK The Hague, The Netherlands.

www.primovere.nl

Original title De beker van Jozef

Translation L.W. Dessauvagie

A. Kok – Stigter

Chief Editor Dr. C. Kutsch Lojenga

With recognition to H. Hanemaayer

Cover illustration by M. Koekkoek – Meijer

Design by C.M. Goslinga

Printed by Van de Garde Jémé, Eindhoven

Epublication by Jilco Ministries, 2016

P.O. Box 369, Clinton, BC V0K 1K0, Canada

Joseph’s Cup – A prophetic parable of the Messianic future

A.A. Leenhouts

ISBN 978-90-73014-169

EBOOK ISBN 978-0-9869075-9-3

Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

Used by permission of Hodder and Stoughton, a member of Hodder Headline Ltd. All rights reserved.

Some Scripture quotations have been taken from the HOLY BIBLE, KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright © by Oxford University Press, Aman House, London E.C. 4. Used by permission. All of these are marked as [KJV].

Some Scripture quotations have been taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright © by Thomas Nelson. Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All of these are marked as [NKJV].

Some Scripture quotations haven been taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE. Copyright © 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All of these are marked as [NASB]

HIJ DROEGH ONSE SMERTEN

T’ en zijn de Joden niet, Heer Jesu, die u cruysten,

Noch die verradelijck u togen voort gericht,

Noch die versmadelijck u spogen int gesicht,

Noch die u knevelden, en stieten u vol puysten.

T’ en zijn de crijchs-luy niet die met haer felle vuysten

Den rietstok hebben of den hamer opgelicht,

Of het vervloecte hout op Golgotha gesticht,

Of over uwen rock tsaem dobbelden en tuyschten:

Ick bent, o Heer, ick bent die u dit heb gedaen,

Ick ben den swaren boom die u had overlaen,

Ick ben de taeye streng daermeê ghy ginct gebonden,

De nagel, en de speer, de geessel die u sloech,

De bloet-bedropen croon die uwen schedel droech:

Want dit is al geschiet, eylaes! om mijne sonden.

Jacobus Revius (1586-1658)

HE BORE OUR GRIEFS

No, it was not the Jews who crucified

Nor who betrayed you in the judgment place,

Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat you in your face,

Nor who with buffets struck you as you died.

No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold

Who lifted up the hammer and the nail,

Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,

Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win your robe.

I am the one, O Lord, who brought you there,

I am the heavy cross you had to bear,

I am the rope that bound you to the tree,

The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,

The blood-stained crown of thorns you had to wear:

It was my sin, alas, it was for me.

Jacobus Revius (1630)

Translation: Henrietta ten Harmsel (1968)

PROLOGUE

Wouldn’t it be wise to put the ancient scrolls of the history of Joseph on the tables of today’s peace conferences wherever in the world, and especially in the case of the Middle East? For, as Pharaoh put it, Joseph was a man in whom was the wisdom of God.

In this volume, Joseph’s life is called a ‘prophetic parable of the Messianic future’, as is stated in the subtitle.

The wisdom of God, which governed the peace process in Joseph’s days, is still valid for today to guide us in the dangerous political confusion at the end of the second millennium. There are plenty of starting points to justify, figuratively speaking, an invitation to ‘Joseph’ to guide us in these complex modern political and religious structures through God’s wisdom.

Take, for example, one aspect of Joseph’s behaviour, when an initial confession of his brothers’ guilt regarding their ‘past’ becomes evident. Scripture records how, after two days of imprisonment, his brothers are released on the third day, on certain conditions. Joseph perceives a pang of conscience in their outcry: “Now we must account for his blood.” It moves him deeply, but it does not disconcert him in continuing and finalising the peace process under the guidance of God’s wisdom. He states his terms, which have the power of an ultimatum, to the family as a whole: Benjamin is to appear in the ‘courtroom of the Holy Spirit’, and Simeon, the man of violence, is to be kept in custody as a hostage for as long as Benjamin has not yet been brought before him. So, an ‘expensive price tag’ was attached to the release of the brothers!

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to pay attention to this way of dealing with things?

Aren’t the signposts which could bring us nearer to the advent of the kingdom of God to be found here, in the same way as the family of Jacob/Israel eventually attained a state of peace?

Why then do so many attempts at obtaining peace, particularly in the Middle East, and in spite of the efforts of clever diplomats and heads of states, prove to be subject to frustration time and again? The dangers of all these failures may escalate to such an extent that an unequalled catastrophe is imminent.

As David, in his wanderings and continually being pursued by Saul, heaved the sigh: “… there is only a step between me and death”, likewise we too, as a variant to this sigh, could say today: It takes only one press on the nuclear button between our continued existence and the absolute destruction of all humanity.

As mentioned before, Joseph, on hearing an initial confession of his brothers, took a measure that had the characteristic of an ultimatum. Jacob/Israel has to reckon with an ever-increasing famine, Simeon has been ‘taken hostage’, and, in addition, his most treasured possession, Benjamin, is now demanded. He can only yield to this ultimatum and so he sends Benjamin away with the brothers. This event results in the discovery of the ‘theft’ of the cup by which the governor of Egypt foretold the future—the ‘theft’ of Joseph’s cup of prophecy; the ‘theft’ of the Word of God.

Well then, today we may, as regards the mystery of Israel, observe an initial confession of guilt from the side of Christianity, and also an initial realisation that it is inappropriate for the Church to point accusingly in the direction of the Jewish people. Too much has happened in the age-long ecclesiastical history.

The Joseph story teaches us that the actual sin against prophecy comes to light through the events which happened with the youngest, Benjamin.

In a metaphorical sense, we might typify Benjamin as the ‘bottom’ of history, specifically the ‘bottom’ of church history and the history of the Jewish people.

We will not be able to fully reach Jerusalem with the Gospel until the guilt that lies hidden at the ‘bottom’ of church history and the history of the Jewish people is revealed.

What has been hidden deep down in our ‘sacks of grain’?

We would do well to search our own hearts first!

World history will end in a divine ultimatum of ‘to be or not to be’. But first of all our Gentile Christian ‘Benjamin’ will have to be summoned to the courtroom of the Holy Spirit. Not until this has been done will it be possible to convince the hearts of the Jewish people, and to effectively offer them a peace plan. Until then, even the Christian mission will be frustrated.

Not every intention justifies pretension!

People may have noble intentions, but the pretension to succeed in striving for world peace without God’s Word and the unanimous acknowledgement of Jesus Christ’s cup of suffering and death, is impossible.

The story of Joseph, in its quality of prophetic parable, which is and will be fulfilled by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, may in our days be a guide for the Church as well as for Israel, and a trustworthy guide in service to the breakthrough of the Kingdom of God.

1. JOSEPH’S ROBE

“… and he made a richly ornamented robe for him.” (Genesis 37:3)

“… and he made him a coat of [many] colours.” [KJV]

“… Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.” (Genesis 37:33)

These two Scripture verses depict in essence the actual dilemma of the entire world history. Either a Prince of Peace will appear, rightly wearing an official robe reflecting the manifold wisdom of God, or no other report can be given to the patriarch Jacob but the blood-stained and torn robe of Joseph. Jacob’s conclusion can only be: Surely, Joseph has been torn to pieces.

This is the dilemma we are faced with right up to and including the last book of the Bible. The lawsuit between God and Satan will either be won by revelation through God’s Spirit or by the beast from the bottomless pit. The Bible tells us the outcome.

Wherever, in the course of history, people have dismissed the impact of God’s Spirit and prophetic proclamation, the ferocious beast inevitably appears on the scene. Therefore, from a religious perspective, it must have been a shattering experience for Jacob to come to the conclusion that a wild animal had torn Joseph to pieces. Who can tell how deeply the divine promise, first given to Abraham, and later on repeated to Jacob himself, had been rooted in his soul.

And now this!

What a contrast!

On the one hand, there is God’s promise that he and his descendants will be a blessing for all mankind, while on the other hand, he seems to be subjected to the cruel whims of fate, which appears to have struck by means of a wild animal.

Scripture tells us how a messenger was sent ahead with Joseph’s robe and the message to father Jacob: “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.” Jacob’s sons made their old father identify the torn-up robe with the words: Whose robe is this?

Next we read: “All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No’, he said, ‘in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son’.” (Genesis 37:32-35)

Jacob’s heart is broken.

Tears drip down on a bloody rag.

Look at this sad scene: Jacob’s sons are anxiously standing around their old father. The identification of the robe looks like an absolute refutation of their father’s messianic expectation. What an inward conflict! It looked like a wild animal had decided on Joseph’s fate.

Scripture records this sad scene; a ‘picture’ was taken. It is a picture of the Old-Testament church in the making. This picture reflects, as it were, the DNA of the divine history of revelation. The picture has to be enlarged many times for us to be able to see how the New-Testament church all throughout church history is showing the same features. Before further analysing these features, I must confess that I on purpose quoted the poem by Jacobus Revius at the beginning of this book. No nation should boast over another nation, as Paul says in Romans 11: 17-18: “Do not boast over those branches.”

I am deeply convinced that, as Scripture says: “From one man he (God) made every nation of men” (Acts 17:26). I do believe, however, that there is a distinction by virtue of election for a specific function with respect to the coming of the kingdom of God. Going on to further analysis of this story, I want to emphasise that I do not wish to portray the Jewish people, nor the Arab nations, nor any other race or nation in a negative way. My only aim is to investigate what God wants to make clear to us, that is, to all mankind, with this story, which is a ‘prophetic panorama’ for all times.

The multi-coloured robe

The verse: “…and he made a richly ornamented robe for him”, is reproduced in different ways in various translations of the Bible, e.g. multi-coloured tunic, costly garb, stately robe, colourful garment. The basic Hebrew text has been translated in the LXX (Septuagint) with the Greek word ‘ποικιλος’ (poikilos), which means: ‘multi-coloured’ or ‘colourful’. The KJV, with ‘a coat of [many] colours’ therefore comes closest to the literal meaning.

It is generally known that in ancient times, the purpose of wearing a multi-coloured garment was to demonstrate one’s official dignity.

Professor Dr. G. Ch. Aalders writes in his commentary:

“The images of Asian rulers in Egyptian drawings show that lively colours were appreciated by the inhabitants of Canaan and Syria as a sign of special distinction.”[18]
[19]

There are no illustrations from Jacob’s time of what such a garment must have looked like. Many scholars believe that it may have been a kind of tunic made of material woven with different colours. Other scholars believe it may have been a long-sleeved tunic, reaching down to the ankles.[20]

This opinion is also expressed by G. Kittel.[21]

Nonetheless, the symbolism of a multi-coloured robe is in itself magnificent. It is obvious that the colours don’t clash; neither does one colour dominate the other. The symbolism of such a garment perfectly suits any king who professes to be a benevolent ruler over all his subjects. There will be no favouritism of any race or tribe or social class. Such a multi-coloured royal garment demonstrates the desire to rule by maintaining unity in diversity. It is more than mere royal attire. It represents more than the formal imitation of an old tradition of the Bedouins, who also honoured the eldest son as the ‘heir to the throne’ by having him wear an ornamental robe.

But one might ask if the rulers of ancient times themselves saw this in such detail. And how does this apply to the patriarch Jacob?

It is doubtful if those rulers occupied themselves very much with the roots of the traditions of their days. For Jacob, however, things were different. With respect to the patriarchs with their specific calling, we should be careful in our speculations.

In order to further illustrate this, we need to take into consideration the context of the tumultuous circumstances in Jacob’s life as well as his experiences in his communion with God. Many exegetes give a superficial explanation for Jacob’s motives in giving Joseph a multi-coloured robe. Some say that Jacob made an annoying pedagogical mistake by favouring Joseph over his brothers. In this way, he gave rise to the brothers’ jealousy, which was intensified by Joseph’s dreams, for which his father never rebuked him.

Indeed, Jacob did not contradict Joseph when he talked about his dreams, although at first, he did have his objections, as he said to him: “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” But immediately after that we read: “His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind” (Genesis 37:10-11).

This reminds us of Mary, when she listened to the words of the shepherds, who came to Bethlehem to see what the Lord had revealed to them. We read about this: “And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:18-19).

The expression ‘to ponder’ suggests a form of ‘testing, evaluating’.

Jacob kept Joseph’s dreams in mind. They became a topic of meditation for the patriarch. For the brothers, however, this was not the case. They ‘meditated’, if anything, about a way to get rid of this ‘dreamer’, this obnoxious telltale. They were not concerned about God’s ongoing plan of salvation through their offspring, nor with a divine revelation regarding this plan of salvation. True, they had been circumcised, and therefore they were full ‘members’ of the Old-Testament ‘church’, but at the same time, they were quite ‘modern’ and ‘liberal’ in heart and soul.

So it is quite dubious when commentators express a negative judgment on Jacob’s motives for giving his son this royal garment. These exegetes even risk becoming ‘liberal’, like Joseph’s brothers. From the abundance of literature about this episode, I only quote a few examples from Jewish as well as from Christian circles.

Rabbi A. Soetendorp writes in the “Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad” (the “New Israel Journal”):

“Our ancestors have made a mess of parenting (…) And we don’t have to dwell on Yitz’chak son, Ya’akov, who, out of his blind love for his wife Rachel, protected Joseph excessively and, in doing so, outlawed him for his brothers.”[22]

The Reformed pastor Frank Rooze writes:

“In his naivety, Jacob attempts to shape the course of history according to his own ideas. However, it will become clear that God’s future was already being fulfilled when Jacob gave preferential treatment to Joseph, even though in a totally different manner than he had ever dared to imagine.”[23]
[24]

In his book ‘Het verhaal gaat’ (As the story goes’), the well-known pastor Nico ter Linden even attributes a form of self-deification to Joseph because of the strange dreams he had and the special treatment he received from his father. On page 162, he writes regarding the episode in Potiphar’s house:

“The vainglorious Joseph who used to believe that he was God, has died on the way. A different Joseph has arisen.”[25]
[26]

And on page 200, Ter Linden describes the fear of Joseph’s brothers after their father’s death:

“There was a time when Joseph thought that he was in God’s place. But he has changed, and so have his brothers. Reconciliation is possible. ‘Am I in God’s place?’ Is it mine to avenge?”

It is not surprising that someone who has crossed out the dimension of revelation right at the beginning of the history of the development of the Jewish people, and merely explains things psychologically, similarly dares to make strong statements about the resurrection of the Lord.

It is recorded that he said: “I would not be terribly surprised if one day, somewhere, Jesus’ mortal remains were found.”

Ter Linden made this statement in a TV-interview in the programme ‘Kruispunt’ (‘Intersection’) of the RKK/KRO on March 9, 1997, in which he was introduced as the most popular preacher of the Netherlands.[27]

Statements like these about the patriarchs cannot be compared with what we would call ‘an average family’. The history of the patriarchs is in a very dignified sense a prophetic example.

In order to gain insight into the structure of the end times today, it would be good to start with studying the book of Genesis.

In almost every detail, the story of Joseph is a miniature picture of the ways along which the kingdom of God will come and how the fearsome future of the Lord will unfold. According to the Scriptures, the disclosure of this future most definitely also includes Elijah’s task to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers (Malachi 4:6).

Jesus also alluded to this eschatological perspective on the Mount of Transfiguration when He said: “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things” (Mark 9:12).[28]

The essence of all prophecy is to bridge the rift that has arisen between the fathers and the children in relation to God. This was precisely Joseph’s task. His inspection tour to Dothan, (Genesis 37) shows how far the hearts of Jacob’s sons were estranged from Jacob’s heart. The spiritual difference is frightful!

However, Joseph’s prophetic work and the turbulent path of his life eventually bridged the rift between the father and his sons. From this point of view, Joseph is a prototype of the promised Elijah—in embryo, as a tiny miniature, but yet very real.

As a symbol of being granted this function by the patriarch Jacob, Joseph received the royal garment. And since Scripture says in Psalm 105:19 that “…the word of the Lord proved him [Joseph] true”, this also counts for Jacob granting the multi-coloured robe to his son. Indeed, Joseph unmistakably was and became a prophet and a king. Therefore, the ‘inauguration’ of Joseph by his father into such a high office should not be counted as human weakness or an error, to which the patriarchs certainly also were subject. It was a holy act, performed under the irresistible working of the Spirit of God.

In the discussion of Jacob’s motivation for giving Joseph the multi-coloured robe, we have now arrived at the circumstances under which this action took place.

The context

I – The fact that God had chosen Abraham and his descendants gave a special spiritual status to this family (Isaiah 41:8-9). This status entailed that the patriarchs, through the Spirit of God, gained insight into the future and saw the coming of the Prince of Peace—the One who would bring true unity for all mankind in its diversity of peoples, tribes, and races.

Jesus says: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). This also applies to the patriarch Jacob. Lying on his deathbed, he read the scrolls of the future, and prophesied: “The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his” (Genesis 49:10).

II – Taking leave of Joseph’s sons, “Israel reached out his right hand and put it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger, and crossing his arms, he put his left hand on Manasseh’s head, even though Manasseh was the firstborn” (Genesis 48:14). And he averted Joseph’s protest against this with the words: “I know, my son, I know” (verse 19). This is by no means a question of personal favour that Israel would have for Ephraim over Manasseh. To a certain extent, this can be compared to Jacob’s choice of Joseph over his brothers. The gift of the royal garment, regardless of his natural preference for Joseph, was, above all, prophecy!

III – Furthermore, it is evident that Jacob knew, through oral tradition, in what special way God had made a covenant with his grandfather Abraham. This event is referred to in Genesis 15:7-18:

“He also said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.’

But Abram said, ‘O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?’

So the Lord said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.’

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.’

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking brazier with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.’”

In this story, we note the following:

Evidently, Abraham understood God’s instructions immediately. For it says in verse 10: “Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other.”

This was the way in which covenants were made in the Ancient Orient. The meaning of this custom was that if either one of them would violate or break the covenant, the same would happen with him as with the animals: he would be cut into pieces.[29]

How seriously God took the making of this covenant is clearly seen in Jeremiah, where king Zedekiah had made a treaty with all the people living in Jerusalem, announcing a release from slavery for all Hebrew slaves, male and female. When the leaders reconsidered the initial release and subjected the released slaves once again, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah:

“The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth” (Jeremiah 34:18-20).

The second remarkable issue is the great terror that fell on Abraham during his deep sleep, while he was waiting for God before the covenant could be concluded: “A thick and dreadful darkness came over him” (Genesis 15:12). In many places in the Scriptures, we find examples of a similar fright or fear when God reveals Himself. This fear of God is existential, also when one has something to hide. For instance, when God called out to Adam after he had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “Where are you?”, he had hidden himself and was afraid (Genesis 3:9-10).

Isaac too, was struck by a terrible fear when he was confronted with the fact that Jacob had deceived him in order to get the blessing of the firstborn (Genesis 27:33).

When a man is placed before God, he is totally undone.

Abraham experienced the sacredness of this event. God was going to establish a covenant with a human being and his posterity. But the way in which this took place was of great significance. If the covenant would be violated, destruction was awaiting him, in the same way as the animals. Abraham understood this ceremony very well. He was acquainted with the custom of making a treaty in this way. The intention was that the ‘king’, as the most important person, would first pass between the pieces of the slaughtered animals (Genesis 15:17), as a symbol that he pledged to keep the treaty.

Therefore, Abraham does not pass as the first one between the pieces of the slaughtered animals. He waits for God, and in the meantime, he chases away the birds of prey, which, prematurely, want to swoop down on the dead animals to devour them. When evening came, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, in which God spoke to him in a dream about the oppression which his descendants would experience in Egypt, and the promise that God would bring them back when the sin of the Amorites had reached its full measure (Genesis 15:16). This was a direct revelation from God.

Then this holy event took place of God passing between the pieces as a blazing torch and so establishing a covenant with Abraham. The smoke of the furnace and the fire of the torch that Abraham perceived in his visionary condition are the same as the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire which accompanied the people of Israel in their journey through the wilderness after they
had been delivered by God out of Egypt.[30] God reveals Himself in fire! When He truly appears, all is fire! We also see this when He appears on Mount Sinai, and in all subsequent revelations.

Abraham, therefore, had the heavy responsibility to keep this covenant, which had been concluded in such a fiery way. It is unthinkable that Abraham would not have conveyed this event to his posterity, an event of such impact that it must have been instilled forever into his mind and soul, and which was so saturated with God’s holiness. Jacob, too, must have known about it. Keeping the covenant was his responsibility, too. It must have caused a constant tension in his soul, even more so since God had also appeared to him, at Bethel, and later, he had even wrestled with Him at Peniel, where he had seen God ‘face to face’, and had concluded in amazement: “and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:30). So by personal experience, Jacob was acquainted with God’s majesty. He knew that the promise given to Abraham would continue in his offspring. That is why he had to hold his sons to the covenant as well.

But how did they behave? They even abused the sign of the covenant, circumcision, as a weapon in their revenge on the Shechemites for having ‘defiled’ their sister, so that Jacob had to say: “You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed” (Genesis 34:30). But Simeon and Levi objected: “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?” (verse 31).

After this serious offence, for which his sons did not show any feeling of guilt or remorse, and because he had not yet redeemed the promise which he had made after his ‘Bethel experience’ (Genesis 28:20-22), Jacob had to go back to Bethel in order to renew the covenant with God from his side.

We read in Genesis 35:1-5:

“Then God said to Jacob, ‘Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.’

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.’ So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. Then they set out, and the terror of God fell upon the towns all around them so that no one pursued them.”

In this case, the renewal on Jacob’s part of the covenant with God guaranteed the safety of his sons. He and his entire house would have been destroyed, if his God had not been merciful to them!

An awkward situation!

And then there is Joseph. Jacob saw something in him. He was different from the other sons, not only because he was the firstborn son of his favourite wife Rachel. Of course, this aspect must have contributed, but was it decisive? Could it not be that Jacob knew deep down in his soul, through the Holy Spirit, that this boy had a special destiny ordained by God?

The words ‘he had been born to him in his old age’ carry a sense of wonder. It was a surprise to Jacob, that God had heard his prayer after the many years of hopeful waiting.

According to Genesis 35:24, Joseph is Jacob’s seventh son. He is the eleventh son, including the sons of his concubines, but counting by his official wives, Lea and Rachel, Joseph is the seventh. This is no coincidence. Seven is three plus four—so here, too, the connection between heaven and earth is symbolically reflected. Since ancient times, the number ‘seven’ has been fraught with meaning. It counted as a holy number.

Undoubtedly, this religious fact was part of his motivation for giving Joseph a royal garment. Moreover, Jacob knew by tradition that Enoch, the seventh-generation ancestor since Adam along the line of Adam’s son Seth, walked with God, contrary to Lamech, also the seventh-generation ancestor since Adam, who, like his forefather Cain, was a man of violence.

Because he knew all this, Jacob may have expected that God would fulfil His plan through his own posterity and so continue the line of Enoch and Abraham. His seed would be the channel for the salvation of the world. In the robe he gave to Joseph, Jacob expressed his hope for salvation, his Messianic faith.

According to 1 Chronicles 5:2, he regarded Joseph as his eldest son, and he acted accordingly. He gave him the patriarchal authority to inspect the comings and goings of his other sons. This can be concluded from the fact that Jacob told him to go and find out how his brothers and the sheep they were looking after at Shechem (!) were doing. Genesis 37:14 clearly mentions that he asked Joseph to bring back word to him on how they were getting along.

Because of all the problems Jacob had had with his sons, this inspection was not superfluous. The responsibility of keeping them under the covenant weighed heavily on him. The only one he could fully trust in this was Joseph.

And, dressed in his ‘official robe’, Joseph goes on his way to fulfil his father’s order. Seeing this robe made it very obvious to Reuben that the right of the firstborn had been taken away from him. The envy and the hatred of the brothers against Joseph had come to a climax, and so when they saw him approaching in the distance near Dothan, they conspired to kill him. This fact also clearly shows that the journey to Bethel had not really meant a genuine reformation or renewal of the whole family. Surely, they had handed in their foreign gods and had changed and put on clean clothes, but the ‘Bethel reformation’ was not deeply rooted. The brothers ventured out without any qualms into the part of the Shechem territory which they had purchased without letting their conscience bother them when they were confronted with the ‘scene of their crime’.

Jacob too, had to experience that he could not conquer the Promised Land by purchase or by murderous behaviour. Furthermore, Hamor’s proposal (Genesis 34:8-12)—no matter how respectable if it had been done normally—would have opened the door to assimilation of the chosen family with a tribe of Canaan. However, God Himself would, in His sovereign way, fulfil His promise.

Jacob refuses to be comforted

When Jacob sees the blood-stained robe and has identified it, he is overwhelmed by an existential grief. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Jacob was inconsolable. All his sons and daughters (among whom of course also his daughters-in-law) tried to comfort him, but he refused to be consoled.

In the Ancient Orient, comfort also meant condolences and wearing special mourning attire. Jacob declined it all. He was conscious of the precarious situation. He knew the way in which God had established His covenant with Abraham. He knew that it included exile in a foreign land, involving great oppression. He, on his part, had done his utmost to keep the covenant immaculate, and as the ‘shepherd of the family’, he had exerted himself to lead his children in the same direction. That is why he had made Joseph—whose dreams were in harmony with his own expectancy of salvation—an inspector and reporter of his sons’ behaviour.

And now this!

It shocked him ‘vertically’, namely that, apparently, a wild animal had killed this Joseph—as well as ‘horizontally’—with respect to his future as a foreigner in the promised land.

He was inconsolable. The condolences of his sons and daughters were unbearable to him. Jacob’s refusal to be comforted was not passive, neither was it a depression after the umpteenth blow in his life. He was actively broken-hearted. He refused to be comforted (Genesis 37:35). We just about hear him say: Enough already! Don’t give me any of your condolences!

Now from our perspective, as we are watching this scene, we easily can conclude that the sons’ attempt to comfort their father was hypocritical. They knew very well what really had happened.

Jacob refused to be comforted. He had spent all his ‘arrows of faith’ on the hostile powers that threatened to disturb a stable residence in the Promised Land. This also included the installation of Joseph as inspector and reporter, including the gift of the multi-coloured robe. He could not do any more than that. But, when human possibilities are exhausted, and our ‘quivers’ are empty, God still has His inexhaustible stock of ‘arrows’ to realise His goal. It was exactly this multi-coloured robe, now blood-stained, which contained a ‘prophetic’ arrow, which would hit the target dead on. Only, Jacob did not see that yet. God’s ways are higher than our ways, but eventually, along with Joseph’s rehabilitation, he, too, was put in the right by a word of the Lord (Psalm 105:19).

The lesson for today

What is the message implied in this ancient story for us today, Jews or non-Jews, in other words Gentiles biblically speaking?

In the Scriptures, the Jewish people are called God’s firstborn son (Exodus 4:22), and therefore, they are representative for all mankind. So it concerns us, too!

It is true, the ‘picture’ of Joseph’s brothers with the blood-stained garment in their hands has been taken. Their question addressed to their old father: “Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe” was utterly hypocritical. Their ‘ecumenical’ comfort—because all his sons and daughters together attempted to comfort him—was unreal and phony The only genuine emotion during this sad moment was Jacob declining their comfort.

Indeed, the picture had been recorded.

They are in it—forever. The ‘picture’ had been taken.

However, we repeat Paul’s words: “Do not boast over those branches!” (Romans 11:17-18). What can mankind report, figuratively speaking, to the patriarch Jacob about its own history with respect to church history as well as world history in general? On what subject do we have a clear conscience? It is really not overstated to say that we—yes we, Gentile Christians —are also in the picture! We, too, are asking indifferently: Whose robe is this?

Was not the one mystic body of Christ, our Prince of Peace, meant to be dressed in the one multi-coloured institutionary ‘robe’ as a manifestation of the communion of the saints? However, we are standing around ‘Israel’, reporting with a ‘blood-stained and torn garment’ in our hands. That ‘picture’ has also been taken, and it has landed in the annals of church history.

But there is more!

There is yet another fragment of the Joseph story for us to take as a warning.

Before the brothers confronted their father Jacob with the blood-stained robe, another horrible act took place. We read in Genesis 37:24: “…and they took him and threw him into the cistern…”, immediately followed by verse 25, which says, “…they sat down to eat their meal.”

We might wonder how on earth they could eat while hearing their seventeen-year old brother moan after they had just thrown him into a deep well.

But then again, what happened to us, Gentile Christians, after the institution of the Lord’s Supper? What was the attitude of the believers, especially after the apostolic times? How did the churches behave after the ‘new covenant in His blood’ had been established exactly during the Lord’s Supper? “Take this, and divide it among you”, is what the Lord commanded during the last supper (Luke 22:17). But, what really happened even surpassed what Joseph had experienced from his brothers. All over the world, people took part in the Lord’s Supper, but at the same time, based on human dogmas and formulae, innumerable children of God were declared anathema.

In the Middle Ages and during the Reformation in the sixteenth century, they were tortured and burnt alive, while ‘the brothers’ sat down at the ‘table of the Lord’!

The ‘brothers’ at the table, and the ‘prophet’ in the well!

At the same time!

Simultaneously!

Even today, in many churches, the Lord’s Supper is used as a means of sanctioning, either for the purpose of exclusion, so as to enforce membership, or as a means of correction in order to make the members stick to the ‘doctrine’, a doctrine mostly determined by human edict.

Instead of letting the cup pass among all God’s children, it led to schism after schism. This is the typical image of many centuries, whereas the Bible witnesses to the hope of an approaching Messianic time of salvation, which will start with a meal for all the nations (Isaiah 25:6).

It was at the Last Supper that the Lord promised:

“And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom …” (Luke 22:29-30).

This is a testamentary disposition!

Exactly during this Last Supper, Judas was exposed (John 13:26).

And then, a remarkable emphasis emanates from this table when Jesus declares:

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:15-16).

And then He announces: “so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:30).

The situation of Christianity today sitting at this table, while continuing to be divided among themselves, can be compared to the scene described above: Joseph in the well and his brothers sitting next to it, eating their meal. The great Joseph, our Lord Jesus Christ, who intended this communion around the Lord’s Supper to be a unifying factor in a world hostile to God, is enduring the same thing. What else would this disregard of His command: “take this, and divide it among you” be other than ‘casting the Prophet in the well’, while the brotherhood—called after His Name—is sitting down to eat their meal?

The interrelationship of the nations

What about the relationship between the nations?

Alas, among the nations of this world, many have striven for an ‘official robe’ in order to manifest themselves as ‘prince of peace’ or as an ‘institute serving world peace’.

In 1995, with great ceremony, the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations was celebrated. According to the press, a ‘historical family portrait’ was taken of the leaders of the world. These world leaders also sat down to eat together. Everything was perfectly kosher: no beef or pork, no shellfish, no alcohol, etc. So, the outside of the ‘cup’ was perfectly clean.

But what about the inside?

For how many of these partying world leaders at this regal meal will the comparison with the earlier-mentioned passage of the meal in the Joseph story hold true? In how many of these people’s ‘homes’ can we find innumerable political prisoners suffering in interrogation cells and concentration camps? How many of them, who are responsible for such brutal actions towards men created in God’s image, are enjoying exquisite food next to the ‘well’ in which ‘prophets’ and ‘dissidents’ are miserably dying?

When official representatives of powerful (read: brutal) regimes dare to treat their own subjects in this way, what then may be expected of them in conflicts with other nations when they may have weapons of mass destruction at their disposal?

‘The meal’ or ‘the table’ has always been a symbol of communion, of unity and peace. At this one table of the United Nations, government leaders who pride themselves in ruling according to ‘democratic principles’ sat next to those who had a questionable or even bad human-rights reputation, and they had their picture taken as ‘one family’. In all of this, we become aware of the absolute opposite of the Table of the Lord, which one day will be established in unanimous recognition of our Prince of Peace when His kingdom will break through.

The conclusion can be no other than the following. In the story of Jacob and his sons, all Jacob’s ‘sermons’ and other measures which he, as a human being, took to make his sons abide by the covenant were eventually of no avail, but the Lord needed to speak by means of prophecy. In the same way in our times, in the ecclesiastical as well as in the political domain, it will only be through prophecy and its fulfilment that a radical change towards the coming of His kingdom will be brought about.

18 Translated from Dutch

19 Prof. Dr. G. Ch. Aalders: “Korte verklaring der Heilige Schrift, het boek Genesis”, volume 3, page 82, J.H. Kok n.v., Kampen, 1936.
“De afbeeldingen van Aziatische vorsten op Egyptische tekeningen tonen dat levendige kleuren juist door de bewoners van Kanaän en Syrië als een bewijs van bijzondere onderscheiding werd gewaardeerd.”

20 Gaalyahu Cornfeld (ed.): “Geïllustreerde Encyclopedie van de bijbel”, page 419, Uitgeverij Septuaginta B.V., Hoofddorp, 1976.

21 G.F. Kittel: “Theologisches Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament, Band 6”, page 483, W. Kohlhammer GmbH., Stuttgart, 1959.

22 A. Soetendorp: “N.I.W.”, volume 131, 1 december 1995, page 5
“Onze voorouders hebben van de opvoeding een puinhoop gemaakt (…) En over Jitschks zoon Ja’akov, die, verblind door liefde voor zijn vrouw Rachel, Joseph overmatig beschermde en hem juist daardoor voor zijn broers vogelvrij verklaarde, hoeven wij niet langer uit te weiden.”

23 Translated from Dutch

24 Frank Rooze: “Jozef”, page 13, J.H. Kok N.V., Kampen, 1981.
“In al zijn ijdelheid probeert Jacob de gang van de geschiedenis naar eigen inzicht te modelleren, desondanks zal het aan het licht komen, dat in Jacob’s eigengereide voortrekking van Jozef reeds God’s toekomst besloten lag, zij het op een totaal andere manier dan hij ooit had durven dromen.”

25 Translated from Dutch

26 Nico ter Linden: “Het verhaal gaat...”, page 162 and 200, Uitgeverij Balans, Amsterdam, 1996.
“De ijdele Jozef van vroeger die zich God waande, is onderweg gestorven. Een andere Jozef is opgestaan.”
“Er is een tijd geweest dat Joseph dacht dat hij in Gods plaats was. Maar hij is veranderd. Ook zijn broeders zijn veranderd. Welnu, dan is verzoening mogelijk. ‘Ben ik in Gods plaats?’ Komt mij het oordeel toe? (…)”

27 (Dutch: “Ik zou niet geschokt zijn als op de een of andere dag ergens het stoffelijk overschot van Jezus zou worden gevonden.”)

28 See: Shofar series, volume II, page 99-105

29 Walter Lüthi: “Abraham”, page 81, Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel, 1967

30 Dr. A. van Selms: “De prediking van het Oude Testament, Genesis volume I”, page 219, G.F. Callenbach b.v., Nijkerk, 1973

2. JOSEPH’S DREAMS

All sorts of things can happen in a dream. For example, someone who thinks a lot about space travel might dream that he and his family are having a barbecue on the moon, and he may experience this as very real and absolutely normal in his dream. Things that are impossible in real life may be quite possible in a dream. Dreams may contain a jumble of emotions and conflicting thoughts and a maze of incoherent matters. Hence the expression: ‘dreams are lies’.

As for the origin of dreams, it is clear that they arise from our subconscious. But what is our subconscious? Merely wanting to understand the subconscious already surpasses our conscious mind.

Why this introduction to a chapter about Joseph’s dreams?

The point is to show that it is a great miracle when God uses a dream as one of the instruments to reveal Himself to mankind.

The Bible tells us that “in the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways” (Hebrews 1:1). Dreams are definitely one of these, and they are found in many places in the Scriptures.

It can be called a miracle when God shows a realistic, objective and orderly image in a dream, in the midst of the tangle of images and feelings as found in an ordinary human dream. It becomes all the more miraculous when we take into account the complexity of the human brain. Within each human skull lodges a ‘universe’. Science talks of billions of cells. In addition, our brains have separate centres with sheer unfathomable cross-connections. Some scientists are trying to discover or formulate the code of our intelligence.

Anyone who does research into this intricate matter will almost automatically come to the same conclusion as Paul: “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11).

However, when God gives someone a revelatory dream, He knows exactly the way in this ‘universe’ beneath our skull. That is why a revelatory dream in itself should be regarded as a great miracle. It belongs to the great works of God.

To broaden our insight into these works of God, it is useful to take a closer look at some striking examples of this in the history of salvation.

In the Joseph story, we notice straightaway how Joseph’s dreams postulate the divine foreknowledge of the living God. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18, [KJV]). The foreknowledge of God can be seen in Joseph’s dream about the scene in which he and his brothers were binding sheaves of grain in the field and his sheaf suddenly rose and stood upright and his brothers’ sheaves gathered around and bowed down to his sheaf, as well as in his dream about the sun, the moon and the stars bowing down to him (Genesis 37:5-9).

God has, so to speak, read Joseph’s ‘biography’ right to the last page. Even more so, He Himself has designed Joseph’s life and made known the essence of his life by means of these simple dreams about stars and sheaves of grain. Only the one who has an overview of things as a whole can make a summary. Moreover, this summary came at a strategic moment in the war between God and Satan. The issue was the Messianic future of the chosen family, and with that, the ultimate advent of the kingdom of God.

The summarising character and the strategic moment are also distinctive of the dreams that would follow. When later on, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt each have a dream, the nature of their dreams evinces a summary of their respective destinies (Genesis 40). The fact that Joseph can accurately interpret their dreams is part of his messianic charisma.

It was a strategic moment in Joseph’s life. He was in the same prison as the prisoners of the king, including the cupbearer and the baker. They were high officials at Pharaoh’s court, in charge of the provision of wine and bread for Pharaoh; important matters, therefore, of the highest order. And although it still took a considerable amount of time, yet at that moment, Joseph’s gift to interpret dreams became the key for him to obtain the highest office under Pharaoh. It would also be the key for the salvation of the chosen family in a situation of life and death (Genesis 42:2).

The loaf of barley bread and the tent

Another striking example of a dream is found in the battle between Israel and Midian in Gideon’s time.

André Neher writes in his book ‘Het wezen van de profetie’ (The essence of prophecy):

“The war between Israel and Midian is the battle between the loaf of barley bread and the tent, between the symbol of the farmer and that of the nomad, as is made clear by the details of a dream mentioned in a story in the Bible, revealing the true meaning of the conflict (Judges 7:13-14)”. [31]
[32]

Gideon was facing a superior power in the imminent battle against Midian. “The Midianites, the Amalekites and all the other eastern peoples had settled in the valley, thick as locusts. Their camels could no more be counted than the sand on the seashore” (Judges 7:12).

Gideon, on the other hand, had ‘only’ 32,000 men. Yet, for God, there were still too many warriors. He instructs Gideon to have everyone who is afraid and fearful return to mount Gilead and after that, to have the rest of them go down to the water, where He would separate them. Finally, Gideon has 300 men left, so that it will be clear to the people that the victory over Midian will not be due to their own bravery, but that it is God who will deliver Midian into their hands.

Then we read how the Lord gives Gideon a password before entering into the battle with Midian:

“During that night the Lord said to Gideon, ‘Get up, go down against the camp, because I am going to give it into your hands. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp’” (Judges 7:9-11).

Notice how the Lord wraps the password for Gideon in a dream of a Midianite.

“Gideon arrived just as a man was telling a friend his dream. ‘I had a dream,’ he was saying. ‘A round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp. It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed’” (Judges 7:13).

Notice the little word ‘just’. These events took place simultaneously. At the very moment when Gideon and his servant arrived at the big army camp of Midian, exactly in the right place near the right tent, one of the Midianites started telling a dream to his companion.

What a strategic moment!

What a concise summary of the reality of the situation, expressed in a dream!

How aptly is the battle portrayed here in the symbolism of the loaf of barley bread and the tent.

The loaf of barley bread symbolises the sedentary, settled, agrarian people of Israel. The tent stands for the nomadic people of Midian. The Midianite immediately understood this symbolism: “This can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon…” (Judges 7:14).

When Gideon has realised how God can play the keyboard of human consciousness and how the Most High Himself is directing this battle, he bows down in worship and dares to engage upon the battle with Midian.

All the elements that occurred in Joseph’s dreams are present here, too. The battle is entirely supervised by God. He Himself is taking the lead. He gives Gideon a code, as it were, for which He makes use of a dream. The interpretation is voiced by a fellow soldier of the Midianite at the very moment when Gideon and Purah have arrived there. Gideon’s faith was strengthened and he entered into battle. It was a crucial battle for the Israelites whose miraculous and divine deliverance reverberated for many centuries, seen the fact that the prophet Isaiah compares its effect with the birth of the Messiah.

“For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. (…) For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9: 4, 6).

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream

Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. It was not just any dream. His dream also came at a strategic moment in the battle between God and Satan. We read in Daniel 1:1-2:

“In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.”

So the holy vessels from the temple of Israel were placed in the treasure house of the temple of Babylon’s god. In addition, a selection of the young men of Israel from the royal family and the nobility were taken away with them. Nebuchadnezzar treated them in the same way as he did the vessels of the temple: they had to be totally ‘babylonised’. They were given new names, different food was served to them, and they were taught the language and literature of the Chaldeans. Notice here that the remnant of the offspring of the patriarch Abraham was taken back to the land which, at God’s command, Abraham had left!

Immediately upon Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to wipe out everything that reminded them of Yahweh, this deified ruler had a dream, which disturbed and alarmed him to the core. This can be seen from the way in which he made his demands on his staff of magicians and wise men in order to find out the meaning of this dream.

He could not remember the contents of the dream—as Scripture states in Daniel 2:5: “The thing is gone from me” [KJV]. This may indicate that Nebuchadnezzar saw an opportunity to test all his wise men and counsellors. He required from them to tell him the content of what he had dreamt as well as the interpretation of the dream, on penalty of being killed should they fail.

In this episode, we find elements similar to the old story of Joseph’s life. Pharaoh also had dreams that severely troubled his spirit, and he, too, summoned his magicians and wise men, but none of them was able to interpret his dreams. They were puzzled. They saw that Pharaoh was troubled because of the dreams—and it takes something to get Pharaoh troubled…! As little as the sun simply changes into a nervous little flickering light, neither will the sons of the ‘sun god’ lose their inner balance for no good reason. The Pharaohs resided in majestic calm on their splendidly-adorned thrones. That was indeed residing in the proper sense of the word.

Egypt did not know any eschatology. In their many species of animals, they worshipped the eternal permanence of the species, and their pyramids mocked the notion of being mortal. Egypt was also the land of fixed structures, ranks and orders, and so it was quite natural for Pharaoh to summon his magicians in this unusual situation. We should not underestimate the wisdom of ancient Egypt! The magicians knew a lot about the subconscious and they knew how to interpret dreams. But here, they had reached the limit of their knowledge. This phenomenon had a different dimension. They didn’t have an answer.

The atmosphere in Pharaoh’s throne room must have been quite tense. Those present must have been desperate. Something was imminent, something that would shake Egypt to its very core, and nobody knew how to deal with it.

The similarity with Nebuchadnezzar’s experience, his unrest and the powerlessness of his counsellors is obvious. But there is also a difference. Pharaoh himself told the wise men and the magicians his dream, and he did not threaten to kill them in case they were not able to interpret the dreams. Nebuchadnezzar puts everything on the line. Daniel, too, is in danger. The captain of the king’s guard, Arioch, also approaches Daniel. Daniel does not understand. Why this harsh decree?

Arioch tells him what is happening, and then Daniel goes to the king and asks for more time.

By being faithful to the word of the living God, Daniel had once already experienced the miracle in his body, namely when he had refused to eat the Babylonian food and when, after ten days, he had looked healthier than all the other young men who had eaten the royal Babylonian food. Would God not once more perform a miracle in this severe crisis?

Daniel made the issue known to his friends and told them that they should plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery so he and his friends would not perish (Daniel 2:16-18). And the great miracle took place, namely that the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision during the night. He could, as it were, dream Nebuchadnezzar’s dream himself and then interpret it. It is moving to read Daniel’s thanks and worship:

“…Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. I thank and praise you, O God of my fathers: You have given me wisdom and power, you have made known to me what we asked of you, you have made known to us the dream of the king” (Daniel 2:20-23).

When Daniel tells the king his dream and its interpretation, we notice that—as stated before—the dream did not only come at a strategic moment, but it also contained a summary of the total situation of the relevant era, in the same way as Joseph’s dreams and the dream of the Midianite in Gideon’s time.

Nebuchadnezzar saw an enormous, dazzling statue.
The head of the statue was of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While the king was watching it, a stone was cut out, not by human hands, and hit the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them, and the entire statue was broken to pieces. And the stone that had hit the statue became a huge mountain, and filled the whole earth.

This image in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream reflected the entire history of the world. What cartoonist, however gifted, is capable of sketching such a striking depiction of world history?

The vision called forth is exceptionally dynamic: a stone, which was not cut out by human hands, came rolling down. This is an act of God, which even Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges. He says to Daniel: “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery” (Daniel 2:47).

What stands out most clearly in the story of Joseph as well as in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, is that both Joseph and Daniel do not claim the wisdom for the interpretation of the dreams as being theirs, but that they give all the glory to God.

When Pharaoh summons Joseph, he says: “I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” And Joseph’s answer to this is: “I cannot do it ... but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires” (Genesis 41:15-16).

In the case of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, we read how he asks Daniel: “Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?” Daniel’s answer to the king is: “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come” (Daniel 2:26-28).

The acknowledgement that God alone is able to reveal the mysteries of this dream was in itself not a negative judgment on the counsellors of the king, who were not able to tell the dream with its interpretation. On the contrary, Daniel wanted to prevent a massacre, which was awaiting them because of their incompetence. He emphatically asks Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard, who had been assigned to execute this gruesome sentence, not to kill the wise men of Babylon. For a government cannot do without counsellors. Proverbs 15:22 says: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”

With this strange dream of Nebuchadnezzar, God did not intend to destroy Babylon’s ‘intelligentsia’. He may have had that in mind for the Babylonian system and its spiritual attitude. But the crucial point here was that He was using Babylon to chasten Israel. In Jeremiah 43:10, Yahweh even calls Nebuchadnezzar ‘my servant’. But there is also a limit to this chastening. God is the supreme ruler, also over Babylon. By God’s sovereign will, Babylon’s power is only relative, and this empire will not be able to destroy God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants.

To Daniel, the Israelite, a divine mystery is revealed. A stone, which was cut loose without human intervention, comes rolling along and ultimately also smashes the golden head and fills the entire earth. This understanding is superior to all wisdom and knowledge of earthly experts. The apostle John writes in his epistle: “…the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

Both Daniel’s and Joseph’s wisdom contains a dimension of a higher order, the eschatological dimension of the coming kingdom of God.

A comforting perspective

Mankind has become restless. All over the place, you can hear people ask the question what this world is heading for. Well, now that mankind seems to be heading for a deadlock, Christians may assume that there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets. There are still unfulfilled prophecies. The Apocalypse draws our attention to sealed-up thunders (Revelation 10). According to this chapter, there are more prophecies yet to come.

God does not intend a massacre in this day and age either, not even when experts from all over the world are summoned. God’s ultimate intention is to have the stone that was cut out without human hands fill the entire earth: a kingdom set up by God Himself, which will crush and put to an end all worldly kingdoms, which are only aiming at power and control. But His kingdom will exist for eternity and its government will not pass to any other nation.

“‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6).

The dream as a shield

Around the time of the birth of Jesus, God frequently made use of dreams. Five times, He lifted up a dream as a shield at strategic moments in the battle between God and Satan, as described in the Apocalypse in the fierce images of the dragon standing before the woman who was ready to give birth, in order to devour her child as soon as it was born (Revelation 12:4). Jesus was born, as it were, on the frontline in the battle between God and Satan.

It is easy to understand that Joseph, after finding out that Mary was pregnant, showed some hesitation. We may assume that Mary did not conceal from Joseph the moving event of the angel bringing the message that the power of the Most High would overshadow her. However, this information did not simply remove his hesitation to marry Mary in these circumstances. He wanted to divorce her in a discrete manner (Matthew 1:19).

The mystery of being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit is beyond human comprehension and analysis. Joseph, too, was baffled. It needed a dream to reassure him and to accept Mary as his wife. An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20).

The second time God used a dream as a shield in the lives of Joseph and Mary was in order to protect the child from the sword of Herod. At that occasion, too, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: “Get up … take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him” (Matthew 2:13).

The moment he can return, after Herod’s death, is also announced to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 2: 19-20).

Once back, he is again warned by God in a dream not to settle in Judea, but to go to Nazareth in Galilee. Once again, a dream was used to protect Joseph and Mary and the child (Matthew 2:22-23).

The wise men from the East

At the time of Jesus’ birth, the people of Israel were enduring exile-like conditions in their own country. The country was occupied by the Romans. Caesar Augustus, who was a kind of god-king, just like the rulers in the days of Babylon, had his entire realm registered in order to further demonstrate his deification. To say it in contemporary language: a database had to be made of the whole world, the house of David included.

What really is at stake here is the true shepherding of the nations. It is therefore a moving sign that wise men from the East—from the very area to which the people of Israel had repeatedly been carried off—now led by the star, had come to worship. This sign in itself proclaims that the exile had been lifted for evermore in this Child. So when Herod says to the wise men: “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him” (Matthew 2:8), it must be evident to us how important the dream is that God gives to the wise men not to return to Herod (Matthew 2:12).

What a strategic moment!

If the wise men had done what Herod had asked them and had indeed returned to him after having worshipped Jesus, they would have paved the way for this manager of Rome to interfere immediately and to try and kill the child. Then, in the great battle between God and Satan, the house of David, and in fact all mankind, would again have been handed over to a deified totalitarian state and driven into exile forever. The dream which the wise men received meant, at this strategic moment, protection against this calamity. It meant that time was created for Joseph and Mary to take refuge in Egypt. Dreams that come from God are a mighty weapon in the battle for the victory and the breakthrough of the kingdom of God in salvation history.

Opposition

“But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. ‘Here comes that dreamer!’ they said to each other” (Genesis 37:18-19).

The expression ‘Master Dreamer’ (as expressed in the Dutch translation), does more justice to the real meaning of this term of abuse than does the expression ‘that dreamer’.

Obviously, the brothers used this expression in order to sneer at Joseph, but in fact, this term should be taken literally. In reality, the brothers meant to say: Here comes the producer of his own dreams, the ‘master’; the ‘owner’; the ‘designer’.

In Hebrew, the term ‘Baal Hachalomot’ is used, which means: lord of the dreams.

All through the ages, the real conflict has been whether the prophets spoke out of their own hearts or whether it was something which originated from beyond this world; whether they were themselves the ‘producers’ of their visions or not; whether it was all merely subjective, as a fantasy, emanating from their subconscious, so that they were the ‘masters’ of their own dreams, or whether indeed, these originated from God.

In the term ‘master dreamer’ lies the denial that Joseph’s dreams could have come from God. In his brothers’ eyes, Joseph himself was the producer of his dreams, and therefore he had to be put in his place. Even his father wavered for a moment: “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” (Genesis 37:10).

As mentioned before, Jacob did keep this matter in his heart. God does not expect each dream to be immediately acknowledged as a divine dream, but He does expect things to be genuinely tested.

In this situation, the initial discerning of spirits in Jacob’s family is already becoming apparent. There are two possibilities: either a dream is flatly rejected as a product of the human spirit, or one considers the possibility that God is revealing something and therefore expects sincere testing. This discerning of spirits was most clearly revealed in the history of Christ’s sufferings. Jesus, in whom all the lines of prophecy converge and who is the Word of God made flesh, was interrogated by the Jews: “Who do you think you are?” (John 8:53). Jesus’ answer was not at all satisfactory to the Jews. They picked up rocks to stone Him.

In John 10:33 we read: “We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” In other words: you, a mere man, are making yourself God. The ultimate result was the cross.

Later, His witnesses were thrown before the lions by the Roman emperor. Wherever in the following centuries, the divine ‘dream’ was proclaimed in truth, all hell resisted. Everything imaginable was used, such as stakes, strangling cords, tortures, expulsions and curses. In the same way, the fulfilment of Revelation 10 will not be welcomed without resistance. And when the last round of history has come, the opposition against God and His Word will come to a climax, and the martyrs will fall by the violence of the Antichrist.

When Psalm 105:19 speaks of the historical Joseph having been proven right by a ‘word’ of the Lord, this ‘word’ has a judicial connotation. All the centuries of world history together constitute the courtroom in which God is conducting the great lawsuit against Satan, and the result of this lawsuit at the end of earthly time will be that Jesus is proven right by a word of the Lord, along with all His witnesses. In His ‘lawsuit’, God continually bore witness through prophets, seers, dreams and other forms of revelation. The utmost and absolute form of revelation was that He sent His Son, who bore witness to the Name of God. In the High-Priestly Prayer, Jesus says: “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world” (John 17:6). Time and again, the word ‘witness’ has a judicial content, and all forms of revelation point to the decisive moment in world history when Satan will suffer the definite defeat at the end of the age. That moment will also be the verdict by which Jesus will be proven right as the judge of the entire world.

Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:8:

“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming.”

Psychological explanation or typological depth

Joseph receives an amazing dream when he is still young. The symbolism is very clear: stars symbolise destiny, and the sheaves stand for sustenance. In ancient times, the starry sky was seen as a huge switchboard regulating all that happened in the world.

It is quite dangerous for Joseph to tell his dreams, for he himself is no less than the centre of a cosmic system and of the harvest. Tell this to your own relatives! In the eyes of others, you are immediately considered intolerably arrogant or completely ‘daft’. For Joseph, it is at least as awkward as it was later for Jeremiah, when he, as a young man, had to tell the people how God had called him with the words:

“Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10).

A story like that will sound very pretentious to your own compatriots, to say the least.

And what about Joseph?

Obviously, the first question the brothers would ask is: ‘Are you really going to rule over us? Will our destiny and sustenance really depend on you?’

However, we really should not think too much of ourselves when looking at those brothers. How would we have reacted? Mercy is indeed an unpleasant word to our human nature. It immediately calls for resistance, and it is only upon our conversion that the word gets its lovely sound.

This was also the case with Joseph’s brothers. It was out of spite that they sold him. And unmistakably, the rejection of Joseph is a clear foreshadowing of the Saviour, who also was handed over to the Gentiles out of spite.

Having established that the first part of this story is evidently a foreshadowing of the Messianic time, it will not take us long to perceive the striking similarities that are present in the continuation of the Joseph story with the many promises mentioned in the Scriptures regarding Israel’s restoration. The more we listen to this story, the more we will become convinced that it is a miniature picture of salvation history , a model of the kingdom of God. The patriarchs are the ‘verb paradigm’ according to which, in the coming ages, God will conjugate the history of Israel, and in their turn, Israel as a nation will function as the ‘verb paradigm’ according to which the Most High conjugates the life of all mankind.

Th. J. M. Naastepad writes:

“Where God begins, He also marks an end. According to the Tanakh, the last days belong to Israel. The evangelists have spelled this out more precisely: the definitive beginning of Israel’s future is anchored in the resurrection of Christ, which also encompasses the future of the nations.”[33]
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In short: As the patriarchs—so the people of Israel, and as the people of Israel—so the world.

In the Bible, Israel is called God’s firstborn, the eldest son in the family of mankind. Consequently, Israel has a representative function, set apart as an example in world history.

There is, for example, a striking similarity between Joseph’s sufferings and those of the Messiah. What is the origin of this similarity? Might it conceal a divine purpose? Did not only Joseph, but also his brothers, unknowingly, serve a big divine plan? We are deeply convinced that this is the case. All prophecy is intended to strengthen our faith. Thus, Jesus Himself has formulated the purpose of prophecy in John 14:29: “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.” This is not only valid for prophecy, but also for the shadow history of the Old Testament. Jesus could say about Himself: “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). Before He was born, He already spoke in prophetic parables about His Messianic task and future. For this is what John meant to say in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This is why the Jewish people, ever since Abraham was called from the ends of the earth, have also lived ‘metaphorically’. In this, they are different from other nations: sanctified, set apart for a higher purpose. This nation bears the Name. This nation spells the Name. The patriarchs are ordinary people, just like us, but they are also living hieroglyphs, mysterious symbols expressing the coming Messianic age of salvation, an anointed family, a prophetic generation, a chosen people, which has inalienable rights with God. This is also the reason why we cannot evaluate their history by means of ordinary, profane standards. And if we forget this significant destiny, this status of prophetic parable, this eschatological dimension, the characters of Joseph and his brothers will only be distorted.

The patriarchs and their offspring have, in their moving history of stumbling and rising again, many times been called to a function in the kingdom of God, the importance of which surpassed by far their own comprehension.

And it is exactly because the spirit of prophecy was so clearly working in their family and because they had to form a bridgehead for God’s speaking in a world alienated from Him, that characterological regularities were contradicted everywhere. In a most profound sense, they have never been themselves, but, separated from the world, they have been the bearers of the eternal Word, servants of the Name, the wonderful all-surpassing Name of the Messiah.

So let us stop trying to squeeze Joseph into our psychological patterns, for, as a type of the Messiah, he is involved in the ‘foolishness’ of God, by which the ‘wisdom’ of this world will be put to shame. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (1 Corinthians 3:19).

31 André Neher: “Het wezen van de profetie”, page 162-163, Gooi en Sticht, Baarn 1993. (Original title: ‘L’ essence du prophétisme’, freely translated: The essence of prophecy):
“De oorlog tussen Israël en Midian is de strijd tussen het gerstebrood en de tent, tussen het symbool van de boer en dat van de nomade, zoals de gegevens van een in een bijbels verhaal genoemde droom dat duidelijk maken, en dat de werkelijke betekenis van het conflict aangeeft. (Richteren 7:13,14)”

32 Translated from Dutch

33 Th.J.M. Naastepad: “Daniël”, page 22, J.H. Kok, Kampen, 1988
“Waar God begint markeert Hij een einde. Volgens Tenach is het laatste der dagen de toekomst van Israël. De evangelisten hebben dat nader gepreciseerd: dat definitieve begin van Israël’s toekomst is verankerd in de opstanding van Christus, en daarin is ook de toekomst van de volken besloten.”

34 Translated from Dutch

3. JOSEPH’S JOURNEY

‘God hears’ and ‘One laughs’

This is what the names of Abraham’s sons literally mean: Ishmael, whose name means: ‘God hears’ and Isaac, whose name means ‘one laughs’. Both names have been given on God’s explicit instruction and so, they have a lasting meaning all through the ages.

When God gives a name, it represents at the same time a divine characterisation.

From Ishmael, the Arab peoples have descended. It is no small thing for the offspring of Hagar, i.e. the Arabs, to know that through the mouth of the Most High, the characteristic words: ‘God hears — Ishmael’ were pronounced over their generations.

Neither is it a small thing when God visits Abraham in order to announce the birth of Isaac (Genesis 17:16).

From our perspective, the response is very surprising and moving: Abraham fell face down and laughed. When God descends, it is very understandable that a human being falls face down in worship. That is the epitome of reverence. However, this picture seems very strange. A man of nearly a hundred years old prostrating himself in worship before God and laughing at the same time.

A person often laughs when he is suddenly confronted by sharp contrasts. At the announcement of Isaac’s birth, Abraham immediately thinks of his own and his wife’s ages on the one hand, and of a potential baby being the fulfilment of a divine promise on the other hand. Humanly speaking, this seems absurd. And on top of that came God’s witty remark: When the child is born, you have to give him the name ‘one laughs’. This divine instruction for naming the boy would also last forever.

God takes responsibility for what is impossible according to human understanding and what even may be called absurd or laughable. The birth of this child is a sign of a perfect and sovereign work of grace. So, when Abraham says: “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” (Genesis 17:18), in other words, let the promise regarding my offspring apply to Ishmael, God’s resolute answer is: “… your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year” (Genesis 17:18-21).

God’s ‘no’ to Abraham’s proposal does not imply that the visitation of the Most High to this patriarch is intended to cause a future rift between Isaac and Ishmael. It is indeed remarkable that God talks about the destiny of each of these children on that occasion. These two: ‘God hears’ and ‘one laughs’ have not been convicted to each other, but through God’s message, they were destined for service to each other.

If the Eternal God had intended to raise a wall of separation between these two future families, it would have been unthinkable that in this one visitation, the destinies and functions of both would be mentioned. Isaac and Ishmael may have had some problems between them when they were young, but take note, they did bury their father together (Genesis 25:9). And they did not fight at the graveside!

When God announces that the ‘line of grace’ of the covenant will pass through Isaac, this does not imply that Ishmael and his descendants are excluded as a factor or a function in the coming kingdom of God, for he will be the father of twelve rulers (Genesis 17:20). Like the number seven, so the number twelve has symbolic value. Twelve is three times four: a link between the divine and the earth with its four winds.

The above retrospective view of the background history of Jacob and his sons is needed to further illustrate all that happened in Joseph’s life.

When Joseph is rejected by his brothers, it is indeed remarkable that at that very moment, a caravan of Ishmaelites, led by a group of Midianites, pass by and buy Joseph from his brothers for the price of a slave and take him away to Egypt (Genesis 37:25-28). Joseph was a descendant of Isaac, and the Ishmaelites—as the name implies—were descendants of Ishmael. That caravan arrived just in time! If it had passed by a few days later, it might have meant Joseph’s death.

We may rightly criticise the slave trade of the Ishmaelites and we may certainly also criticise the behaviour of Isaac’s grandchildren, Joseph’s brothers. But it is a fact that Ishmaelites intervened at the right moment. And, on reflection, this intervention was crucial, because years later, Joseph was able to save Jacob’s whole family from starvation. The ‘line of grace’ which was announced when God appeared to Abraham and which would pass through Isaac and his posterity would have been cut off if Joseph had died. But Ishmael intervened!

If the God in heaven is alive, about whom Scripture says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” (Matthew 10:29), then Joseph with his strange dreams and their fulfilment is worth much more than many sparrows. This event of his rescue cannot be a mere coincidence. And looking further into the history of this subject, we find that Egypt—which later as a nation would completely fall under the Ishmael denominator (the Arabs)—became the shelter and the expedient for the entire offspring of Isaac. In this way, Ishmael ‘God hears’ saved Isaac ‘one laughs’. God’s fingers did not only play the keyboard of Joseph’s subconscious in the dreams he had, but they also play the keyboard of the history of the nations. Much later, the great Prince of Peace, our Lord Jesus Christ, would obtain a hiding-place in this same Egypt, of which God says in Isaiah 19:25: “Blessed be Egypt my people…”

Egypt has always played a part in relation to Israel. Sometimes, that happened in order to point out to the people of Israel that they should not rely on mighty neighbours. In this connection, Egypt is called a ‘staff of reed’ that breaks when one leans on it (Ezekiel 29:6-7); at other times, Egypt is used for the salvation of Israel.

Dr L.A. Snijders writes the following about Isaiah 19:

“There is victory over the Babel of confusion. This is also indicated by emphasising the location of ‘Israel’, namely in the centre of the earth. It is the position of the reconciler, the place of the peacemaker. The nation is a blessing, a source of blessing for the world (Zechariah 8:13). This blessing, being God’s merciful turning towards the entire world, is made evident by mentioning Egypt and Assyria, the two opposing superpowers of ancient times and the arch-enemies of Israel. They are, together with Israel, the three partners of YHWH. (…) Quite different from the way in which Isaiah speaks about Assur and Egypt elsewhere, namely judging and reprobating (10:5-19; 14:24-27,31), he proclaims here in the final verses of Isaiah 19 a universal peace. He gives a concrete picture of the future without harm or destruction on the holy mountain, in which the people will seek the stump of Jesse (Isaiah 11). And in terms of world politics, he explains the vision of the kingdom of God in Isaiah 2:1-5.”[18]
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Isaiah 19:23-25 clearly shows how the Egyptians with the Assyrians will serve the Lord, and how Israel, along with Egypt and Assyria, will be the third, and will be a blessing on the earth because the Lord Almighty has blessed it with the words: “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.” So, the blessing of Egypt and Assyria is included in the blessing of Israel. The fact that Israel is quoted as the third signifies completion, the fulness.

The part that Egypt played as a hiding-place for Jesus has already been mentioned. Nothing, however, is told about the journey to and their sojourn in Egypt. The story about their flight ends with the words: “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called My son’” (Matthew 2:15).

This prophetic word originally from Hosea 11:1 refers to the love that Yahweh had for His people, who were oppressed and treated as slaves in Egypt—a love, which was not only shown in that He delivered Israel out of their slavery in Egypt, but above all in that He ‘adopted’ it as His son through His word.[20]

Dr. J.T. Nielsen writes the following about this ‘sonship’:

“Jesus, as an individual, is the representative of Israel. The entire history of Israel is recapitulated in His history. He is the true Israel. (…) As Israel—God’s son—was called, likewise this Son was called. (…)

O. Cullman uses the image of progressive reduction: an ever-decreasing remnant takes over the task that was originally set to a greater entity. There is a road leading from God, from creation to all mankind, from there to the one nation Israel, from Israel to the remnant, and from there to the One, Jesus. And from Him, the road leads back to all mankind and creation.”[21]
[22]

Indeed, here, too, God draws ever-expanding concentric circles in His work of salvation, since He called the descendants of Abraham from the ends of the earth (Isaiah 41:9) and took them to the ‘midst of the land/earth’ (Isaiah 19:24, KJV/NIV). The specific calling of this nation as well as the geographic location of the Promised Land make up the ‘middle’ or the ‘centre’ around which concentric circles are drawn by the great works of God. This convergence on the same centre constitutes the mathematical interrelationship of the circles.

We only need to put Joseph’s story next to Romans 9-11 to make us aware of a mighty parallel: via Egypt, i.e. via the Gentile world, the Jacob/Israel family will find its place, and through the fulness of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25-31), all Jacob/Israel will be saved. Everything will ultimately come to fulness through Him who came down to earth and who ascended up far above all the heavens, namely our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4:10).

Actual history as prophetic parable

“Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world’” (Matthew 13:34-35).

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt; I will make you live in tents again, as in the days of your appointed feasts. I spoke to the prophets, gave them many visions and told parables through them” (Hosea 12:9-10).

We need to differentiate between three kinds of parables.

1. Parables by means of fictitious persons and matters.

Parables that Jesus told using imaginary people and things, such as the parable of the prodigal son, the parable of the good Samaritan and many others, have not been taken from actual history. No archaeologist will set out to dig for the foundations of the inn where the Samaritan treated the wounded traveller. Neither will anybody look in the genealogy of Israel in order to find out to which family the prodigal son and his elder brother belonged.

2. Parables in the form of acts and deeds.

Among the parables that Jesus told by way of acts and deeds, we may rank Jesus’ walking on the sea in the stormy night, the miraculous draught of fish, the washing of the feet, His cleansing of the temple, the wedding in Cana, etc. After all, He himself was a parable in His appearance and His behaviour. He could say: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

The author of the letter to the Hebrews put it as follows:

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs” (Hebrews 1:1-4).

3. Historic reality as a prophetic parable.

We even find this type of parable in the New Testament. For example, on His way to Calvary, Jesus says: “For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31). Or when, in His teaching regarding the day of the Son of man, He mentions the gripping historical fact of the Flood, saying: “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:26-27). In this connection, Jesus also quotes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).

It is evident how Jesus uses historical events as a prophetic parable for the future.

These three kinds of parables are found in the Old Testament as well.

When the prophet Nathan has to reprimand king David about his attitude to Uriah the Hittite, he does this by means of a parable, using fictitious persons. He tells David about a rich man, who had many herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and a poor man, who possessed but one ewe lamb that he had bought and lovingly took care of. The rich man received a visitor, but he could not bring himself to prepare one of his cattle or sheep for the traveller, so he took the only ewe lamb of the poor man to prepare a meal for his visitor. When David got so angry against that man, Nathan had to say to him: “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:1-10).

A parable in deeds is for example what the prophet Jeremiah did in the days when Jerusalem was besieged by the king of Babylon. God had ordered him to buy a field, symbolising that a day would come when people would once again buy houses, fields and vineyards in Israel, and that the Lord, after the great evil He had brought on them, would give them all the prosperity that He had promised them (Jeremiah 32:1-44).

Another example is found in 1 Kings 11, where the prophet Ahijah took a new cloak and tore it into twelve pieces, ten of which he gave to Jeroboam, saying: “… for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand and give you ten tribes. But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe’” (1 Kings 11:30-32).

Thirdly there is the prophet Elijah, who preached the necessary unity of the nation on Mount Carmel, taking twelve stones, symbolising the twelve tribes of Israel, and building an altar for the Lord, in order to restore the altar that was broken down.

We also find parables in the Old Testament told by prophets with the help of actual history. A striking example of this is found in Isaiah 9:1-6, where the birth of the Messiah is announced and where the prophet compares the effect of His appearance and performance with Gideon’s victory over the Midianites.

The prophet Hosea interprets the exile by pointing to what happened in the valley of Achor by way of a parable. He says: “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope” (Hosea 2:14-15).

The Torah gives a reliable historical report. This counts for all the stories of the Old Testament. They are all a true account of actual events. But they are also prophetic parables which Jesus told before His incarnation. As John writes:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-4 and 14).

As mentioned before, Jesus could truthfully say: “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). The entire Tanakh bears witness to Jesus, as He Himself says to the Pharisees: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39).

In the same way, after His resurrection, Jesus talked with the two men on the way to Emmaus about the necessity of Christ’s sufferings, thereby causing their hearts to burn within them, saying: “‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-32).

It is a confirmation of what Hosea says in chapter 12:10: “I spoke to the prophets, (…) and told parables through them.”

In telling parables, God even went so far as to sometimes use the lives and marriages of the prophets as parables to show God’s sorrow over the unfaithfulness of His people. One of these is Hosea (Hosea 1:2-12); another example is the prophet Ezekiel. In chapter 24:24 the Lord says to the people: “Ezekiel will be a sign to you; you will do just as he has done. When this happens, you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.”

The Joseph story, as a prophetic parable, is not an exception to the above explanation on actual history.

On the contrary!

The path Joseph’s life took appears to be the same as Israel’s and even the same path that Jesus’ life took, as well as the path of Jesus’ Church of all times, namely through suffering to glory.

Most striking is the similarity between Joseph and our Saviour in their suffering and exaltation. Especially in the first part of Joseph’s story, the comparison is evident, as was illustrated in chapter 1: the divine revelation by means of his dreams is by no means accepted. Along with his dreams, the royal garment provokes the envy of his brothers. The hatred in their hearts is so great that they are on the verge of killing him. This ends when his brothers sell him for the price of a slave to a caravan of merchants on their way to—in their eyes—hostile Egypt. In those days, this stood practically on a line with a death sentence.

Likewise, Jesus was delivered for the price of a slave to the occupying hostile power of the Gentiles.

Because God was with Joseph in all his tribulations and graced him with great charisma, he overcame all humiliation and rose to the highest official position under Pharaoh. All Egypt and the surrounding nations depended on him and were saved by him, as was his own family.

God acts in such an objective and realistic manner, that He makes the whole world subject to Joseph’s dreams: Pharaoh with his power as well as the brothers with their guilty conscience.

Their terrible guilt!

Who is able to tamper with the axiom, the fundamental principle of the kingdom of heaven? For restoration, for pardon and for the diversion of an imminent curse, everything depends on the mercy of a king sprung from Jacob/Israel! That mercy was accorded to the entire family of Jacob and will likewise be accorded to the entire Jewish nation.

Do not cut

Nobody should try to cut anything out of this story by accepting Joseph’s rejection as a foreshadow of the rejection of Christ, and at the same time not accepting the conversion of the brothers, which really is the climax of this story. If the first part has a typological meaning, the second part does, too. If the second part does not also represent prophecy, then this story would indeed be quite strange, to be honest, we would not know what to do with it.

The entire story of Joseph would only be mere coincidence if the second part had not been fashioned as a parable of the resurrection of Israel through the Hand of Him who existed before Abraham.

Joseph is set for a fall and a rising again for them. They stumble, but their fall is not fatal, not irrevocable. Their hardening is only in part. They remain the beloved for their fathers’ sakes. However, God is following a certain path with them. God has a plan of salvation, and their fall and rising again are subservient to this plan.

Pay attention to the prophetic word that shines in a dark place, and do not only look at the paths along which they came to fall, but also the paths that led to their restoration. The path along which the family of Jacob came to their fall is clear. For their path to restoration, we can mention three main characteristics:

1. God brings an existential distress over Israel.

2. God speaks prophetically to Israel in their hour of need.

3. Before anything of God’s judgment becomes visible, a fulness of grace is available.

God’s holy method

The application of these three characteristics for re-grafting the natural branches in the old trunk of the believing fathers has remained God’s holy methodology in the whole history of salvation. When the fulness of the Gentiles comes about, this too will be the way in which Israel will be accepted in order to enter into the fulness intended for them.

First of all, God brings a total famine to the land and to the family. No sooner has it become clear that their supply of bread has been cut off then Jacob says to his sons: “I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die” (Genesis 42:2). So it becomes a matter of life and death, not just a difficult time with some hardship; it becomes a situation of ‘to be or not to be’.

Furthermore, being under the radical threat of losing their lives by starvation, this—in a religious respect—incriminating evidence is brought up against them: the solution cannot be found in their own promised land, but a double and very humiliating exile journey is needed.

However, quite a lot must have happened so that the land, promised by the Most High, could no longer produce food for Jacob and his children. The empty bags with which his sons were sent to Egypt were a real test of faith for him. For, time and again, there had been conversations between the Eternal God and the patriarchs about the land of Canaan, whose destiny would not be insignificant, namely a new Eden, a pledge and a portent of the new earth.

Empty bags do not fit in this picture. In fact, it is rather a poor show for the chosen family to have to go to Gentile territory with empty bags—to really have to go. This looks like a bunch of ‘broken branches’ that have ended up in an ‘Egyptian garden’. And quite soon, they are indeed interrogated in a humiliating way: What are you doing here? You are spies!

Jacob’s children find themselves in a foreign country, not in order to be a blessing to all nations, in line with the divine promise, but driven by need to pick up a few sacks of ‘blessing’.

The situation in which Jacob’s family had ended up has a dark background. Later, Moses sings about Jacob:

“He made him ride on the heights of the land
and fed him with the fruit of the fields.

He nourished him with honey from the rock,
and with oil from the flinty crag,
with curds and milk from herd and flock
and with fattened lambs and goats,
with choice rams of Bashan
and the finest grains of wheat.

You drank the foaming blood of the grape”

(Deuteronomy 32:13-14).

But if they reject God, who has created them, and if they despise the Rock of their salvation, God will also come with His judgments:

“They made me jealous by what is no god
and angered me with their worthless idols.

I will make them envious by those who are not a people;

I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.

For a fire has been kindled by my wrath,
one that burns to the realm of death below.

It will devour the earth and its harvests
and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap calamities upon them
and expend my arrows against them”

(Deuteronomy 32:21-23).

The prelude of God’s fearsome dealings with His chosen people can be perceived as far back as the Joseph story.

Look at how Joseph makes life hard for his brothers. Can we think of any worse provocation to jealousy than to have to discover that there are full granaries in pagan territory, outside the enlightened circle of special revelation, because there is a man there who appears to live closer to God than they do and who is generally known as a person who has the wisdom of God? And mark well, this is a nation that is not blessed with the special ‘oaths of God’!

Their sacks are empty, his granaries are full.

In light of the conversations of the Eternal God with the patriarchs, this is the world upside down. Had the Lord not spoken to the patriarch Abraham: “And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”? Is their family no longer the channel through which God’s salvation flows to the entire world? Why has the centre of gravity been shifted to Egypt, the pagan world, and why don’t the neighbouring nations all come to the Promised Land to buy their grain there?

The threefold cord, God—Israel—the holy land, seems to be broken. The empty bags are accusing them. They have been banned from their own table!

To arrive in Egypt like this is banishment. To have to humble yourself twice under the conditions of a foreign ruler is double banishment.

What suspicions!

What harsh words!

What grief at home with their old father: “You have deprived me of my children … Everything is against me!”

This bitter complaint of Jacob carries quite far. This complaint is an onerous prophecy, reaching over many centuries. It has been heard as far as Assyria and Babylon. It was heard when Jerusalem was destroyed. It was heard ... ah, here everybody falls silent, the veritable heathen as well. And it will be heard until Jacob no longer needs to say “Everything is against me!”, at the moment when the heart of the fathers will truly have been turned to their children. Then nothing will be against Jacob any more, but everything will be for him. Then Jacob will no longer be deprived of his children, but—because of the multitudes that will be added to Israel—his descendants will be like the sand of the sea and like the stars in the sky. Innumerable: generations—families—galaxies. A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to His people Israel.

18 Translated from Dutch

19 Dr. L.A. Snijders: “De prediking van het Oude Testament, Jesaja deel I”, page 203, G.F. Callenbach bv, Nijkerk, 1979
“Er is overwinning op het Babel der verwarring. Dat wordt ook nog aangegeven door de positie van ‘Israël’ te onderstrepen: in het midden der aarde. Het is de positie van de verzoener, de plaats van de vredestichter. Het volk is een zegen, een bron van zegen voor de wereld (Zacharia 8:13). Dat de zegen een genadige toewending van God naar de gehele aarde is, wordt verduidelijkt door het noemen van Egypte en Assur, de elkaar bestrijdende supermachten van de oude tijd en de aartsvijanden van Israël. Zij zijn met het volk van God de 3 partners van YHWH. (…) Geheel anders dan Jesaja elders spreekt over Assur en Egypte, veroordelend en verdoemend (10:5-19; 14:24-27; 31), verkondigt hij hier dus aan het slot van Jesaja 19 een universele vrede. Hij concretiseert het toekomstbeeld dat men geen kwaad doet noch verderf aanricht op de heilige berg en dat de volken de wortel van Isaï zoeken (Jesaja 11) en legt in termen van de wereldpolitiek het visioen van het Godsrijk van Jesaja 2:1-5 uit.”

20 Dr. C. van Leeuwen: “De prediking van het Oude Testament, Hosea” page 223, G.F. Callenbach BV, Nijkerk, 1968

21 Dr. J.T. Nielsen: “Het evangelie naar Matthéüs I”, page 51, G.F. Callenbach BV, Nijkerk 1978
“Jezus is als individuele gestalte de representant van Israël. In zijn geschiedeni wordt de geschiedenis van geheel Israël gerecapituleerd. Hij is het ware Israël. (…) Zoals Israël – Gods zoon, geroepen werd, zo werd deze Zoon geroepen. (…)
O.Cullman gebruikt het beeld van de progressieve reductie: een steeds kleiner wordende minderheid neemt de taak over, die oorspronkelijk aan een groter geheel was gegeven. Er loopt een weg van God, van de schepping, naar de gehele mensheid, vandaar naar het ene volk Israël, vandaar naar de rest, vandaar naar Een, Jezus. Van Hem uit loopt de weg weer naar de gehele mensheid en de schepping.”

22 Translated from Dutch

4. JOSEPH’S TEARS

Mankind does not need scientific research to understand how the tears in our eyes come to flow. Everyone, young or old, has at times had a hair or a speck of dust or sand in their eyes and felt how their tears washed it away. Tears cleansing the eyes protect them from infections.

The eyes also react to irritating substances, like when working with ammonia or peeling onions.

Emotional events, like great joy or deep sorrow, often cause a flood of tears as well. So far nothing is new. What causes tears to flow has been common knowledge for a long time.

What science has been curious about is to find out the chemical make-up of tears in different circumstances. Research into this matter was done in the United States several years ago with the aid of volunteers who donated their tears to be analysed. This research showed that tears of sorrow contained 23% more protein than tears shed while peeling onions.

Science examines all sorts of things.

Does theology do the same?

For example, we ought to do more research into those places in Scripture which mention weeping.

In this chapter, we pay special attention to the tears of Joseph.

Of course, his tears have not been put in a bottle to be analysed in a laboratory. But figuratively speaking, Joseph’s tears have been preserved, and the report on their spiritual make-up can be read in Genesis.

Joseph’s weeping is mentioned six times in the Scriptures.What is the message of his tears?

What were the circumstances in which tears welled up in his eyes?

When his brothers arrived in Egypt to buy grain, Joseph’s ‘Via Dolorosa’ was quite some time behind him. What then was the use of staging such an emotional closing scene full of harsh measures and sharp words, full of tension and distress, even for his father, who, in the end, also had to give up Benjamin for the denouement of this gripping family drama?

Many commentators find it hard to appreciate this behaviour of Joseph. Their opinion is that, at the first confrontation with his brothers, Joseph should, in a spirit of forgiveness, have ordered some racing chariots to meet his old father and comfort him. Instead, he starts a long and painful procedure.

This makes it look like a game of cat and mouse: let go for a moment and then pounce once more. Show them that he is the one in charge. Vent his wrath. Take revenge. Frighten them to death.

Joseph immediately throws them into a dungeon, in the same way as he had once been thrown into a well.

He accepts none of their arguments, such as:

“We are all the sons of one man”.

This sounds ecumenical, but he does not believe it.

And: “Your servants are honest men”.

Joseph is not impressed. He immediately accuses them of spying. This is a shocking accusation and must have deeply hurt his brothers. All at once, they were regarded as enemies of the state. When spies are exposed, they are not treated gently, neither in those days, nor today, never and nowhere!

On the basis of this accusation, Joseph immediately puts them into prison for three days. Three days stands for: today, tomorrow and the morning of the third day. Moreover, he orders that one of them should be sent to take grain to their family and to fetch Benjamin (Genesis 42:16).

This requirement must have caused them additional anxiety. Who among them can and is willing to take on this heavy responsibility? Who will stand in for the others? Moreover, that person will be all by himself on this long and possibly dangerous journey, and how much grain can one person take along on a pack animal? Will father Jacob/Israel let his favourite son go, now that nine of his sons have to stay behind in prison?

The brothers have two days and two nights in their dungeon to worry about this. On the third day, Joseph comes to see them. The only reassurance he has for them is a change of terms on which Benjamin has to be fetched. All of the brothers except one—Simeon—are released. He has to stay behind. The terms are relaxed a bit, but the requirement to go and get Benjamin still stands!

The effect of Joseph’s rigorous conduct now becomes clear. Their unanimous confession: “‘Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come upon us.’ Reuben replied, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn’t listen! Now we must give an accounting for his blood’” (Genesis 42:21-22).

Joseph justifies the way he treats his brothers as: ‘testing their honesty’, as a particularly significant testing, namely ‘before God’. He on purpose uses the words “for I fear God” in combination with the threat “… so that you may not die”. For the brothers, it is a matter of life and death. The testing has the same impact as making a vow.

After having heard this, they present their confession, at which Joseph weeps at once. He had to appeal to their conscience in a prophetic way.

Joseph is above all things a prophet.

He was deeply moved to see how the first arrow that was shot at them hit the mark and set the ‘door’ of their conversion ‘ajar’.

Why did this first arrow that Joseph shot at them consist of accusing them of spying? Was it revenge or sadism that he chose to strike them as painfully as possible?

Certainly not!

This accusation has a business-like quality. After all, how did the rejection by his brothers start at the time? They did not tolerate him in his role as their father’s eyes. He used to report to their father what they were doing and was therefore in their eyes a spy. The brothers had an aversion to Joseph, but what it really all boiled down to was his so-called ‘spying’.

Setting the boundaries

What could have been the spiritual background of Joseph’s fierce accusations?

Briefly, it is the fact that his brothers had abandoned and desecrated the covenant and the spiritual ‘territory’ related to it. In fact, they had chosen to set their own moral boundaries and by doing so, they had marked their own territory where supervision by the patriarch was no longer welcome.

We know how different species of animals mark the boundaries of their territory with the use of scent glands or urine.

Well, the boundaries marked by Simeon and Levi at Shechem were just as evil-smelling. Jacob says: “You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land” (Genesis 34:30). Evil-smelling boundaries were set, even misusing the holy sacrament of the covenant, i.e. circumcision, in order to enable them to murder and loot as much as they felt like.

And—forgive the digression—what is it that happened later in the great ecclesiastical world, where people used the holy sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper to mark their own territory?

Murder and manslaughter—foul-smelling boundaries!

The brothers no longer wanted to be supervised—neither directly nor indirectly by the ‘master dreamer’ with his fancy robe. Their father might still hold the ‘contract’ that God had made with Abraham, their great-grandfather, in high esteem—a covenant which concerned them just as much—but they no longer considered it as making a claim on their hearts and lives.

There were certainly plenty of reasons for understanding their father’s concern. The way in which the ‘contract’ had been made was serious enough: It was a blood covenant. God had passed between the pieces (Genesis 15:1-21). Whoever desecrated the covenant could count on being torn to pieces, as was symbolised by the slaughtered animals.

And, as was explained in chapter 1, their father Jacob had also had his ‘experiences’ in his tumultuous life, such as at Bethel and Peniel.

However, was it now really necessary that the line of the special and divine revelation should run via that dreamer Joseph because of this covenant?

Their attitude to Joseph, who sincerely and honestly wanted to obey his father’s orders, strongly proved how much they had detached themselves from the old history. They were even prepared to kill Joseph. Their ‘territory’ was full of hostility towards the old ‘territory’ of God’s covenant.

So, by accusing them of spying, Joseph had not said too much. The roles were now completely reversed. The process of this reversal was in itself a testimony, an accusation: Joseph had been accused of ‘spying’, after which he had been thrown into the pit and subsequently transported to Egypt—now they were accused of spying and imprisoned in the dungeon in Egypt. The association is obvious. Even before that, the word Egypt appeared to have evoked associations with the brothers. No sooner had the word Egypt been uttered in connection with buying grain than Jacob had to ask the question: “Why do you just keep looking at each other?” (Genesis 42:1).

It was a common understanding among the brothers!

Jacob sensed this perfectly. The way they looked at each other was significant.

And later on, when they were on their way to Egypt, they would certainly have thought of Joseph, who had travelled the same difficult road devastated.

Now that they are in prison, their conscience says: “Now his blood will be required of us.”

Joseph certainly said nothing too much, and moreover, his attitude to his brothers was not that he took matters into his own hands by punishing them, but it was a prophetic testimony in the lawsuit which God, through Joseph, was conducting with his brothers. A divine settlement of the ‘crime’ apparently also means that criminals must experience the pain and misery caused to their ‘victim’.

Joseph weeps when he hears their confession of guilt.

However, the lawsuit was not finished yet. We read: “…but then [he] turned back and spoke to them again. He had Simeon taken from them and bound before their eyes” (Genesis 42:24).

After all, this entire tragedy was not only a question of the pain inflicted on him personally as a human being and as a brother, but they had misjudged him as a prophet. Ethically speaking, the brothers did now realise their offence as they talked about the anguish they had caused to their brother at his young age. They now clearly remembered his pitiful cries for help and how they had cruelly ignored those. But much more serious is the fact that they had rejected God’s covenant with their family by absolutely despising his dreams. This rejection falls in a religious sphere and will be disclosed when Benjamin has been brought to Egypt and when the cup which Joseph used for divination is found in his sack.

In reality, the brothers have ‘robbed’ the world of the divine Word; they have ‘stolen’ the prophecy. When this is revealed and is confessed in Judah’s moving speech, Joseph’s tears appear once again, and his weeping is so loud and emotional that it penetrates every wall and is even heard in Pharaoh’s palace.

Man and prophet

As was mentioned before, there are many exegetes who find it difficult to accept that the way Joseph behaved towards his brothers during their two journeys of exile was a prophetic treatment, inspired by God. Instead, they see it as a traumatic reaction because of the pain inflicted on him in his youth or as a desire for compensation for the many years of frustration,
mixed with a dose of hard feelings. Here are a few examples.

Franz Werfel writes:

“The deep wound in Joseph’s soul is the only explanation for the sly and grand comedy Joseph enacts as a punishment to his brothers, a long and dangerous game, before he makes himself known and, in a trembling voice, utters the to-the-present resounding words: I am Joseph, your brother! In keeping with that fact and still in a spiritual climax, many a dramatic sorrow and lofty play will be enacted between Christ and Israel when the time is ripe, that is to say barren enough, before the exalted brother will present himself to the humiliated people and utter to them and from them the words: I am Jesus, your brother, the Messiah(…)” [23]
[24]

In the book: “The exile of the word”, by the Jewish professor Andre Neher we find the following passage:

“Already, on his brothers’ return, when he was still for them only governor of Egypt, he tried to see his way: “Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spoke? Is he yet alive?” (Gen. 43:27). Are you not hiding the truth from me with a polite lie? Your old father who (as you cannot know) is mine also, is he really still alive? For if he is no longer alive, what is the sense of this whole comedy I am playing out before you, what is the point of this whole tragedy which God is acting out with us, what use is it to play the tragi-comedy of life? It is my old father whom I wish to find again, and not you nor even myself. It is in order to find him that I have suffered, endured, and acted a part. And at the moment when I lift my mask, revealing to all that “I am Joseph,” there is one thing whose truth or untruth I wish now, at this instant, to know, only one thing for which it is worth living for right now: is my father still alive?” [25]

It is precisely this passage from Professor Neher’s book which evokes questions: Isn’t it risky to start an argument with the word ‘if’? Does the possibility that his father is no longer alive turn the entire procedure of chastening, for which Joseph was to be the prophetic instrument, into a comedy? Is father Jacob/Israel, as such, the axis around which everything revolves, or is the issue the unveiling of the original guilt of the brothers in order to bring about a true reconciliation after their confession? Is the patriarch, in his very being, the gospel beside the gospel?

God had said to Abraham: “And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”, so his offspring was used by God as an instrument to reach the goal He had purposed. So it is, and so it remains—even when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have died. However, it may be necessary for this ‘instrument’ to be cleansed.

Already here, Joseph acted as a prefiguration of the Messiah by ‘clearing the temple’. The ‘blows’ were hard. The ‘tables of the money changers’ were also ‘overturned’ by him.

What arguments did the brothers come up with to satisfy Joseph?

“Your servants are honest men …”

“We are all the sons of one man.”

“One is no more…”

“We are no spies.”

“We don’t know who put the silver in our sacks.”

“We did not steal the cup he uses for divination.”

All of these look like solid arguments. Ten men spying together would be absurd. The mission would be bound to fail. They are not merely a group of servants or slaves buying grain for their master, but they are almost his entire family. Who would risk his entire offspring by sending them on a spying mission? Yet this argument would not do to gain Joseph’s confidence.

Surely, the brothers are telling the truth when they stand before Joseph and say: “One is no more”, and yet this is not the whole truth. Joseph’s soul must have ached when he heard his brothers talk about him like that.

On the one hand: ‘sons of one man’—and on the other hand: ‘One is no more’.

Everything they say about the unity of those ‘sons of one man’ is nothing but a façade, idle talk. That is why Joseph says: “You are spies!” “You have come to see where our land is unprotected” (Genesis 42:12).

Joseph overthrows all the ‘tables of the money changers’, and his words are fierce lashes.

This scene is a prelude to the task and the function of the subsequent prophets and not in the least the great prophet Jesus Christ. All the prophets have greatly loved their people. But God’s love becomes fierce when it is hurt. This is the love that all the prophets had to portray in their very being and actions.

Obviously, the prophetic passion of God’s servants must have caused inner tensions. They were, after all, human beings and not just passive robots or puppets mechanically dependent on some undefined higher power. They were not made of stone, but the awareness of their calling prevailed. Therefore, their inner struggle cannot be measured according to our current psychological standards.

This applies to Joseph as well. When he meets Benjamin at the end of his brothers’ second journey to Egypt, he is so deeply moved that he has to leave the room at once so he can weep without anyone seeing him. Although Benjamin was very dear to him, we might ask ourselves if this was only the blood relationship speaking here?

When he met his brothers after their first journey, Joseph did not weep. It was only after their two days of imprisonment and after hearing their preliminary confession that he turned away from them to weep.

Was the reason for this different reaction that they were ‘only’ half-brothers, whereas Benjamin was born from the same womb as he was—that of Jacob’s favourite wife Rachel? This is difficult to verify, but we should take into account that Joseph already knew what he had to do to Benjamin by putting his own cup of divination into Benjamin’s sack. With Benjamin’s coming ordeal in mind, it looks as if he wanted to comfort him in advance by saying: “God be gracious to you, my son” (Genesis 43:29). So, we should not automatically draw the conclusion that Joseph’s tears when he met Benjamin were only due to their special blood relationship. The prophetic aspect was certainly not absent.

What did pass through Joseph’s mind?

There was a long period of time between this meeting with Benjamin and the order to his brothers at their first journey to come back with their youngest brother. His father’s reluctance to send Benjamin with them elicited this remark from Judah: “As it is, if we had not delayed, we could have gone and returned twice” (Genesis 43:10). All that time, Joseph had had the opportunity to think about his coming meeting with Benjamin and also what this demand to send Benjamin along with the brothers would do to his father, now that he had missed Joseph for 22 years and had lived in the supposition that he was dead. Joseph realised that, because of his demand, the lives of three of his father’s sons were at stake: Simeon is in prison, Joseph is no more, and now, Benjamin is going on a long and dangerous journey.

Yet there was no alternative!

It was a holy necessity.

It is unthinkable that during that long period of time, he would have contrived his plan with Benjamin only at the last moment. The scenario was ready.

Foresight is the essence of government. Joseph, however, had charismatic foresight. His was able to look into the future as well as view the past, but through many tears.

Retrospective approach

What is it that has evoked this negative criticism of Joseph’s calling and behaviour in all kinds of theological publications and even as preached from the pulpit?

The few examples mentioned above are just the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’. The negative criticism recently broadcast in a sermon on television surpasses everything. This sermon was about Joseph and certain terms pertaining to his dreams were used, such as: ‘fantasy’, ‘he abhorred himself and his wonderful dreams’ and ‘in prison, his strange dreams emerged’. On his way to Egypt, he was said to have crossed the desert ‘hallucinating’.[26]

This sermon showed no respect whatsoever for Joseph and his dreams as an instrument in the service of God’s revelation.

Thank God, there is freedom of expression in The Netherlands. However, does this imply that those who call themselves ‘church’ can publicly disqualify God’s envoys and His holy prophets who have had to assume a key position in the service of the coming kingdom of God and, in doing so, endured much suffering?

It is true that the way prophets lived and behaved is sometimes incomprehensible to us and might on occasion even be called strange, but does this give us the right to judge them according to our own standards? Shouldn’t we rather regard the prophets and patriarchs in the light of God’s standards and His holy deeds with respect to the salvation of the nations?

Is this book meant to be a posthumous rehabilitation for someone like Joseph?

Certainly not! That would be quite unnecessary. In Psalm 105:19, the Holy Spirit inspired the following words about Joseph: “Till what he foretold came to pass, till the word of the Lord proved him true.” This was a judicial statement. God put Joseph in the right! This applies to his dreams and their unmistakable fulfilment as well as to how he behaved in his lengthy dealings with his brothers. But the main issue here is the necessity for us humans to be keenly aware that ancient ‘road signs’, which will certainly be greatly needed in the near future, should not be pulled down.

In chapter 3 of this book, three main points for Israel’s restoration were mentioned: an existential distress over Israel, God speaking prophetically, and a fulness of grace, which is ready and waiting before anything of God’s judgment becomes visible.

Of course, this is a very brief summary. It is a basic formula, an axiomatic sketch. Generally speaking, this was the procedure in the story of Joseph, and in the same way, God’s therapeutic formula was applied later on in the various periods of exile of the Jewish people. With their prophecies, the prophets announced the imminent divine judgments and also opened up the prospect of restoration. The same principle is also applied in the fulness of time, when Jesus announces the worldwide exile, together with His promise: “…until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matthew 23:39).

The fulfilment of the promises about the fulness of the Gentiles and Israel’s salvation will roughly follow the same pattern (Romans 11:25-26). In the coming universal distress, which will affect all nations, there will be uttering of prophecy (Revelation 10), whereas, initially invisible, the fulness of grace is ready waiting in the promised dawning of the times of refreshing and the kingdom of peace. Jesus announced this ‘uttering of prophecy’ at the occasion of His transfiguration on the mount, when the disciples asked Him about the expected coming of Elijah: “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things” (Mark 9:11-12).

Even this description of what is going to take place in the days preceding the times of refreshing is just a brief summary of God’s great works for the salvation of the world. In the meantime, mankind is passing through a deep valley. The Jewish people are not able to lift the centuries-old worldwide exile by means of secular Zionism. The one in whose mouth no deceit was found has declared: “Look, your house is left to you desolate.” This is God’s great sign of the truthfulness of Jesus’ Messianic mission. Every nation will be faced with an absolute impasse because of the eternal representative character of the Jewish people.

That is why we should pay careful attention to the ancient ‘road signs’ established by God all throughout the Old and New Testament. The ‘road signs’ in the story of Joseph have been there for thousands of years. If we pay attention to them, they may save us from ‘going astray’! So we should not turn these ‘road signs’ around or disable them. Let’s not paint them over or pull them up from where God has so explicitly put them, for they are meant to serve mankind on their perilous pilgrimage to the eternal city. They contain a ‘blueprint’ of God’s redemptive intervention in salvation history, and if we pay careful attention to them, we will become aware of the fixed order of God’s actions and of the mathematical interrelationship of what was mentioned in chapter 3: the concentric circles of the great works of God.

A similarity can be noticed in the relationship to the focal point of God’s intention in calling Abraham, namely—in all the recurring motives and changing circumstances—to be a blessing for all the generations of the earth.

God is love!

Due to this mathematical relationship, the story of Joseph can shed light on God’s further intervention through the prophets at the time of the exile and the restoration, and, yet later, on the future, when the promise about the fulness of the Gentiles and Israel’s total restoration will be fulfilled. Because of this similarity, it is legitimate to approach the story of Joseph retrospectively from the light which the later prophets shed on God’s work of salvation, more precisely the exegesis concerning the salient junctions in Joseph’s life-journey.

The following are a few examples:

When Joseph hears how his brothers have come to realise their guilt regarding their behaviour in the past, even confessing: “Now we must give an accounting for his blood” (Genesis 42:22), he is momentarily overcome and leaves the room to weep. How curious it seems at first when immediately after that, he encourages himself and has Simeon bound in front of his brothers, demanding at the same time that they bring Benjamin to him.

If this was only about some profane history, one could easily draw the conclusion that this shows a split personality or extremely paranoid behaviour. However, this story is anything but profane. It is of a high and sacred order.

At this stage, at the end of their first journey to Egypt, the brothers had in a way attained a sense of ‘solidarity’, as it might be called today. This also included a religious dimension, as we can see from their words: “Now we must give an accounting for his blood.” These words more or less entail an acknowledgment of their guilt regarding the way they had acted when they had wanted to eliminate Joseph. Furthermore, their words imply that they are aware of a ‘higher power’ whose right it is to ‘claim’ their brother’s ‘blood’ from their hands. But Joseph has not yet heard a confession from them about the pain he suffered by their scorn and mockery because of his dreams. After all, it was not about him personally, but because their behaviour had been pure enmity to the covenant and so to God Himself.

The procedure that had begun was not nearly completed. More was at stake than ‘a moral code and a sense of values’ on the ethical level. Similarly, much more was at stake than full bags of grain. “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3). The Word of God is Bread with a capital B, and the bags of grain provide bread with a small b.

Moreover, what is the purpose of ‘a moral code and a sense of values’ if deep-down, they are not secured in divine revelation manifested by the covenant of grace, which is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ? This ‘moral code and sense of values’ is like flowers that have been cut from their stems! A similar severe warning is found in the story of Moses, when he has to present to the people the stone tablets on which God has engraved the Ten Commandments with His own hand. When Moses comes down from the mountain and sees the people dancing around the golden calf, he burns with anger and, with the approval of the One who sent him, he throws the tablets down, breaking them to pieces (Exodus 32:19 ff.). This was a sign that the covenant of God with His people had been broken by them (Exodus 24:7-8). When God Himself and His deliverance are exchanged for the natural power of a bull to which they ascribe the deliverance from slavery in Egypt, there is no sense whatsoever in handing over the ‘moral code and sense of values’ to these people plunged in disgraceful idolatry. This applies even more to the Ten Commandments written with God’s own hand. So the divine judgment that follows is indeed unequalled in its severity. Moses’ stood in and interceded for them, pleading on the covenant the Lord had made with Abraham, Isaac and Israel. This is the reason why the Eternal One does not definitively turn His back on His chosen people, but we read how the Lord relented of the disaster he had threatened to bring on His people (Exodus 32:13-14). However, when Moses saw how uncontrollable the people were, he stood at the entrance to the camp and said: “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me” (verses 25-26). So Moses wanted the people to choose for the Lord once again and denounce their idolatry of the golden calf. At this, all the Levites stepped forward and Moses gave them the following command in the Name of God: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbour.’ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died” (verses 27-28).

After this, God could give Moses an angel at his disposal, who would drive out all their enemies and bring the Israelites into the Promised Land, but God Himself would not go with them. Then follows Moses’ moving objection: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here” (Exodus 33: 3 and 15).

This thrilling episode of the exodus strongly shows the need to
give priority to the sanctification of the Name of the Lord over all blood relationships and every ‘moral code and sense of values’.

Moses stood at the entrance to the camp when he called on the people to choose for the Lord. The indication of the place in itself already signifies the importance of the event. The ‘entrance’ is more than just a piece of geographical information. In ancient Israel, it was the central place where nearly every spiritual and social decision was made. The ‘entrance’ was used—in today’s terms—as the ‘notary’s office’, as the official place for marriages, as the ‘stock exchange’ or the ‘market place’ and as the ‘centre of publication’, etc. Announcements made in the ‘entrance’ concerned all people living inside the camp. From this point of view, the indication ‘entrance to the camp’ has a symbolic value, and is also meant as a ‘pars pro toto’, as a part of the whole; it is a representative place.

This information is of great importance, since—in a figurative sense—all the prophets before Moses as well as after him had to make their appeals and give their messages in the Name of God at ‘the entrance to the camp’.

This was also the case with Joseph. By virtue of God’s counsel, he had a key position. It was as if he was standing at the ‘entrance’ of the world events in those days. The command to give priority to the sanctification of the Name of the Lord over blood relationships applied to him as well. He fully lived up to this priority. Nevertheless, he was also an ordinary person, and kinship would certainly have had a say in his deliberations, but the prophet in him was not subjected to the person; the person, with all its natural desires, was subjected to the prophet.

So time and again, the sanctification of the Name had priority, possibly in spite of inner struggle and many tears. This is exactly what happened when he met Benjamin. The reunion with his ‘blood brother’ moved him deeply, but it did not stop him from having his cup of divination hidden in Benjamin’s bag, thereby terrifying him for quite a while of being sentenced to death and almost certainly of being executed.

Before Joseph made this decision, a tense inner dialogue between Joseph as a person and Joseph as a prophet must certainly have taken place. The result of this dialogue, however, was obedience such as Jesus asked for in the New Testament with the words:

“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:37-39)

In the entire process, the first thing that has to be dealt with is not the recognition of Joseph as their brother, but the relationship of the brothers with God. Neither should they be forced to acknowledge the truth of his dreams through a forced recognition of him as a person. Also in ancient story, it is the Spirit who comes to convince, which automatically excludes all use of violence.

All the prophets have faced the same dilemma as Joseph, and had tense inner struggles, just like Joseph. As human beings, they had a great love for their own country and people, but as prophets, they had to obey their mission and announce imminent judgments in the name of the Lord. But the matter did not end with an inner struggle of their soul. While accomplishing their mission, they were often ridiculed and persecuted. ‘Being a prophet’ is often the same as ‘being a martyr’. Not without reason did Jesus exhort the people:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12).

These words of Jesus closely correspond to 2 Chronicles 36:11-21, which speaks about the destruction of the Temple under Nebuchadnezzar and the exile of the people to Babylon. In verses 15 and 16, the author of the Chronicles tells us how God sent messengers such as Jeremiah (verse 12) to the people, early and late, because He was compassionate with his people. “But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy” (verse 16).

When Jeremiah is involved in the announcement of this judgment, he is deeply moved, as is evident from what he says: “Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people” (Jeremiah 9:1), and “I have not run away from being your shepherd; you know I have not desired the day of despair” (Jeremiah 17:16).

The struggle in Jeremiah’s soul is even emphatically recorded in the Scriptures:

“O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. (…)

Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, ‘A child is born to you—a son!’ May that man be like the towns the Lord overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon. For he did not kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?” (Jeremiah 20:7-9 and 14-18).

These words show how his prophetic task made him extremely lonely as a person. This inward struggle of Jeremiah is splendidly expressed in a poem by J.H. de Groot:

“ … I shall go and speak for my Lord
whose words are burning in me like a fire.

Farewell, my house, in this awesome hour,
he who follows God’s voice, does not think of return,
but becomes a flame, in which he is consumed,
flaring up above the most perilous adventure
clear, smokeless, a sharp spear,
which trembles and corrodes as a caustic acid.

Behold, the rain is beating down from the mountains,
but the fire burns in me, unquenchably.” [27]
[28]

We read how the prophet Ezekiel received from God a ‘forehead harder than flint’, so he could fulfil his mission. This equipment was certainly not superfluous, for he had been told previously that he had to convey God’s message to a rebellious people and that they would not listen to him. But he was encouraged by the Lord with these words:

“And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious (…)” (Ezekiel 2: 6-7).

The struggle in Ezekiel’s soul which followed is movingly described by Dr. A. Noordtzij:

“Duty calls. And now it becomes frighteningly clear in Ezekiel’s mind how awesome—or stronger still—how repulsive his calling is. He has to go to the exiles with the dreadful words: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says!”, and then he has to announce the imminent disaster—to his own people, his own flesh and blood, to those who have already endured such hardship in this foreign country. He, Ezekiel, has to aggravate their suffering, to darken their horizon! Bitterness and wrath bubble up from the unfathomable depths of his soul with an irresistible urge. A storm is unleashed, involving his whole being: his head, heart and hands. The question ‘Why have I been called to do this?’ arises in his soul. (…)

So for two long days, he wrestles with himself … and with his God. Yes, also with his God. For, although ‘the glory of the Lord’ had left him, ‘the hand of the Lord’ remained on him. He feels His hand heavily on him. Ezekiel may be sitting, speechless, in the midst of his people, but in his soul, a moving dialogue is heard. An awesome struggle is taking place between God and man, between man and God.” [29]
[30]

These words make the struggle in Ezekiel’s soul between man and prophet almost tangible for the reader. Eventually it is the prophet who wins.

Likewise, for the prophet Isaiah, ‘being a man’ was secondary to ‘being a prophet’. In spite of the fact that he belonged to a noble family, God ordered him to walk naked and barefoot in public for three years, as a symbolic warning to the people not to put their trust in other nations, but in God alone (Isaiah 20:1-6).

The account of Jesus’ struggle, as recorded in the New Testament, cannot be omitted, looking retrospectively at Joseph’s tears, since Joseph’s entire life was a foreshadowing of the Messiah.

A fierce struggle between the two elements—prophet and man—was also evident in Jesus’ life. Already at the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, it became clear how the multitude misunderstood His kingship (John 6:14-15). Much must have passed through Jesus’ compassionate soul when He saw how the people wanted to make Him King by force! Here as well as later, when He entered Jerusalem, He was confronted with complete misunderstanding regarding His Messianic mission. In Luke 19, we read how Jesus is surrounded by an excited crowd of people. The air vibrated with the sound of the crowd shouting ‘Hosanna!’

All the disciples joyfully started praising God in loud voices for the mighty works they had seen, saying:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:37-38).

This hymn of praise is no less than the joyful shout of Psalm 118, a salutation which was only due to the promised Messiah! It is through Him that all the spheres of heaven and earth would be brought to harmony. He is the King, the great Son of David, who comes in the name of the Lord ...!

Branches are cut from trees ..., leaves are pulled from plants ..., garments are spread on the road ..., all this to honour Jesus of Nazareth as King Messiah!

And how does Jesus respond?

Is Jesus not affected by the joy of the cheering crowd?

When Jesus sees the city of Jerusalem, He bursts into tears! The Greek original text says ‘εκλαυσεν’ (eklausen), which is a strong term for ‘weeping’.

What is the reason for this strange scene with the sharp contrast of a cheering crowd and a weeping Messiah? Jesus Himself answers this question:

“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognise the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:42-44).

God visited His people in this Jesus, who, as the promised Prince of Peace of Zechariah 9:9 arrived riding on the foal of a donkey, righteously, victoriously and humbly.

The multitude that began to praise God with a loud voice did this because of all the mighty works they had seen. The Most High surrounded Jesus’ life with a host of signs and miracles, and this had brought the people to accept Him as their own national hero. This man could serve their purpose, their Jerusalem, their country and nation! A person so favoured and confirmed by such spectacular signs and miracles would be able to lead Israel to be at the head of the nations! In this way, the divine signs and the divine word about the coming suffering Servant of the Lord would be torn apart. The supernatural powers were annexed by their own ‘flesh’ for their own chauvinistic purpose.

Jesus weeps!

He sees Jerusalem’s true character and the consequence of her carnality. Jerusalem will be destroyed! And beyond this destruction, His weeping eyes prophetically see the horrible dispersion of this chosen people among all nations.

As a man, it pierced His soul!

The inner struggle Jesus went through in Gethsemane was unfathomably deep. In Mark 14:33-36 we read:

“ …and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’”

His agony became so intense that His sweat fell like drops of blood to the ground. An angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him (Luke 22:43-44).

As a man, Jesus prayed: “Take this cup from me”, but it was His prophetic Messianic mission that prevailed, which is evident from the words: “…yet not my will, but yours be done.”

It is appropriate to compare this to Hebrews 5:7-10:

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”

Like Jesus, the apostles too experienced a similar grief regarding their human affinity with their people and their mission to call them to repentance (Romans 9:1-5 and Acts 2:40).

Absolute power linked to absolute priesthood

For the prophets, it is not exclusively their inner struggle between ‘being a man’ and ‘being a prophet’ that stirs up a great emotion in them, but even more so the fact that they see their prophetic dreams and predictions come to fulfilment. In Joseph’s case, this was combined with a long nurtured wish being satisfied, a wish that arose from general human kinship.

We sometimes use the saying: “blood is thicker than water”, by which we mean to say that the blood relationships are so strong that they can even overcome long-lasting feuds and can give priority to one’s own ‘clan’ in times of need. Although it is evident from the above that Joseph did not allow these feelings to prevail over his prophetic task, they were certainly not strange to him.

For the patriarch Jacob, the fulfilment of Joseph’s dreams even meant that the grievous mourning for the ‘loss’ of his son, whom he imagined dead, was lifted—a period of mourning that had lasted twenty-two years! One can easily imagine the reunion of father and son after everything that had happened in that period of time. When Joseph was told that his family was on the way, he could not restrain himself any longer. He prepared his chariot and went to Goshen to meet his father Israel. When he met him, he embraced him and wept in his arms (Genesis 46:28-29). His tears also witnessed to the profound experience of God’s faithfulness to the covenant, of which the dreams that God had given him, among others, were the outcome.

Later on, when his father Israel passes away and Joseph closes his eyes, his weeping is more than just grief for the loss of a beloved father; it is at the same time the end of an intensely moving story in which the living God had been so powerfully present.

Joseph’s prophetic experience of this parting is closely entwined with the way he experienced it as a man and as a son. For Joseph to close Jacob’s eyes is proof of the close bond that existed between father and son, but at the same time, it is a fulfilment of what God Himself had told Jacob in a nocturnal vision: “…And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes” (Genesis 46:4).

Joseph weeps.

It is no small thing what all did happen here. He was allowed to be the saving link between the chosen family of Israel and the vast world of the heathen, and because of this development in ancient history, Jacob/Israel has been able to bless the Gentile world.

This opened new perspectives!

Perspectives that find their origin in the promise to Abraham: “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” However, this blessing is only to be ‘shared out’ in the deepest dependence on God, and only because of the status that this nation has before God. This is also evident in the moving scene in which the old Jacob blesses Pharaoh.

When his brothers and their father arrive in Egypt, Joseph introduces his father at Pharaoh’s court as soon as possible. What matters most in this audience with all its pomp and circumstance, are the simple words: “… and Jacob blessed Pharaoh” (Genesis 47:7).

These are only four words, but if we try to visualise this scene, it will take our breath away.

Jacob and Pharaoh.

Jacob, a shepherd, who in his appearance must have compared poorly with the grandeur of the Egyptian court and Pharaoh, the king of the most powerful kingdom of the world.

What a scene!

What an event!

Just look how the one hundred and thirty year-old patriarch raises his hands to bless Pharaoh, who was worshipped as the god-king, hands of a shepherd—a trade which was an abomination to the Egyptians (Genesis 46:34).

Scripture says: “And without doubt the lesser person is blessed by the greater” (Hebrews 7:7). Melchizedek, in whose order Jesus too was included and who came directly in the name of the Most High, could, as a priest, raise his hands to bless Abraham and was therefore his superior. Here, however, it is Jacob who raises his hands to bless Pharaoh. Pharaoh must certainly have understood that Jacob was his superior by this deed. But he accepted it, which was an extraordinary reaction, because normally, every subject approaching Pharaoh’s throne had to reverently bow down to the ground. It becomes even more remarkable when we learn how, at this audience, Jacob does his utmost to totally make himself of no reputation.

It was not as if Jacob could enter Pharaoh’s palace unprepared. His entry was definitely preceded by a certain ‘protocol’. First of all, Joseph personally reports to Pharaoh that his family has arrived. Moreover, he forms a delegation of five of his brothers to whom he gives instructions before introducing them to Pharaoh. At Pharaoh’s question what their occupation is, these delegates had, so to speak, to show their ‘credentials’: “Your servants are shepherds ... just as our fathers were.” (...) “We have come to live here awhile, because the famine is severe in Canaan and your servants’ flocks have no pasture” (Genesis 47:3-4).

When a little later, Jacob is brought before Pharaoh, and Pharaoh asks how old he is, Jacob does not disguise his nomadic life. His answer is: “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers.”

Jacob uses the term ‘pilgrimage’ twice: first when he mentions his own age and the second time when he talks about his ‘fathers’. So he fully stresses the nomadic nature of his existence. He is a ‘nomad’, a ‘foreigner’. He does not possess a place of his own and has settled nowhere.

Neither can he boast about the quality of his life: “My years have been few and difficult: ‘few’ in comparison with how old Abraham had become, 175, and Isaac, 180 years old.

Immediately after having exposed himself in this way, Jacob blesses Pharaoh.

It is remarkable that Jacob—just after having talked about his own insignificance—raises his arms to bless Pharaoh. Indeed, he can only do this because of his religious status, because he has been chosen along with his ancestors and his descendants to be a blessing for all the nations on the earth. Jacob blesses by the power of God’s Word, by the power of a calling.

Up to this very day, the desire of Jacob’s descendants, both orthodox and liberal, has been to be instrumental in Tikkun Olam, the restoration of the world, and to be l’or goyim, the light to the nations.[31] This desire will become a reality on a global scale in the acknowledgement of their Messiah! With this perspective in mind, the breathtaking scene taking place here in Pharaoh’s palace, is a prophetic event of unprecedented importance, for Jews as well as for Christians.

We should not isolate the blessing Jacob pronounced over Pharaoh from the entirety and universality of God’s plans, as it is a link in the chain of blessings which find their origin in Paradise. Already there, God blessed Adam and Eve, and in doing so, He blessed the entire creation of which they are the representatives (Genesis 1:28 and 5:2). After the flood, God established a covenant with the only remaining family that had found grace in the eyes of the Lord—Noah and his sons. And God also blessed these new representatives of mankind (Genesis 9:1). The seventy nations which descended from Noah and which are mentioned in the list of nations in Genesis 10 are all included in this blessing.

This, however, was not the last link in the chain of God’s blessings. After the construction of the tower of Babel, when the Lord dispersed the people over the entire earth, God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans with the words: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3). In other words, the moment when Abraham was called, he and his offspring were appointed as the new representatives of mankind. The same counts for Jacob, when he and his seventy family members departed for Egypt. Moses says concerning this:

“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel” (Deuteronomy 32:8).

The chain of blessings finds its completion in Luke 10:1-20, where Jesus sends the seventy on their way with a message of peace, which Jesus directly connects to the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.

Returning to what happened in Pharaoh’s palace where Jacob blessed Pharaoh—it is not the scene in itself, however impressive it may be, which is so striking, but it is the fact that Jacob keeps the continuity of God’s plan of salvation for mankind going. For at that crucial moment of a famine, which was to last for another five years, Pharaoh, as the king of the most powerful nation of the world, reigned supreme.

Now, when the nation that has descended from Jacob nurtures the desire to be the light to the nations and wants to be instrumental in the restoration of the world, and when the Christians, who have been grafted in as a wild shoot in the nourishing olive root (Romans 11:17), proclaims their intention to strive for peace, justice and wholeness of creation, then this will only be effective if it is founded in the pilgrimage and suretyship of the great Son of Jacob, Jesus Christ, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, ... and humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:7-8).

As to the fact that He was a sojourner, a stranger, Jesus spoke the words: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).

Jesus took upon Himself this alienation up to the point of being forsaken by God on the cross. From this alienation, He raises His Hands in order to secure eternal peace for all those who want to follow Him.

This absolute priesthood of Jesus, together with His absolute prophetic and royal status, had already typologically been depicted in the story of Joseph.

Would the brothers upon the death of their father, with a view to the dimension of the depth of their lives and Joseph’s life, have been able to come to a precise interpretation of their experiences without Joseph’s prophetic light on the matter?

After Jacob’s meeting with Pharaoh, five more years of famine followed in which Joseph supported his entire family. At Pharaoh’s command, they were allotted the best land in Egypt (Genesis 47:6, 11). Yet they were alarmed when Jacob died after they had been living in Egypt for seventeen years under Joseph’s benevolent protection. The thought occurred to them that Joseph might have spared them because of their father. Now that he has complete monopoly of power in Egypt and the brothers are fully dependent on him, might he now consider taking revenge on them because of what they had done to him?

The brothers sent Joseph the following message: “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father” (Genesis 50:16-17).

“When their message came to him, Joseph wept” (verse 17).

This is the last time that the Scriptures mention Joseph’s tears.

It touches him deeply to see the brothers pleading in this way and showing their fear. It saddens him to see that, in their hearts, they consider him capable of vengeance. Yet this is not the essence of his grief. His eyes are filled with tears because, obviously, they still do not understand how everything that has happened is an expression of God’s forgiving love—his dreams and his being rejected, and especially the dramatic outcome when he made himself known.

“Am I in the place of God?”, he asks.

Do I have the right to put you on a blacklist or to have you arrested as suspects of murder after your confession?

Joseph does not deny their guilt regarding their evil thoughts about him. He does not smooth over their responsibility for the evil plans they had devised against him in the past, but he declares with tears in his eyes: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children” (Genesis 50:20-21).

This is not the first time that Joseph expresses himself in this way. At the moment he had made himself known to his brothers, as they shrank back from him in fear, he spoke these words of comfort: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (Genesis 45:5). Three times, he used the term: ‘sent ahead of you’. The last time, he even drew the conclusion: “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:8).

These are words to be mulled over forever.

From this heavenly perspective, from this unfathomable merciful nature of God, Joseph looks at his brothers with tearful eyes and with a prophetic vision, he sees how in his brothers’ behaviour, there was already a determination of God to execute His plan of salvation. That is why he says: it was not you who did this,
but it was God who sent me ahead of you, in order to save you.

Joseph’s tear-filled eyes are revealing!

They also look at us—Christians from among the Gentiles!

Have we in our two thousand years of history understood the ‘message’ of these tears?

Did we have ‘ears’ to hear what the Holy Spirit intended to say to the church by this?

For centuries, we have had the Scriptures at our disposal, which tell us how Jesus prayed for His people when he was hanging on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:33).

We could have known, of course, how the Father always hears Him, couldn’t we?! (John 11:42).

Did we ever understand what these tears meant in the times of the crusades, or even worse, of the holocaust?

Do the church denominations understand anything at all of these tears, when they confess a kind of ‘replacement theology’ regarding Israel in an exclusive sense?

Joseph was sent ahead in history by God! This happened prophetically as an example, and it also functions as a ‘parable’ referring to all the Jewish people—those who lived before as well as after the birth of Christ! In the history of mankind, the Jewish people have been and are being sent ahead in their fall and rising, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

In a most sublime sense, this being ‘sent ahead’ also counts for Jesus. And in Joseph’s case as well as in the case of the entire Jewish nation, and in particular for Jesus, the purpose of this is to save by standing in for them!

“Don’t be afraid” is what Joseph repeatedly says to his brothers. They need not fear the extraordinary position of authority that has been bestowed on him. It is true, everybody in Egypt depended on him. He possessed all the estates and the finances and all the livestock of the Egyptians, and in the end, they even offered themselves to be subservient to Pharaoh in the time of the famine. They were virtually his slaves. The power of Egypt was completely centralised.

This absolute power that Pharaoh had given to Joseph was also a prefiguration of the coming kingdom of God. In the letter to the Philippians (3:21), we read how Jesus has the “power that enables him to bring everything under his control.” The fulfilment of all the promises in the Scriptures also belongs to this.

Jesus has the power to direct and arrange history in such a way that by divine forgiveness, a miraculous outcome will emerge on which the kingdom of peace will be founded. However, we as Christians have to be prepared to believe a priori in this generous forgiveness.

Joseph’s perspective demands it.

That is what his ‘tears’ demand.

This ‘being sent ahead’, ‘taking the lead’, ‘standing surety’, is a theme of profound significance in the Bible. Jesus derives a parable from the scene of the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts of the Lord, in order to explain to His disciples what the intention is of His going to the Father.

“I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).

Here Jesus uses the image of the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem on the days of the feasts. Such a party of travellers would normally send their servants ahead to look for a place to stay. When the servant or slave had prepared everything for the reception of his master, he would walk back to the party of travellers. In this way, they did not have to find a place to stay themselves, and at the same time they had a guide to lead them to the place reserved.

By means of this image, Jesus summarised His work. He was sent ahead to His death on the cross, in order to save a great nation forever. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Jesus has been given all power in heaven and on earth. We need not fear this ‘monopoly’, however, for His absolute power is inextricably connected with His absolute priestly love. His incredible power at the right hand of the Father is placed under the same denominator of His ‘being sent ahead’ to stand in for us.

Who will fathom the height, the length, the width and the depth of the love of God in Christ Jesus, who, knowing that the Father had given Him all things in His Hands, i.e. the full ascendency of the Kingdom of God, knelt down to wash the feet of His disciples like a slave? (John 13:1-20).

The absolute Monarch is at the same time the absolute slave!

Joseph comforts his brothers. He has no vengeance in mind.

Neither does Jesus, the great Joseph, have any vengeance in mind, however much we—as Joseph’s brothers—have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we will be justified freely by His grace, because that One Person was sent ahead as a ‘first-fruits offering’ in order to be sacrificed for all and to be resurrected from the dead as the first one as well. He is calling out to us: “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19).

“What could ever limit His power?

The universe is under His dominion;

What His love will bring about
does not deny Him His power!”

After the Dutch hymn:

“Wat zou ooit Zijne macht beperken?

‘t Heelal staat onder Zijn gebied;

Wat Zijne liefde wil bewerken,

Ontzegt Hem Zijn vermogen niet!”

23 Franz Werfel: “Zwischen oben und unten”, Stockholm, 1946. Translation is taken from the publication: “In de waagschaal”, 29 March 1958, Volume 13, number 27.
“Slechts de grote wond in Jozef’s ziel verklaart het sluw verheven komediespel, dat hij tot straf met zijn broeders opvoert, een lang en gevaarlijk spel, voordat hij zich te kennen geeft en met bevende stem die tot heden weerklinkende woorden spreekt: Ik ben Jozef, uw broeder! Overeenkomstig daarmee en wel nog altijd in geestelijke climax, zal er tussen Christus en Israël, als de tijd rijp is, d.w.z. dor genoeg is geworden, nog menige dramatische verdrietelijkheid en een verheven spel zijn, voordat de verhoogde broeder zich aan de vernederden te kennen geeft en tot hen en uit hen de woorden aanheft: Ik ben Jezus, uw broeder, de Messias (…)”

24 Translated from Dutch

25 André Neher: The exile of the Word - From the silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz, page 25, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1981. (Original title: L’exil de la Parole: du silence biblique au silence d’Auschwitz, 1970).

26 Reverend Yko van der Goot in a broadcast of the NCRV from the Nicolai Church in Utrecht on Sunday 14 September 1997

27 J.H. de Groot: “Jeremia, een sonnettenreeks”, page 9, G.F. Callenbach, Nijkerk
“… ik zal gaan en spreken voor mijn Heer
wiens woorden in mij branden als een vuur.
Vaarwel mijn huis in dit ontzaglijk uur,
wie Gods stem volgt beraamt geen wederkeer,
maar wordt een vlam, waarin hij zelf verteer
oplaaiend boven ‘t hachlijkst avontuur
helder en zonder rook, een felle speer,
die beeft en invreet als een bijtend zuur.
Zie, van de bergen slaat de regen neer,
maar onuitblus’lijk brandt in mij het vuur.”

28 Translated from Dutch

29 Dr. A. Noordtzij: “Korte verklaring der Heilige Schrift, Ezechiël”, page 61. J.H. Kok, Kampen, 1932
“De taak roept. En nu stelt zich met ontstellende klaarheid het ontzaglijke, nee meer, het weerzinwekkende van de tot hem gekomen roeping voor Ezechiël’s geestesbewustzijn. Tot de ballingen moet hij gaan met dat geweldige: ‘Zo spreekt de Heer Heere!’ en dan getuigen van komende jammer. En dat tot zijn eigen volk, zijn eigen vlees en bloed, tot hen, die toch al zoveel te lijden hebben in dit vreemde land. Hun lijden moet hij verzwaren, hun horizon verdonkeren, hij, Ezechiël! En uit de onpeilbare diepten van zijn zieleleven borrelt met onweerstaanbare drang bitterheid en gramschap naar boven. Een storm wordt ontketend en zijn ganse persoonlijkheid is erbij betrokken: hoofd en hart en hand. Het ‘waarom ben ik daartoe geroepen?’ welt uit zijn ziel. (…)
Zo worstelt hij twee lange dagen met zichzelf … en met zijn God. Ja, ook met zijn God. Want al is ‘des Heren heerlijkheid’ van hem weggegaan, , des Heren hand’ is op hem blijven rusten. Zwaar voelt hij de druk ervan. Sprakeloos moge Ezechiël neerzitten in het midden der zijnen, daar binnen in hem, daar wordt een ontroerende sprake gehoord. Daar wordt een ontzaglijke worsteling gestreden: van God en mens, van mens en God.”

30 Translated from Dutch

31 Hebrew expressions have been taken from the article: “Liberaal jodendom en zionisme: een beginselverklaring voor de eeuwwisseling”, in ‘Levend Joods Geloof’, pages 12,13, 44th volume, nr. 1, 1997

5. JOSEPH’S CUP

The symbolism of the cup of divination

The symbolism of the cup of divination is in itself very simple. In Scripture, the word cup is often used as the symbol of fate or destiny, what God has in store for somebody.

Here are a few examples:

David says in Psalm 16:5: “Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.” And in Psalm 23:5: “… my cup overflows.”

Psalm 75:8 says: “In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs.” The wicked of the earth will get to swallow the dregs of history!

“Then I understood their final destiny” (Psalm 73:17-20).

Psalm 116:13: “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.”

The prophet Jeremiah also uses the symbolism of the cup with regard to fate: “Babylon was a gold cup in the Lord’s hand; she made the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore they have now gone mad” (Jeremiah 51:7).

Very striking is this symbolism in the words of the Saviour when He prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

From His cup of suffering, Jesus predicted His own future. When standing before Caiaphas, He was made to vow under oath: “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus’ answer was: “Yes, it is as you say.” On hearing this, Caiaphas tore his clothes and said: “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy.”

Jesus, however, said: “But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:63-66).

In other words: My suffering also signifies My great future.

The metaphor of the cup has remained the same throughout the ages.

Rabbi S. Ph. De Vries Mzn. writes the following about the consecration ceremony at a wedding:

“The cup is offered to the couple-to-be, so they can have a sip. (…) They drink from the same chalice. From now on, they may know and will have only one common cup of life.” [32]
[33]

The covenant God made with Israel was, in a symbolic sense, a marriage vow. This is what Jesus refers to when He institutes the Lord’s Supper with the words: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). Matthew adds the instruction: “Drink from it, all of you” (Matthew 26:27-28).

The new covenant is in essence the same marriage vow made by the Eternal God with His people made up of Jews and Gentiles. Jesus Christ is the Bridegroom and His Church is His bride.

This reality is illustrated by the cup of thanksgiving which has to circulate among all.

At a more secular level, the metaphor of the cup is still being used. Think of making a toast at a banquet as we raise the glass.

Or think of the importance of a cup in sports.

In every aspect of life, whether it concerns sports, games, or politics, the ‘world Cup’ is what it is all about.

Of course, Joseph’s ‘cup’ cannot be compared with something as profane as the ‘World Cup’, but in his time and place, the cup which he supposedly used to predict the future helped Joseph to keep the situation under his control, and Egypt as well as the surrounding nations depended on him and his actions for their sustenance.

This is the cup he put in Benjamin’s sack of grain!

Strictly speaking, his brothers were completely innocent regarding this ‘theft’. But to Joseph, it concerned the significant issue, a testimony by way of metaphor relating to a reality of which they were certainly guilty, namely the fact that they had made light of his prophetic calling. The brothers had despised the dreams that God had given him, and in doing so they had rejected the divine revelation.

In essence, this is their original guilt!

This original guilt cannot be settled by filling a few sacks of grain. Joseph even refuses to accept any payment for the grain. Their salvation will be by grace alone.

By stealing his ‘cup of divination’, they themselves are the cause of their need and in fact, figuratively speaking, they have ‘plundered’ all of Egypt. For without Joseph’s intervention, who, according to Pharaoh, was filled with the wisdom of God, Egypt would have no future either.

Let us on no account think that Joseph has resorted to Egyptian superstition. He is not a fortune-teller, who uses a cup of oily water to pontificate the future. His action has nothing to do with magic or any occult inspiration.

We should imagine the way Joseph used the cup of divination more or less as follows: When Joseph had to speak about Egypt’s fate and about the wise measures that needed to be taken in order to serve the Egyptian people, he raised his silver cup and spoke his prophetic words. For this reason, his cup is called ‘cup of divination’ (Genesis 44:5). Egypt’s fate and that of the whole world depended on the gift of prophecy which God had given to Joseph.

This makes the fact that Joseph put this cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain so relevant. It is like scoring a bull’s-eye!

Of course, Joseph would have had the opportunity to put another precious object in Benjamin’s sack, for example a small gold crocodile or a silver miniature pyramid. As an Egyptian viceroy, he would certainly have had enough jewellery. But none of these was good enough to serve as evidence for the essence of his accusation. There is indeed divine wisdom in the procedure that Joseph followed.

The cup, along with the returned money, could not have served as a means of accusation on the first journey either. Benjamin had not yet joined them on the first journey. It was only on the second journey, when he had his cup put in Benjamin’s sack rather than in anybody else’s, that Joseph had a good case to test his brothers regarding their mutual solidarity or willingness to stand in for each other. Now he knew beforehand that Benjamin would be arrested and that the brothers would be faced with the question whether they would allow Benjamin to be arrested and let him manage on his own or whether they would go back with him and await a possible death sentence together.

We who know the entire story may conclude how just and necessary this test was. What had Reuben done after he had come home from the first journey and had confronted Jacob with the unconditional demand to send Benjamin with them on the next journey which would inevitably come? Forced by the necessity of going to Egypt again, he tried to persuade his father to consent to Benjamin joining them, because a second journey without him would undoubtedly be of no avail. He suggested to his father: “You may put both of my sons to death if I do not bring him back to you. Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him back” (Genesis 42:37).

Is that standing surety for each other?

Is the patriarch reassured by the suggestion that he could kill two of his grandchildren if Benjamin did not return safe and sound from Egypt?

Would Reuben’s suggestion remove his hesitation to let Benjamin go?

At the second journey, Joseph, driven by the ‘wisdom of God’ working in him, pushes through to the deepest motives of their hearts. It was not without reason that, when the brothers on their first journey had referred to their ‘honesty’, Joseph had declared: “I fear God.” However, the brothers’ ‘honesty’ was only an ethical matter. But when peace and unity have to be brought to the chosen family, more is at stake than a mere ethical problem: it has become a religious question.

How, for instance, will they deal with his prophetic office?

What is their stance in the matter of their family ‘being chosen’ to be a blessing for all the nations?

By means of the cup, it now will become clear how God is true to His covenant and fulfils His promises. It has already become evident how his dreams have started to come true. Besides, the dreams had obviously come from the One who has known both present and future from eternity.

That is why the brothers get a short ‘sermon’, a ‘sermon’ without words, but which is not to be misunderstood in the ‘language’ that it ‘speaks’: the cup of divination is found in Benjamin’s sack of grain! With this, Joseph will push further to the religious roots of their existence.

It will be the all-crowning conclusion of Joseph’s ‘procedure’ with his brothers.

Benjamin’s sack of grain

For the second time, the brothers have arrived in Egypt. The reception is quite different from the first time. Joseph keeps his word: now that Benjamin has come along, Simeon is taken out of prison and is released.

The steward of Joseph’s house gives the brothers the opportunity to refresh themselves, and their pack animals are fed. In the meantime, Joseph has everything prepared for a meal. Once the brothers have entered the dining room, to their surprise, Joseph has them seated exactly according to the order in which they were born. When the food is served, something remarkable takes place: Benjamin is served five times as much of the food as each of the others.

The number five is not without symbolic significance in Egypt. At the coronation and enthronement of the king, for instance, the major component of the ‘protocol’ (statute, covenant) is the ‘great name’, the ‘five-fold title of the king’, which the Pharaoh receives at his accession to the throne.[34]

Evidently Joseph, who had lived in Egypt for more than twenty years and occupied a high position at Pharaoh’s court was well aware of this tradition. But we may also take for granted that he was just as much aware of his own ‘royal’ descent, but then in a religious sense, for his great-grandfather Abraham had been acknowledged by the Hittites as a ‘mighty prince’ (Genesis 23:6). And of course, Joseph knew that his father Jacob had wrestled with God and had been given the name ‘Israel’ with the words: “because—as a prince (explicit in KJV)—you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome” (Genesis 32:28).

Jacob’s struggle at the death of Rachel, his favourite wife, was also difficult. It was a victory of faith for Jacob to call this child Benjamin, ‘son of my right hand’, as opposed to Ben-Oni, ‘son of my sorrow’, the name which Rachel had given the child at whose birth she had died. The fact that he gave him this name actually expresses the essence of Jacob’s victory. It reflects royal splendour.

In the language of the Old Testament, ‘son of my right hand’ simply means ‘my right hand’. In the deepest sense, the patriarch Jacob is going to change history with this ‘right hand’.

By giving Benjamin, the ‘son of his father’s right hand’, five helpings, Joseph must have wanted to honour his father Jacob/Israel, in his religious status as a ‘mighty prince’. In the ancient Orient, when wanting to honour somebody, it was the custom to give lavish portions at meals. In ancient Israel, too, the symbolic significance of the number five has a royal character. This becomes clear in several places in the Scriptures—certainly at the establishment of the kingship of David, the culmination of the exodus from Egypt.

When king David writes his last ‘psalm’ in 2 Samuel 23, it is striking how he celebrates his fivefold title given to him by God:

1. “The oracle of David, son of Jesse,

2. the oracle of the man exalted by the Most High,

3. the man anointed by the God of Jacob,

4. Israel’s singer of songs” (2 Samuel 23:1).

These words are then followed by a prophetic Messianic message about the advent of a righteous ruler over the people:

“The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me;
his word was on my tongue.

The God of Israel spoke,
the Rock of Israel said to me:

‘When one rules over men in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,
he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings the grass from the earth’”
(2 Samuel 23:2-4).

These verses, in which David celebrates the Messianic future should be regarded as an introduction to the fifth and at the same time the highlight of his titles in 2 Samuel 23:5:

5. “Truly is not my house so with God?” (NASB)

In other words: David, with the kingdom that he had been allowed to establish, was appointed by God as a prefiguration, a foreshadow of the kingdom to be introduced by the Messiah.

The rhetorical question in 2 Samuel 23:5 becomes all the more important when David announces the advent of the Messianic ruler and emphasises that the Spirit of the Lord is on him and His words are on his tongue. It is in relation to his argument about the coming of the kingdom of God that David says: “Truly is not my house so with God?” (NASB)

The mention of the eternal covenant of God with his dynasty is in conformity with this rhetorical question: “Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant?”(2 Samuel 23:5).

This refers back to Nathan’s prophecy in 2 Samuel 7:12: “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.” And in verse 9, we read how the prophet Nathan says to David on behalf of God: “Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth.”

At the same time, these words anticipate the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1: 32-33).

When Isaiah announces the birth of the Messiah, it is remarkable how he, too, confers a fivefold title on Him: Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, to which the prophet immediately adds: “Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this” (Isaiah 9:6-7).

If we put 2 Samuel 23:5 next to this, the similarity will be clear to everyone.

The number five also plays a role in the liturgical service at the celebration of Pesach in Judaism.

This is what the Dutch Rabbi J. Soetendorp writes on this subject:

“The four cups of wine which are drunk that evening are a reminder of the four utterances in which the exodus was announced. The fifth cup, which is set aside, and which is usually a little bigger, is ‘the cup for Elijah the prophet’ (…) The relevant utterances are found in Exodus 6:6-7: “I will bring you out, I will free you, I will redeem you and I will take you as my own people.” These make up the different stages in which the deliverance was carried out: liberation from slavery, the yoke of bondage cast off, liberation from all dependence on Egypt, and being chosen with a special mission from God. The fifth promise: “I will bring you back to Canaan” is the last stage, the promise that led to ‘Elijah’s cup.’” [35]
[36]

The Pesach liturgy uses this terminology to emphasise the royal character of the exodus from Egypt.

The exodus from Egypt certainly had a royal character.

In those days, Egypt was ruled by a Pharaoh who had not known Joseph and who, because of his fear of the tremendous increase in numbers of the Hebrew people, ordered all the boys born to these people to be thrown into the Nile with the purpose of exterminating the women’s offspring. This made him a prefiguration of the Antichrist. Most likely, this Pharaoh had also retained his fivefold title.

But then God’s jealousy is aroused, of which Isaiah speaks in his description of the Messianic future. This jealousy of God is clearly perceived in the statement: “The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen” (Exodus 14:18).

The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle (Exodus 13:18), in one Dutch translation it says ‘in rows of five’. It is as if we can already hear God ‘laugh’ (Psalm 2:4). Leaving Egypt in rows of five was, apart from the necessary strategy, in itself ‘scornful’ in relation to Pharaoh with his fivefold royal title.

But, coming back to the meal Joseph had with his brothers: isn’t it a somewhat strange paradox to see that Benjamin received five helpings, as a royal distinction, whereas Joseph was already planning to put his cup of divination in Benjamin’s sack?

When looking at this question, we should seriously bear in mind that this entire procedure is of quite a high order. It is the order of election for the salvation of all mankind. This exclusive election also involves special responsibilities.

The prophet Amos formulates it as follows:

“You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins” (Amos 3:2).

The rejection of prophecy is to be considered as one of the worst iniquities.

Later on, when the people desire a king in the place of the prophet Samuel, and Samuel makes his disapproval known to God, God answers him: “…it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7).

In the same way, Joseph’s rejection along with the dreams he had received was, in essence, a rejection of God Himself. But the Lord God maintains His election and His covenant in spite of everything else and regardless of people’s unfaithfulness or stumbling, even though it means subjecting His people to severe chastisement.

The patriarchs too had experienced this many times in their personal lives. For them as well, it was one long chain of trials to keep the covenant that God had made with them and to surrender to God and His mercy. Jacob had also known many moments of struggle. The most important moment of the testing of his faith was undoubtedly his wrestling with God at Peniel, where he submitted himself to the sovereign and merciful will of God, and where he received from God his new name, Israel. In the second place, there was Rachel’s untimely death, when Jacob rejected the name she had given to the child at whose birth she lost her life, and instead called him ‘Benjamin’. And finally, there was the decision, after a fierce inner struggle, to send Benjamin with his brothers to Egypt, by which he surrendered to God’s guidance once again with the words: “And may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man so that he will let your other brother and Benjamin come back with you” (Genesis 43:14).

In fact, three times, Jacob behaved in a royal way before God and before people, and he received the honourable title, Israel, directly from God.

The fact that Joseph gave Benjamin five times as much as the others at the meal with his brothers fits perfectly with the high order of the election to which Joseph himself had been subjected his entire life. It was the wisdom of God that governed his thoughts and plans. Benjamin was going to take a central place in the denouement of this ‘family tragedy’. The turn which this story took would—in a figurative sense—make him yet the ‘right hand’ of his father Jacob/Israel.

Joseph’s dreams came true—in the line of the election.

God’s Word stands firm—even if human desires are crucified.

The cup of divination is put in Benjamin’s sack of grain!

Why precisely in his sack and not in the sack of one of his brothers?

If we would only judge this according to our psychological standards, our conclusion would obviously be that this was a ‘brilliant move’ by Joseph on the ‘chessboard’ of the procedure that had been started. Benjamin, as a person, was a delicate issue! Joseph could easily imagine what the arrest of his brothers and the discovery of the cup in Benjamin’s sack would do to their souls.

It would cause an existential shock!

If Joseph in faith was counting on the dreams he had received from God in his youth, he could have positive expectations, because those dreams had shown how the entire family would bow before him.

But there is more!

As mentioned before, the entire Joseph story may be regarded as a prophetic parable of the great future of the Lord and as a typological picture of Israel’s fall and rising. The characters that appear in this story are written on the ‘wall’ of world history as living hieroglyphs.

“Known to God from eternity are all his works” (Acts 15:18 [NKJV]). So, let us retrospectively contemplate these deeds of Joseph in light of the subsequent historical developments—since the story did not end when Joseph had his cup of divination put into Benjamin’s sack of grain. It is as if the great Joseph, the Messiah, has repeatedly put the ‘cup of prophecy’ in ‘Benjamin’s sack’, both before and after the incarnation of the Word, to show how severely the iniquity of killing the prophets and stoning His messengers is punished.

Moses prophesied about Benjamin as follows:

“Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders” [rendered as “mountain slopes” in one Dutch translation] (Deuteronomy 33:12).

This prophecy was literally fulfilled when the land was divided after the Israelites had entered Canaan: Jerusalem belonged to Benjamin’s inheritance (Joshua 18:28). That was how it was distributed at Shiloh by Joshua casting lots in the presence of the Lord.

The territory of the Benjamites was situated between that of the Judeans and the descendants of Joseph. In 1 Kings 11:36, however, God calls Jerusalem: “…the city where I chose to put my Name.”

So Jerusalem had been predestined by God to be the centre of His revelation. However, history shows that time and again, this same city was the centre of opposition against this revelation. Jesus says about Jerusalem: “…for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!” (Luke 13:33). And in His speech to the Pharisees, He said :

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matthew 23:37-39).

All this took place in Benjamin’s territory, of which Jerusalem was the centre. We can compare the territory which had to provide sustenance for all the Benjamites, including Jerusalem, to
Benjamin’s sack in the Joseph story. However, time and again, the ‘sack of grain’ contains the stolen ‘cup of divination’, the ‘theft’ of prophecy, the guilt of killing the prophets, and the opposition against the great Joseph, the Messiah, who came down to earth to reveal God’s Name, Yahweh, to the people, ‘I am who I am’ (John 17:6). The people opposed Him too, although both before and after His coming in the flesh, He had wanted nothing but to gather His people in love, ‘as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings’.

But the people did not want this!

They only wanted the ‘sack of grain’. They did not want a Samuel, they did not want prophecy. The people said to Samuel: “Appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:4). They wanted to be like the nations around them.

But the Lord had destined His people to be a holy people and a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6). The people wanted to have a king, just like the surrounding nations, because they did not want God to rule over them. So they indeed received kings. But the prophet Hosea says about this:

“You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against me, against your helper. Where is your king, that he may save you? Where are your rulers in all your towns, of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? So in my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away” (Hosea 13:9-11).

And in Ezekiel 20:32, the word of the Sovereign Lord says:

“You say, ‘We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone.’ But what you have in mind will never happen.”

Time and again, the prophets had to remind the people that they should only serve Yahweh, and time and again, they wandered away and followed other gods. It was a rapid decline and eventually ended in exile.

Prophets acted as intercessors before God on behalf of the people, begging for mercy, like the prophet Daniel, who, together with his people, had been exiled to Babylon. He expressed his solidarity with his people and prayed:

“We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. (…)

“O Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our sins and the iniquities of our fathers have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn to all those around us” (Daniel 9:5-6 and 16).

Time and again, the ‘theft’ of God’s revelation is hidden in ‘Benjamin’s sack’.

This being the case, the result was repeatedly an ‘arrest’ followed by a deadly threat!

Just as it was in the Joseph story!

Apart from the ten tribes being taken away into exile after the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, the first ‘arrest’ of the remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin, took place under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. On the 9th day of the month of Av, the temple was burnt down (2 Chronicles 36:19). The next ‘arrest’ was by Titus, in the year 70 AD, and also took place on the 9th Av. This was to be an exile of two thousand years!

And what is the spiritual condition of the nation of God’s revelation today?

Are the Jewish people still satisfied with a ‘sack of grain’? Do they believe that now that they have a secular state and a thriving economy, an army and a fleet as well as an existence similar to the ‘surrounding nations’, they can come home and lift the exile without living up to their holy status of being a kingdom of priests?

Are the words from Exodus 19:6, pronounced by the Most High at the time of His appearance on Mount Sinai, accompanied by thunder and lightning and the sound of trumpets, no longer valid?

And what about Jesus’ words: “Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matthew 23:38-39)?

Are these words no longer found in their ‘sacks of grain’, i.e. is this the ‘theft’ of Him, who is the Word Himself?

Isn’t there going to be another ‘arrest’, which will result in the restoration of their ‘family’ and of the ‘family’ of all mankind according to the words about the coming of Elijah? (Malachi 4:5)

The chosen people cannot simply be asked to answer these last few questions because too much has happened in the non-Jewish world, that is to say in the world of the Gentile Christians. Because of this long history and the great suffering of the Jewish people, we as Christians have lost all credibility to ‘interrogate’ this nation about the contents of their ‘sack of grain’. The above questions may only be asked on the direct order of Him who has the authority to send the promised prophet Elijah, (Malachi 4:5; Matthew 17:11; Mark 9:12), whose mission will be an unmistakable call to all Christians to attend to their eschatological task of mercy regarding the Jewish people (Romans 11:31-32) in the hour of the imminent curse over all mankind.

For we too, as Gentile Christians, have our own ‘Benjamin’, who is dragging the ‘theft’ of the ‘cup of prophecy’ along in his ‘sack of grain’. We will not escape being ‘arrested’ either.

The seating in order of seniority

At the meal, Joseph seats his brothers in the exact order of their ages. This must have made them think, as also the money they had found in their sacks on top of the grain on their first journey back. When, on their second journey, they had made a remark about it to Joseph’s steward in order to return the money, this Egyptian eased their minds with the words: “Don’t be afraid. Your God, the God of your father, has given you treasure in your sacks (…)” (Genesis 43:23).

In the world of the Gentiles, the knowledge regarding God’s secret way of dealing with His chosen people apparently has a certain priority.

Most certainly, the unfolding of God’s penultimate mystery of Revelation 10 will also receive priority in the world of the Gentiles! The eschatological meaning of the Joseph story as a typological picture is quite profound and far-reaching.

Seating the brothers at the meal in order of seniority has a deeper meaning than just a stimulus to think of God’s guidance. That was certainly also a purpose. However, the brothers must have wondered how the history of their births could be known in Egypt, and especially at the court of this highly-placed ‘governor’. They may also have wondered about the special way Benjamin was treated.

The deeper meaning of ‘Benjamin’ as a person in a typological sense will only be understood if we look at it in the light of the spiritual background of how Jacob named his youngest son. As mentioned earlier, giving him the name ‘Benjamin’, ‘son of my right hand’, was an act of faith of the patriarch as opposed to Rachel naming him ‘Ben-oni’, son of my sorrows.

The prophet Jeremiah also points to this high level of faith when he speaks the following words concerning Israel’s exile and restoration:

“This is what the Lord says: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,’ declares the Lord. ‘They will return from the land of the enemy’” (Jeremiah 31:15-16).

Matthew refers to the same spiritual background at the time of the massacre of the children in Bethlehem:

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18).

As we repeatedly come across this spiritual reality in Scripture, we may take the liberty to draw the conclusion that at this meal in Joseph’s house, where the patriarchs are seated in order of seniority, Israel’s history does not end in ‘Ben-Oni’ but in ‘Benjamin’—not in a downfall, but in a victory.

At first sight, it seems to result in the downfall of the family, considering Joseph’s intention to hide his cup of divination in Benjamin’s sack of grain, yet, it resulted in a complete victory and the restoration of the entire family.

The seating in order of seniority is symbolic for the history of the birth of Israel, and at the same time for the entire history of Israel. Benjamin as the youngest brother, may metaphorically be regarded as the most recent history of the Jewish people. In other words: Benjamin is seated at the ‘bottom end’ of history. At this ‘bottom end’, the denouement of the mysterious experiences of the patriarchs as well as their offspring took place in the past and will take place in the future. Joseph was involved in this denouement as a prophet. And what’s more, he played a crucial role in it.

At the end of the Joseph story, there is the exposure of the ‘theft’ of the one thing needed, the Word of God, symbolised in the cup of divination.

For the Gentile Christian ‘Benjamin’, it will be the same. The great Joseph, the Messiah, also knows the whole history of the church and its ‘bottom end’. He is also able to arrange everything in order of seniority among us without a single mistake.

What is the outcome of two thousand years of church history?

We have deviated quite a long way from the early Christian church, about which Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians:

“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (that done in the body by the hands of men)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ (…)

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:11-13 and 19-22).

So Paul says that we, who in the past were Gentiles and lived without Christ, being excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world, are now allowed to join and enter Israel’s citizenship through the blood of Christ. Do we understand, however, that by our entering the inheritance of Israel as Gentile Christians, we now also bear a special responsibility?

Are we sufficiently aware of the fact that we now have to do with Yahweh, with Him whose Name is: ‘I am who I am’?

Will we, being at the ‘bottom end’ of our history escape ‘inspection’ and ‘arrest’?

If He did not spare ‘the natural branches’, will He spare us, being ‘wild branches’ (Romans 11:21)?

Is the imminent curse exclusively destined for the Jews and will we keep out of harm’s way?

The Egyptian said to Joseph’s brothers that they shouldn’t fear, but trust, because there is a secret discussion going on with your and your father’s God. Certainly, with these words, the Egyptian is a servant of the Gospel, but still, the sacks are opened and the fear of the Lord will fall on Jacob/Israel’s family. This also applies to the ‘family’ of mankind today. It did not, in those days, release the family of Jacob/Israel from the responsibility of the ‘theft’ of the cup of divination, the ‘theft’ of prophecy, and neither will it now release us from that responsibility.

Is this sense of responsibility alive in present-day Christianity, in all its length and breadth?

Do the churches, regardless of their character, feel any kind of guilt regarding the ‘robbing’ of prophecy?

It may help us to answer this question if we let the story, as described in Genesis 44, sink deeply into our minds.

How and in what mood did Joseph’s brothers leave Egypt after the strange experiences at the meal? At that moment, they had ample reason to set out on their return journey with a feeling of satisfaction and optimism. The tide had completely turned in comparison with their first journey. They had even had a meal in the dining room of that powerful ‘governor’ of Egypt.

Their sacks were filled to the rim with grain.

Simeon had been released from jail.

But above all, they could safely take Benjamin back home to their anxious father. Soon the latter would be able to hold his youngest son in his arms again. His grey hair would not have to be buried in grief. Each of them could wholeheartedly say: What else do you want?

Well, Joseph did want more!

That became evident from their ‘arrest’. No sooner had they left the city than Joseph’s steward chased after them. This was certainly not what the brothers had counted on. Even less on the accusation: “Why have you repaid good with evil?” (Why have you stolen the silver cup?) “Isn’t this the cup my master drinks from and also uses for divination? This is a wicked thing you have done” (Genesis 44:4-5).

The brothers strongly defended themselves against this accusation of Joseph’s steward. They appealed to their honesty, which, of course, could have been clear because they had wanted to return the money of their first journey. Why would they now want to steal silver and gold from the viceroy’s house?

They were so sure of their case that they even pronounced a possible death penalty on the person with whom the cup would be found: “If any of your servants is found to have it, he will die; and the rest of us will become my lord’s slaves” (verse 9).

What a risk!

In theory, by saying this, they made it possible that their father Jacob would not see any of his sons again! This attitude shows their self-confidence. They thought it absolutely impossible that the viceroy’s steward would find any stolen goods in their sacks.

Then follows the inspection.

The brothers hurry to unload their sacks from the pack animals and open them. From the eldest to the youngest, the steward investigates the contents of their sacks. It must have been an ominous sign for them to see the money they had paid for the grain lying in their sacks a second time. Then, to their utmost horror, the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack.

Once again, there was incriminating evidence against them on a moral level—the money that was in their sacks. However, the most incriminating evidence against them on a religious level was found in Benjamin’s sack, viz. the stealing of the prophecy, by which Egypt as well as the surrounding nations, including the family of Jacob/Israel, were saved.

Can one possibly imagine a more serious case of ‘repaying good with evil’?

This subject appears to provoke many modern exegetes to extreme criticism: Why didn’t Joseph, starting from the first journey of the brothers, arrange this whole matter a bit more humanely? Doesn’t his way of handling things make it look like a comedy? He could easily have used his authority because of his high status to arrange a dialogue with his brothers and make himself known to them, meanwhile pointing out their guilt?

By human standards these are logical questions. Joseph certainly could have arranged the matter this way. But one thing is certain—both the way and the contents of the entire procedure that Joseph followed with his brothers came from the wisdom of God that Joseph possessed. Any other way would have meant a serious devaluation of that procedure. The main issue in this story was not recognising each other and being reunited as a family. The main issue is—just as in the entire salvation history of the coming kingdom of God—the recognition and acknowledgement of guilt towards the divine revelation! That is why this serious ‘procedure’ was necessary and what this abrupt ‘arrest’ of the brothers on their journey back to their country was intended for.

Stop!

In this way, you won’t get home—with your sacks full of grain and your beloved Benjamin.

Moreover, the procedure and the form of this arrest in particular, which resulted in finding the cup of divination in Benjamin’s sack of grain, are a divine warning for the next generations reaching to a distant future and even up to the Messianic age.

This painful procedure eventually brings Judah to his moving penitential speech, that comes from the bottom of his soul, and which results in a genuine sense of religious guilt: “God has uncovered your servants’ guilt” (Genesis 44:16).

Only now can he fulfil his promise to his father, and he begs to be allowed to stand surety for Benjamin:

“Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’ ‘Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father’” (Genesis 44:32-34).

Such words and such commitment to stand surety for his youngest brother speak of a genuine rebirth. The attitude of the other brothers also shows this. When the cup of divination was found in Benjamin’s sack and the others had the opportunity to go free, they chose for solidarity in standing surety for Benjamin, and they would not allow Benjamin to go back by himself to be sentenced (Genesis 44:13).

In comparison with the old story of Joseph’s rejection and extradition, this is no less than the rebirth of the entire family.

After this, Joseph makes himself known.

This story contains the seed of a warning to all mankind at all times: Be aware of the idea that Jacob/Israel might be forever impervious to a complete rebirth! The prophet Ezekiel is very clear about this. When he has to prophesy about Israel’s restoration and chastening he says:

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.

For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:22-28).

Suretyship and revelation

How did Judah come to step forward all of a sudden? First with his father when he promised to stand surety for Benjamin, and now, at the ‘moment supreme’ of their arrest and being brought before the ‘judge’ as suspects of a mortal sin.

There is no human explanation for his behaviour, except for the eternal election of Judah and the tribe of Judah, from whom would come forth the Messiah.

On his deathbed, Jacob sees through the Holy Spirit:

“Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. You are a lion’s cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him? The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his” (Genesis 49:8-10).

Because he is so united with his father in heart and soul, Judah says that he would not be able to bear his father’s sorrow.

After this existential standing surety by Judah, Joseph makes himself known. His announcement: “I am your brother Joseph”, following Judah’s passionate speech about standing surety for Benjamin, was no less than a revelation, an ‘Apocalypse’.

A history full of God’s guidance was unfolded.

A few examples of the link between suretyship and revelation in salvation history should be mentioned—if only to prove how consistently God extends this line until the end of the world.

The life of the prophet Daniel shows a similar existential suretyship to that of Judah. In the first year of Darius’ reign, Daniel read in the ancient scrolls that seventy years would elapse over the ruins of Jerusalem, as the Lord had spoken to the prophet Jeremiah. He then realised that, according to these words, the time of the exile had almost come to an end. This brought him into action. He starts fasting and praying and makes an impressive confession of guilt before God.

When Daniel, in solidarity with the people, appeals to God’s mercy, standing surety for the people, the angel Gabriel appears immediately, while he is still praying, and he receives the revelation about the restoration of Jerusalem (Daniel 9).

The one, who, as far as suretyship is concerned, overshadows everything and everybody is of course Jesus Himself. He is the Lamb that was slain and His sacrifice at Golgotha made the revelation to John possible. Nobody was worthy to open the scroll of history and break its seals—i.e. to reveal the secrets of the future and the kingdom of God. Only the Lamb has that moral worthiness, because He stood in for mankind when He went to the depth of hell. The fact that He ‘was slain’ made the Lamb worthy to open the scroll. The causality is what it is about, which is clearly expressed in the word ‘because’ in Revelation 5:9-10:

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”

Only the Lamb that was slain has the ethical or moral standing before God to know His plan until the end of the age.

The martyr church, of which the apostle John is the representative, also received revelations from God, just as Jesus did. John had been exiled to the island of Patmos for the sake of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. It was there and in those circumstances that he received visions about the Son of man and of ‘what must soon take place’.

In John 15:13, Jesus states: “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” He Himself—as the true personification of God’s love—laid down His life for His friends, and subsequently, He makes a connection between this love in laying down His life and the revelation He receives from the Father: “I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

Jesus’ words in John 7:16-17 have the same thrust:

“My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”

Obedience to God’s will is also a form of suretyship, which will cause the light of the truth of the Gospel to dawn in people.

Joseph already pointed this out when his brothers were afraid after Jacob’s death. When he had made himself known to his brothers, he had said three times to them that God had sent him ahead as surety, in order to preserve their posterity on the earth (Genesis 45:5,7,8), which he affirmed once more after his father’s death (50:20). Because Joseph stood surety for his brothers, they were enabled to receive the revelation of God’s forgiving love. God’s suretyship is the foundation for the forgiveness of sins. This forgiveness may be called a mystery and go beyond our human logic; it is, however, the truth affirmed through and in Jesus’ death on the cross. On this basis, the prophet could proclaim: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). Then God will no longer see sin in Jacob nor iniquity in Israel.

Therefore, we ought to pay attention to Paul’s words when he writes: “How unsearchable his judgments” and “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Romans 11:33-34). Have not we, Gentile Christians, also been sent ahead as a surety for the Jewish people? (Romans 11:31).

Have the Jewish people, both in their fall as well as in their rising, not been sent ahead to prepare the way to peace for mankind and to warn all the nations of the great and awesome day of the Lord?

Truly His ways are unfathomable!

For a moment, it was difficult for the patriarch Jacob to accept the divine denouement of his own family history. After Joseph had made himself known to his brothers, he said: “And bring my father down here quickly” (Genesis 45:13). But when Jacob heard that Joseph was still alive, he was stunned at first (Genesis 45:26). Only when he had heard all the words that Joseph had spoken to them and when he saw the carts that Joseph had sent, filled with the riches of Egypt, did he revive, saying: “I’m convinced! My son Joseph is still alive” (verse 28).

We may once again see this episode of the Joseph story as a parable of the things which will happen in the future.

In connection with the status of the Jewish people and with what God is going to do in the Gentile world, the ‘carts’ of God’s grace will be filled. The time of the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ will come, and the ‘cold’ and ‘indifferent’ Jacob/Israel—now taken in its totality, namely the entire Jewish nation, which at first had a completely indifferent heart concerning the Jesus of two thousand years ago—this ‘ice-cold’ Jacob/Israel will revive when he sees what God has done in the Gentile world and hears all the words that He has spoken. This concerns also the words in Revelation 10—the penultimate secret and its explanation by the prophet Elijah. Not until all this has come about will the Jewish people come to the conclusion that it is enough, that Jesus is alive! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!

Their being accepted again will be like a resurrection from the dead for all mankind, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the earth and to annihilate mankind, but to see to it that His sheep will find pasture and abundance.

“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever!” (Romans 11:36).

Search your own heart

We already mentioned that we, Gentile Christians, do not have the right to point an accusing finger of ecclesiastical authority at the contents of the ‘sack of grain’ of the Jewish ‘Benjamin’, but that we should first of all inspect the ‘sacks’ of our own religious denominations, for when the great ‘arrest’ will take place and the Holy Spirit will conduct a general ‘inspection’, our ‘tribes’ will be found equally guilty of stealing the ‘cup of prophecy’ from the great Joseph, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Could this ‘theft of prophecy’ committed by the churches not be the cause of mankind’s search for an anchor in this world that has become so dangerous?

David described his precarious position with the words: “There is only a step between me and death” (1 Samuel 20:3). By way of variation on this verse, in today’s world, somebody may come to the conclusion that there is only one push on the nuclear button which separates us from absolute destruction. Since Cain’s club, the weapons that people and nations use to threaten each other have been perfected to the extreme. We now speak about NBC-weapons. Because of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons of mass destruction, we have reached a border situation of ‘to be or not to be’.

An absolute deadlock is imminent!

It is therefore not surprising that so many people are seeking solace in so-called spiritual movements, trying to find a new anchor in the depths of human existence. Dreams are popular once again. Angels, or whatever is supposed to pass for them, are quite welcome. Esoteric writings are being devoured. In short, in the face of a great threat, people are searching and sometimes desperately groping for an exit out of the labyrinth of our human existence, so as to find peace for themselves and for the surrounding world.

Why is it that the ancient message of the Gospel is not being received on a large scale, whereas many people do recognise the threatening character of our time?

With this question we are confronted with the extremely complicated situation of today. However, it is not enough to just register these facts, or to report our findings and evaluations. In all kinds of publications, people write about political and ecclesiastical deadlocks. But who will come up with a solution?

What can we do?

We should first and foremost pray for the working of the Holy Spirit to arouse in our hearts the readiness to come to a radical self-investigation of our personal lives as well as all other aspects of life.

To put it in the metaphorical language of the Joseph procedure: The readiness to ‘come to a halt’ and to have our ‘sacks of grain’ inspected in order to see whether and where and in whatever shape or manner we might have a share in the ‘theft’ of Jesus’ cup and of His prophetic testimony. There are enough signals to show us all, without exception, the absolute necessity of such an inspection!

The first signal to be mentioned is the relationship of Christianity towards the Jewish people. The Christmas message already speaks of the promise of ‘peace on earth’ in relation to God’s chosen people. This promise in the first place is meant for the Jewish people.

After Jesus was rejected as the promised Prince of Peace, the Gospel found its way from Jerusalem to Rome. The Church of Rome still has a dominant place in the worldwide, unfortunately fragmented church, certainly as far as the number of its members goes.

When Christianity has to be subjected to an ‘inspection’ of its own ‘sack of grain’, conducted by the Holy Spirit, will this church escape from such an inspection?

This raises the question as to what the relationship of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) with the Jewish people is today.

To a certain extent, official statements from the RCC give an answer to this question. We quote the following from the statement made by the members of the Dutch Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference held in Utrecht in October 1995.

“A tradition of theological and ecclesiastical anti-Judaism has contributed to the rise of a mood in which the Holocaust could take place. A so-called “catechism of revilement” taught us that the Jewish people had been repudiated as a nation after Christ’s death.

Even in our country, Roman Catholics were sometimes reticent and even indifferent or averse to Jews, due to these and similar traditions. Immediately after the war, this was still noticeable when people who had been in hiding and survivors of the concentration camps returned.

We reject this tradition of ecclesiastical anti-Judaism and regret its horrible consequences. Together with our Pope and with other conferences of bishops, we condemn each form of anti-Semitism as a sin to God and humanity.” [37]
[38]

What gave rise to this statement of the Dutch bishops is, among others, the document ‘Nostra Aetate’ from the second Vatican Council on October 28th, 1965 under Pope Paul VI. At the top of this document, it solemnly says:

“To the memory of BISHOP PAUL, the least of the servants of God, together with the fathers of the holy council.

Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions”.

From this document, we quote the following:

“True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”
[39]

Of course, this same point of view is reflected in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
[40]

In a commentary on Vatican II, Cardinal Bea not only goes into great detail to attempt to give a sound exegetical basis to the Council’s statement about the Jewish people, but he also includes Jesus’ most important words regarding the judgment of Jerusalem in his argument:

“And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation” (Matthew 23:35-36).

“…your enemies will dash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you (…) because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:43f.).[41]

Cardinal Bea:

“It is in this light also that we must see the prophecies of Jesus about the judgment which would overtake Jerusalem. In point of fact this judgment was not incurred simply and solely on account of the crucifixion; thus in the catalogue of outrages which Jesus enumerates (Matthew 23:31-36), the latter is not even explicitly mentioned. It is a punishment for “all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zacheriah, son of Barachiah” and also for that of the prophets, sages and teachers to be sent by Jesus himself. The fate of Jerusalem constitutes a sort of final reckoning at the end of a thousand years of infidelities and opposition to God. Here, too, it is not the fact of belonging to the people of Israel which determines the judgment but the act of opposing God and his prophets and messengers, above all Jesus.

Here, therefore, we must keep in mind the typical prophetic outlook according to which the judgment on Jerusalem is likewise a type and symbol of the universal judgment on all evil and on the powers hostile to God. So true is this that in Jesus’ discourse in Matthew 24, the particular judgment of Jerusalem and the universal judgment are so interlaced that it is impossible to show where one ends and the other begins. For this reason the judgment of Jerusalem and its destruction form part of God’s revelation to man whereby he makes manifest in a particular episode something of the terrible reality of the judgment with which the story of mankind will end. Since, as holy scripture tells us, this reality is of decisive importance for mankind, it is wholly consistent with the divine method of teaching to project some reflection of it into the history of man as a stern but effective and salutary warning.”

In conclusion, Cardinal Bea states:

“Now, if this is the meaning of the terrible judgement on Jerusalem, its cause and motive are not the presumed collective guilt of the chosen people, but the same criterion according to which, as the scriptures tell us, God’s judgements are always made and which St. Paul describes in the following manner: ‘God will render to every man according to his works…’ (Rom. 2:6-8).”
[42]

I do not mean to comment on Cardinal Bea’s most disputable point of view here with a detailed exegetical counterargument, but I would like to state the lack of acknowledgement and discussion of the great SIGN that Jesus gave in the words of judgment in Matthew 23 and 24, for immediately after His words about the responsibility for the righteous blood that was shed on earth, He continues in Matthew 23:37-39:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

This concerns the great SIGN OF GOD of the truthfulness of JESUS being sent by the Father as the Messiah. This SIGN cannot be regarded separately from the unique and universal place which the chosen Jewish people have ‘as a nation in its entirety’ by virtue of their status of being a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6).

The words about the blood of the righteous from all times, even starting from Abel—when there were no Jewish people as yet—point to a unique office of the Jewish nation as a whole, and by virtue of this office, a responsibility which surpasses by far the general responsibility under which of course all nations have been placed. A regular pattern can be perceived in Israel’s response to the Covenant of the Eternal God. Whenever Israel breaks the Covenant by unbelief and iniquities, the punishment for this hardness of heart is always exile from the Holy Land. Canaan is, so to speak, a ‘radar screen’, on which Israel can read how matters stand wit h their relationship to God. Each time Israel breaks its bond with God, the ties with the land are in imminent danger of being broken too. And because Israel is representative for all mankind, the rupture of the threefold cord, God—Israel—the Holy Land, also affects the nations of the world.

It is not for nothing that Jesus, immediately after expressing His judgment regarding the people of Israel in Matthew 23, announces the distress of the nations because of the judgments that will come over the entire earth (Matthew 24).

This is why the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is such a breathtaking event. It is much more than a political or national affair. With His harsh announcement about Jerusalem’s future, Jesus committed Himself also to the earthly time frame, as He did in Luke 21:24, saying “…Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”. His words also imply that the end of the world would not come before the Jewish people had acknowledged Him as the Messiah. With respect to these words of Jesus, the establishment of the State of Israel is definitely a test case.

What if, after much struggle and tribulation, the State of Israel manages to make peace with all the surrounding countries , and eventually is left with a kind of ‘Residual State’? What are we then supposed to think of Jesus’ announcement of judgment?

It is either … or!

Either the Jewish people will, without the acknowledgement of Jesus as the Messiah, but via negotiations and agreements, achieve genuine peace in the region and the distant surroundings, or the God of Israel will direct history towards an absolute deadlock, in such a way that only one possibility will be left, namely calling out to Jesus of Nazareth: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

This ‘either … or’ has also been acknowledged in Jewish circles as a SIGN. Dr. I. Swelheim ventured to make the following strong statement: “The fact that the Jewish people have established their State without the mediation of their Christ, is a symbol of the Jews ‘being in their right’.”[43] The expression ‘the Jews ‘being in their Right’ has strong religious overtones; it reminds us of the biblical usage of the word ‘right’, i.e. ‘being put in the right by a judicial pronouncement of the Lord’ in the course of events (Psalm 105:19, Isaiah 43:9). Although Dr. Swelheim draws an honest conclusion from his Jewish perspective, and by doing so, acknowledges to a certain extent the SIGN character of exile and rehabilitation, yet the future will prove that his interpretation of the ‘Jews being Right’ will not be confirmed by a pronouncement of the Lord.

On the contrary!

The return to the land, as promised by God to Abraham and his descendants, by way of secular Zionism can be compared to the rebuilding of Jericho in spite of Joshua’s curse in Joshua 6:26, with the consequent destruction of the architect Hiel’s family, and immediately after that Elijah’s mission to announce the judgment of the drought.
[44]

Apparently it is possible for us, humans, to build in complete defiance of a divine curse.

But at what price?

The repercussion in those days was the great ‘arrest’ in the shape of a Carmel judgment.

Would things be different today?

Pope John Paul II states in his book never to have had any doubts about the recognition of the State of Israel.[45] His view obviously agrees with the view of Vatican II about the relation between Church and Israel.

The press even reported that an olive tree was planted in the garden of the Vatican in 1995, when there was a celebration because the Vatican and Israel had entered into diplomatic relations in 1994. The same publication reported how this tree, together with a Hanukkah Menorah symbolically served to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel, which began at the Hanukkah celebration of 1997. Cardinal Cassidy and the minister of foreign affairs Jean Luis Taurin lit the Hanukkah Menorah, on behalf of the Pope. This celebration took place with the purpose of emphasising the improved relationship between Israel and the Roman Catholic Church.[46]

Is this olive tree, which was planted in honour of the improved relations between Israel and Rome, intended to be a ‘symbolic option’ on the great future of the one restored flock, the Church of God, composed of the Jewish people and the Christian church out of all nations?

Is this mighty future compatible with a secular Jewish state?

Is this single ‘olive tree’ in the garden of the Vatican a ‘symbolic option’ on this, and therefore under the care of the RCC?

If indeed this is the idea, then the culmination of history might well be quite a disillusion for the RCC, for the conversion of the Jewish people will mean the cutting off of a system in which much was ‘meant for evil’: “For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either” (Romans 11:21).

The great ‘arrest’ is at hand in an inconceivably severe world crisis. A ‘Carmel judgment’ will have to give a decisive answer about the ‘truthfulness’ of Jesus’ words.

However, Jesus’ word of judgment also implies salvation. For He says: “…you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

He who misjudges the great sign of God will also fail to see the salvation it entails: The Jewish people as a nation will be converted. Paul prophesies: “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15).

Their office as ‘kingdom of priests’ will be effective again!

The apostle warns: “For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved. …” (Romans 11:25-26 [NKJV])

In the Gentile world, there is a strong connection between not taking the coming conversion of all Israel into consideration and being conceited. Many dogmatic constructions and ecclesiastical laws and structures have become the fruits of this ‘conceitedness’. Numerous attempts at formulating that which is impossible to formulate—along with the practices of the inquisition—have resulted in infinite divisions in Christianity.

When, for the sake of Israel’s conversion, the ‘stones of the broken altar of Pentecost’ will be gathered together in a ‘Carmel procedure like that of Elijah’, then this will imply for all denominations—Rome included—that every distorted relationship will be cut off.

The great temple cleansing is at hand!

In three days, He will raise His temple again!

Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:34-35).

It is therefore most disappointing that the Second Vatican Council does not attribute to the great sign of God, the exile, nor to the coming restoration the place that they deserve. This causes a gap in the expectations of a very large denomination. This gap also becomes evident in Cardinal Bea’s words about the Jewish people as a means for the salvation of mankind:

“Evidently it is true that the Jewish people is no longer the people of God in the sense of an institution for the salvation of mankind. The reason for this, however, is not that it has been rejected, but simply that its function in preparing the kingdom of God finished with the advent of Christ and the founding of the Church. From then on, the nature of the people of God and the way of becoming incorporated into it changed completely: “people of God” of the New Testament is no longer confined to a single nation and is no longer propagated by descent according to the flesh but by faith. All this, however, does not in fact imply the disavowal of the election of “Israel according to the flesh”. On the contrary, “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Israel remains most dear to God for the sake of its fathers.” [47]

If the ministry of the Jewish people to proclaim salvation to mankind had ceased to exist with the advent of Jesus and the foundation of the church, as Cardinal Bea states, then how can we explain Paul’s high expectation at the end of his speech in Romans 9-11? He expresses the anticipation that their acceptance will mean a resurrection from the dead, a new spring by means of a hymn of praise. This includes the adoration with which he ends: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Romans 11:36).

This expectation, as formulated by Paul, fully corresponds with Peter’s speech in Acts 3:11-26, in which the apostle makes a connection between the conversion of the Jewish people and the ‘times of refreshing’:

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets” (Acts 3:19-21).

The conversion of the Jewish people will also cause history to change in a horizontal manner in the direction of world peace.

Furthermore, the views of the Second Vatican Council regarding the absence of the collective guilt of the Jewish people are in stark contradiction with Peter’s speech. The apostle literally says: “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders” (Acts 3:17).

However, the confession of faith of the RCC says:

“The historical complexity of Jesus’ trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles’ call to conversion after Pentecost. Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept “the ignorance” of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders (Acts 3:17).” [48]

Nowhere in the New Testament do we notice a difference between the leaders and the so-called ‘manipulated’ common people, as regards the killing of ‘the Prince of Life’ (Acts 3:15). It is also quite important that at the end of his speech, Peter points to God’s covenant with Abraham and the promise connected to it: “Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed” (3:25).

So Peter sees the rejection of Jesus by the Jews as being collective, in the same way as their eternally predestined ministry to be a universal blessing for all generations. A ‘suspension’ for a certain time does not imply a ‘removal’ from their office. The denial of the office as appointed to the Jewish people until the end of the age is the root of all anti-Semitism. Each expression of anti-Semitism should be vigorously resisted as sin against God and mankind.

The statement of the bishops concerning this issue may well have been welcomed as a step in the right direction, but when this statement is enclosed in the wider cohesion of conciliar statements, such as those of the Second Vatican Council, and the Jewish people are no longer regarded as destined to bring salvation to all mankind, and when it has been proclaimed as a fact that their task of preparing the advent of the kingdom of God with the coming of Jesus and the founding of the Church has come to an end, then this means that the statement of the bishops has been weakened and the impression is given of an opportunistic attempt at remedying the harm done to the credibility of the church as an institution due to its indirect contribution to the gruesome Holocaust. Neither does the document “We remember: A reflection on the Shoah” [49] display a sincere sense of guilt about the ‘theft’ of the prophetic Word. At most, it admits the fact that some individual believers within the RCC have been guilty of anti-Semitic ideas or deeds, and that, on the other hand, they may have done next to nothing for their Jewish fellow human beings out of fear.[50]

However, this is not the crux of the matter. Paul’s exhortation in his letter to the Romans has been disregarded: “I do not desire that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel …” Furthermore, Paul’s entire argument in Romans 9-11, in which he announces in a sublime manner: “...what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” has been disregarded. If only the Church had preached throughout the ages what a momentous place and mission the Jewish people have with a view to the breakthrough of the Kingdom of God!

This negligence is the main reason for the development of an anti-Semitic climate from generation to generation, which ultimately led to the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the Second Vatican Council as well as the recent document “We remember:
A reflection on the Shoah” remain silent about it.

The following is a list of factors which so far have led to an unbiblical attitude towards the Jewish people.

1. The fact that the Gentile Christians have neglected the continuing command to ‘provoke Israel as a nation to jealousy’.

2. The inadequate interpretation of the great ‘sign of God’ regarding the truthfulness of Jesus being sent by the Father (Matthew 23:38-39).

3. The weakening of the message of the apostles by the autonomous denial of a collective guilt of Jesus’ death (cf. Acts 3:12-15).

4. The elimination of the expectation that the Jewish people are predestined to bring salvation (salvation is from the Jews) to the world. This results in regarding every task intended for these people as a nation in the service of the advent of the kingdom of God as terminated.

5. A completely wrong exegesis as regards the concept of ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ in Romans 11:25.

6. An overestimation of one’s own denomination, (the Roman Catholic Church), presuming that the intention of the New Testament regarding ‘the Body of Christ’ has been adequately realised with the RCC. The decree of the Second Vatican Council regarding the Ecumenical movement explicitly says: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God.” [51]

7. Ignorance of the mystery of the thunders of Revelation 10, the penultimate secret of God. [52]

By way of explanation on point 5, Cardinal Bea writes the following about the exegesis regarding the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’.

“Finally there is God’s own assurance that their lack of faith is only for a time, until the day—known to God alone, as the Declaration says—when the full number of the gentiles has come into the kingdom of God and so all Israel will be saved.” [53]

According to this exegesis, the Greek word for ‘fulness’ has been translated by the quantitative word ‘multitude—a full number’, a generally accepted interpretation. Of course, in that light, there is no more room for Israel’s task in preparing the coming of the Kingdom of God in earthly time, within the scope of history and before the end of the world.

Although in earlier publications, I have discussed the concept of the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ extensively, a short contemplation of it should not be left out in this context.

The Greek word ‘πληρωμα’ (pleroma) has a quite different meaning in this context. When we compare verse 12 of Romans 11 with verse 15, it becomes evident that the words ‘fall’ in verse 12 and ‘rejection’ in verse 15 are correlative concepts, so they have a similar meaning in Paul’s argumentation. This is also the case with ‘fulness’ in verse 12 and ‘acceptance’ in verse 15. ‘Fulness’ is the opposite of ‘fall’, as ‘acceptance’ is the opposite of ‘rejection’. So it is absolutely incorrect to see something quantitative such as ‘the full number’ or ‘the multitude’ in the word ‘fulness’. It does not mean a ‘multitude of people’ entering the Kingdom of God at the end of the world, but rather God’s fulfilling intervention in the history of the church and the world. ‘Fulness’ means: God fulfils His promise regarding the Gentile world—this is the fulness of the Gentiles—as well as regarding the Jewish people—this is the fulness of Israel. We can also express ‘fulness’ as follows: that Gentiles as well as Jews reach their promised destination in the Kingdom of God through God’s fulfilling acts.

Whenever God gives a promise, there is a void or ‘emptiness’ as long as this promise is not fulfilled. When this ‘emptiness’ is filled up by an act of God, this is called a ‘fulness’ in Scripture (Ephesians 1:10; Galatians 4:4).

Thus the fulness of the Gentiles will be the ‘interlude’, in which God will carry out the things he made known to Moses (Deuteronomy 32:21), according to His supreme will and according to the “times or dates the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). It is this very promise that Paul connects with the fulness of the Gentiles in his argumentation:

“…because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fulness bring!” (Romans 11:11-12).

The above summary shows how much the attitude of Rome and their ‘doctrine on the last things’ hinders the call to all Christians to unite in a joint acknowledgement of the blood of the Lamb of God, so as to be able to fulfil the eschatological task of mercy towards the Jewish people. And this while the great and worldwide ‘arrest’ is imminent!

The apostle Peter says:

“And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19).

A new day is coming!

A day in which Isaiah announces the following concerning the Jewish people:

“Aliens will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards. And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast” (Isaiah 61:5-6).

As in ancient Israel the people from every tribe had to exempt the tribe of priests for service in the temple, so will Christianity on a global scale release a converted Israel for their universal service of priesthood for all generations of the earth.

Dividing up the holy land will not bring peace, but assigning functions in the Kingdom of God, as prophesied by Isaiah, will be the only possible way in which peace can be achieved in the Middle East as well as globally.

In the above-mentioned passage, Isaiah gives instructions for the establishment of true ecumenism. Jesus prayed for this ecumenism in His high-priestly prayer: “...that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).

Division among Christians obstructs progress of the Gospel. However, every ecumenical effort which excludes the calling of the Jewish people is bound to fail. Any denomination striving for unity without a positive commitment to the Jewish people will easily degenerate into a false synthesis and thus profane the great and only Name under heaven given for salvation, the Name of Jesus.

When the decision to kill Jesus is made and Caiaphas says: “You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish”, Scripture immediately continues with: “He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one” (John 11:50-52).

God is love, also when He has to ‘arrest’ us and inspect our ‘sacks of grain’! The purpose is positive, namely the salvation of the whole household of the children of God.

However, when this procedure reaches a climax, every single Christian is admonished to be careful in judging members of any church, even if it concerns a denomination which may be somewhat lax with respect to the facts of salvation in Scripture. For God always looks at the heart of the believer when it is fully focussed on Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

The verse in Scripture that says: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13), is true for all those who believe in His Name.

Similarly, we must entrust to the guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead believers out of denominations which have deviated from the teaching of the apostles. He will bring separation between light and darkness.

Even today, Jesus is moved with compassion toward the multitude which has been scattered by dark powers—powers that are unfortunately partly of ecclesiastical origin too.

We should always differentiate between the institutions and the individual believers belonging to those institutions. Of course, this does not exempt these believers from their duty to take their personal responsibility when they notice wrongs and fallacies in the system. Jude exhorts us to do so in his epistle, verse 3:

“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”

We do not mean to critically scrutinise one specific denomination here. The example mentioned here serves merely as a model to show the need for us, Gentile Christians, to collectively submit ourselves to an ‘inspection’ by the Holy Spirit as regards our ‘credentials’. As far as the ecclesiastical world is concerned, there is also a collective guilt of the ‘theft’ of Jesus’ ‘cup’.

The confusion and desperation are terrible!

The ‘altar of Pentecost’ is in ruins!

But the great restoration is also at hand! The morning star will rise in the hearts of those who love the Lord Jesus.

May the time come soon—the time of which Isaiah speaks when he proclaims the year of the Lord’s favour:

“…the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour. (…)”

“Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs. For I, the Lord, love justice; (…)”

“For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations” – (Isaiah 61:2-3,7-8, and 11).

His vengeance is merciful!

32 Rabbijn S. Ph. De Vries Mzn.: “Joodse riten en synbolen”. Page 225, De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam, 1968
“De beker wordt de aanstaande echtelieden geboden tot het nemen van een teug (…) En zij drinken uit dezelfde kelk. Zoals zij voortaan slechts één gezamenlijke levensbeker mogen kennen, zullen hebben.”

33 Translated from Dutch

34 Othmar Keel: “The Symbolism of the Biblical World, Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of the Psalms, page 259,261, The Seabury Press, New York, 1978

35 J. Soetendorp: “Symboliek der joodse religie”, page 171, Uitgeversmaatschappij W. de Haan N.V., Zeist, 1958
“De vier bekers wijn die op die avond worden gedronken zijn een herinnering aan de vier uitdrukkingen, waarin de uittocht werd aangekondigd. De vijfde beker die apart staat en meestal wat groter is, is ‘de beker voor Elia de profeet’ (…) De uitdrukkingen waar het om gaat, zijn die in Exodus 6 vers 6 en 7: “Ik zal uitvoeren, Ik zal redden, Ik zal verlossen en Ik zal nemen.” Dit vormen dan de verschillende stadia waarin de bevrijding zich voltrok. Het voeren uit slavernij, het afwerpen van het slavenjuk, het bevrijden van alle afhankelijkheid van Egypte en de uitverkiezing van het volk met een speciale opdracht van God. De vijfde belofte: “Ik zal Israël terugbrengen in Kanaän”, is dan het laatste stadium, de belofte die aanleiding gaf tot ‘de beker van Elia’.”

36 Translated from Dutch

37 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, 27 oktober 1995
“Een traditie van theologisch en kerkelijk anti-judaïsme heeft bijgedragen tot het ontstaan van een klimaat waarin de ‘sjoa’ kon plaatsvinden. Een zogenoemde ‘katechese van de verguizing’ leerde dat het jodendom na de dood van Christus als volk verworpen zou zijn.
Mede door zulke tradities stonden ook in ons land katholieken soms gereserveerd tegenover Joden, soms zelfs onverschillig of afkerig. Direct na de oorlog was dit nog merkbaar bij de terugkeer van onderduikers en overlevenden uit de vernietigingskampen. Wij wijzen deze traditie van kerkelijk anti-judaïsme af en betreuren de afschuwelijke gevolgen ervan. Met onze paus en met andere bisschoppenconferenties veroordelen wij elke vorm van antisemitisme als een zonde tegenover God en de mens.”

38 Translated from Dutch

39 “Constituties en Decreten van het Tweede Oecumensich Vaticaans Concilie”, page 247, translation: mgr. K. Pessers o.f.m. en mgr. Dr. R. Staverman o.f.m., Katholiek Archief, Amersfoort, 1967

40 “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, Apostolic Constitution, Fidel Depositum, Pope John Paul II, art. 597

41 Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J.: “The Church and the Jewish People - A Commentary on the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”, page 75, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Dublin-Melbourne,1966

42 ditto, page 81,82

43 “Levend Joods Geloof”, 11e jaargang, nr. 3, February 1965
“Het feit dat het Joodse Volk zich heeft opgericht zonder het middelaarschap van hun Christus, is een symbool van het Joods Gelijk.”

44 See Shofar series volume 1, page 58 ff. about the ‘Hiel-building’.

45 Paus Johannes Paulus II: “Over de drempel van de hoop”, page 102, Veen Uitgevers Groep, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, 1994

46 Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, jaargang 133, number 14, 31 December 1997

47 Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J.: “The Church and the Jewish People - A Commentary on the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, page 96, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Dublin-Melbourne,1966

48 “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, Apostolic Consitution, Fidel Depositum, Pope John Paul II, Art. 597

49 Holy See: Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews

50 Commission for religious relations with the Jews (Cardinal Edward Iris Cassidy a.o.): “We remember: A reflection on the Shoah”, 16 March 1998

51 “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, Apostolic Constitution, Fidel Depositum, Pope John Paul II, Art. 816

52 See Shofar series volume 2, chapter 4

53 Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J.: “The Church and the Jewish People – A Commentary on the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of The Church to Non-Christian Religions, page 100, 101, Geoffrey Champan, London-Dublin-Melbourne, 1966

6. JOSEPH’S BONES

A coffin with a ‘Future’

Why does the book Genesis—the book of beginnings, the birth of the heavens and the earth—end with a coffin?

In the first pages of this book of the Bible, everything sprouts up out of the earth. It is full of vitality. So isn’t it paradoxical that this book ends with a coffin? It says in chapter 50:26: “So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.”

We hear nothing about a funeral of great pomp and circumstance, nothing about a mausoleum or a ‘mastaba’, which are frequently found around the pyramid of Cheops and which are known as burial places of eminent people of the Egyptian court. So no pyramidal interment, nothing but the simple information: “…he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.”

Yet this coffin, this sarcophagus, is not just any coffin. It is a coffin containing the bones of Joseph, a coffin on which Joseph made a ‘testamentary disposition’, a kind of ‘option’ by a solemn oath which he had his brothers swear.

That is why this coffin, containing Joseph’s bones, acquired the character of a ‘sacrament’, a testimony, a confession of faith. By the oath which he had his brothers swear, Joseph’s sarcophagus was consecrated to being a ‘prophecy’ of the coming intervention of God to prepare an exodus out of Egypt for His chosen people.

Joseph’s instructions about what should be done with his bones after his death was a ‘no’ to the religious and political system of Egypt:

“By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones” (Hebrews 11:22).

It was impossible for Joseph to harmonise his faith with the religious concepts of Egypt, simply because of the ancient Egyptian view of the origin of the universe, for in this belief, creation was placed above the Creator.

According to Genesis 1:14-18, the sun is part of creation. In the worldview of ancient Egypt, however, the sun is a divinity and the king is a son of the sun god.

The ancient Egyptians also believed that from the waters of chaos, a hill had emerged, the ‘navel of the earth’, a place where, at its birth, the umbilical cord of the earth had been tied off, and which was therefore perfectly suited as centre of power for the throne of the deified king. From this centre of power, the primeval waters were ruled and the world received its necessary structures. This ‘mysticism of the primeval mount’ was translated and reflected in the shape of the pyramids. The ladder-like shape of the pyramids in particular symbolised the primeval mount.

It is remarkable to notice the parallel with the ‘mysticism of the primeval mount’ of ancient Babylon. It is believed that in ancient times, Egypt was invaded by a people group whose culture was in some respects similar to the culture of ancient Mesopotamia. Hence it is quite possible that this people group, by subjecting the indigenous Egyptian people, has influenced the religion and mysticism of Egypt. However, one cannot rule out the idea of the world’s emergence from chaos as a spontaneous notion either.

Apart from Mesopotamia, some reminiscence, a remnant of knowledge and mysticism may have emanated from the generations that lived before the Flood. It seems that the Egyptian sphinxes are staring at prehistorical times far beyond the horizon of the ancient pharaonic dynasties.

However, it is quite clear that the Egyptian pyramids and the Babylonian ziggurats are fully related. Both the ziggurat and the pyramid are archetypes for the structure of a totalitarian state with a deified god-king at the top. [54]

Exodus: a divine intervention

In Joseph’s time, the pharaoh was still regarded as the sun god who possessed cosmic powers. He was divine.

Because he was married to a daughter of Potipherah, the priest of On, Joseph was obviously fully acquainted with the function of the powerful elite of the caste of the priests of Egypt. The town of On, known to the Greeks by the name of Heliopolis (Sun city), was famous for the ‘theology’ of its priests. The priest caste also functioned as a ‘safety belt’ around Pharaoh’s throne. The priests even enjoyed immunity to a certain extent, as appears from Genesis 47:26, where it says that of all private deeded property, one fifth should be given to Pharaoh, whereas deeded property of the priests was excluded from this rule. This emphasises the importance of the priest caste in the religious and political infrastructure of Egypt.

How could Joseph, who was also fully aware of the calling of his great-grandfather Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, have himself interred in an Egyptian grave, which was moreover alleged to be surrounded by all sorts of magic, since the deceased was always given all kinds of magic formulas and charms that had to accompany and protect his soul in the hereafter? [55]

By his last will, Joseph faithfully took the line of Abraham’s ‘no’ to Babel. Contrary to the static Egyptian religion, Joseph had eschatological expectations for the future. He says: “God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” The land of Goshen will only be a ‘temporary’ residence. God will ‘visit’ His people with an exodus out of Egypt, leading it into Canaan.

This eschatological expectation implies a certain parallel with the ‘temporary’ character, which will also be characteristic of the ‘times of refreshing’. God will realise His plans for the gentile world. Once this ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ has been accomplished, God will intervene in the situation of Israel, and will bring about the times of refreshing—the Kingdom of Peace.

This Kingdom of Peace, this interval in world history (Revelation 10), may be compared to the land of ‘Goshen’, which in those days was allotted to the people of Israel. In the land of Goshen, the ‘church’ of the old covenant will be allowed to develop, but only until the moment when a Pharaoh comes to the throne who has never known Joseph and who will oppress the people severely. This pharaoh shows the characteristics of the ‘Pharaoh’ of the last round, the Antichrist.

Every ‘god-king’ brings along his own cruelty and tyranny. Time and again, Satan, as ‘the prince of this world’, tries to establish his headquarters and set up a centralised power system from which he can direct his assaults on the Lamb of God, and finally place the Antichrist on the throne by way of religious deception.

Joseph’s words: God will surely come to your aid”, are said in relation to his last will about his bones. It is as if towards the end of his life, so much has already changed in the relationship of his people and the Egyptian regime, that he realises that an intervention of God and a divine exodus will be necessary. His father’s funeral was still an impressive ceremony for all Egypt. The whole family went along to Canaan (Genesis 50:7-14). Egyptian chariots and horses were involved, and besides Joseph’s family, all Pharaoh’s servants and the elders of his house and all the elders of Egypt formed part of the funeral procession. An immensely large procession, of which the Canaanites said: “‘The Egyptians are holding a solemn ceremony of mourning.’
That is why that place near the Jordan is called Abel Mizraim ” (Genesis 50:11).

It becomes evident from the history of that time that at the end of Joseph’s life, a change in their relationship with the Egyptian people had developed. The ‘Biblical Handbook’ says:

“It seems probable that at the time of Joseph’s death, Southern Egypt, led by Sequenen-Ra, had rebelled against Apepi. However, in Northern Egypt, the Hyksos were still in power and the road to Canaan was still open, so Joseph had the chance to go to Hebron to bury his father there (Genesis 50). The year of Joseph’s death, however, is quite close to the final expulsion of the Hyksos. The situation may have been so critical that a funeral in Canaan was out of the question. Whatever the case may have been, Joseph’s body remained in Egypt. But the sons of Israel had had to swear that they would take his body with them to Canaan (Genesis 50). And that is what finally happened” (Exodus 13:19, Joshua 24:32). [56]
[57]

Joseph’s expectation that God would surely look after his people receives an extra dimension in light of the fact that the situation in Egypt had deteriorated. As already mentioned, the letter to the Hebrews speaks about faith which made Joseph refer to the exodus of the people of Israel and give them instructions about his burial. This faith refers both to his deep-rooted trust in the God of Israel, who would certainly lead His people out of Egypt, as well as to his conviction which was completely opposite to the pharaonic worldview.

Joseph’s end was approaching.

An Egyptian tomb did not fit his expectations. But a solemn oath concerning his bones certainly did. So we read these simple words at the end of the ‘book of birth’: “… he was placed in a coffin, in Egypt.”

A coffin!

But a coffin with a ‘future’!

His dimming eyes were directed towards that ‘Future’.

It was to take centuries.

But—IT DID COME...

“Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place” (Exodus 13:19).

“ And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants” – (Joshua 24:32).

The sarcophagus as a sacrament

If there is any nation on earth which, from its origin until today, has endlessly suffered and survived being strangers, it is the people of Israel.

Even Abraham felt a ‘stranger’ in the Promised Land (Genesis 23:4). Jacob suffered from feeling a stranger, too, especially after the unpleasant events that took place at Shechem. Joseph as well, in spite of his high position at the Egyptian court, was aware of the fact that he was a stranger. Yet we would not do him justice—and so we would be wrong—if we imputed a kind of ‘nostalgia’ for his native country to Joseph as a ‘motive’ for his last will regarding his bones. Joseph was never guided by the idea of ‘blood and soil’, as we have observed during the procedure that he followed with his brothers. In this procedure, he gave evidence of his pure motives.

Besides, the Jacob/Israel family possessed nothing in Canaan but a family grave in Hebron and a strip of land in Shechem, which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor (Genesis 33:18-20).

The true motivation for Joseph’s last will consisted exclusively in deference to the status which God had given to Abraham and his descendants when He had called him out of Babylon: a status by which all people on earth would be blessed. The future possession of the land allotted to them by the Eternal One was also part of this status. This status and allotment even had priority in Joseph’s life above any form of blood relationship, racial consideration or chauvinistic attitude.

Joseph assumed that God would, at some point in time, ‘visit’ His people in their continuing state of being strangers. His trust in God’s faithfulness made him take the decision to have his bones carried along to the Promised Land when this ‘visitation’ of God was to take place. It was to be of immeasurable importance that his sarcophagus continued to function as a ‘sacrament’ during his people’s suffering under the oppression of a Pharaoh who had not known Joseph, as well as during the exodus that God would prepare for them through Moses and Joshua.

Both in the Old and in the New Testament, divine history displays moments and stages of such violent tension that go far beyond our imagination. An example of this is what happened during Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in Luke 19.

When the crowd exuberantly hailed Him, and the multitude of the disciples joyfully praised God with a loud voice, saying: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”, which was a direct reference to Psalm 118:26, the Pharisees thought this was too much and they said to Him: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” Jesus then answered them by saying: “…if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (verse 40).

Jesus senses the tension of the moment. To impose silence on the crowd now is impossible. The tension of the event is too great. The crowds are praising Him as their Messiah. This justifies His powerful statement: “…if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

But what about the day when—according to Joseph’s prophecy—God ‘visited’ His people to lead them out of Egypt?

Egypt was stricken by dreadful plagues.

Humanly speaking, it was impossible to be released from the ‘murderous grip’ of Pharaoh. One cannot imagine the pain that mothers, whose newly-born baby boys were thrown to the crocodiles, had to endure. The slave labour the people had to do at the brick-kilns was unbearable.

They did not have a Bible full of ‘miracle stories’; they only had their traditional stories about Abraham’s calling and his visions about a covenant (Genesis 15). They also knew about God’s guidance in the lives of Isaac and Jacob.

But what else did they have?

The only tangible thing was Joseph’s coffin, which was a ‘sacrament’, a promise of their coming exodus: a ray of hope in their difficult existence.

But it took so long! Ages!

And then … all of a sudden, there it was.

Moses!

The tension in the night of the Passover must have been enormous! Deliverance at last, after so many miserable years of oppression. But Moses did not forget to take along the sarcophagus with Joseph’s bones, leading the greatly increased population in battle array in a hectic and hasty departure out of Egypt.

This sarcophagus had a strong, religious influence.

Whenever the people were in danger of falling into a deep depression and even started grumbling, the sarcophagus reminded them of Joseph’s life full of trust and deliverance. There would be many of these precarious moments and situations. As mentioned already, the exodus was an absolute impossibility by human standards. So were the journey through the desert and the entry into the Promised Land. It was an accumulation of impossibilities but at the same time an accumulation of miracles by the hand of the Eternal God.

In existential situations, the sacramental evidence of Joseph’s coffin was of great importance for the people.

Very soon after their departure, there was such a crisis. No sooner had the people left than Pharaoh pursued them with his large army and almost caught up with them to take them back into captivity. The Red Sea was in front of them and Pharaoh with his horsemen and chariots was behind them. At that moment, a seemingly impossible command came from the Lord:

“Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground” (Exodus 14:15-16).

And so it happened. Joseph’s sarcophagus was also carried through the Red Sea: a coffin that ‘spoke’ of God’s eternal faithfulness and of His deliverance.

The sarcophagus was there in all circumstances: when the manna came down from heaven, when they were victorious over Amalek, when the Lord appeared on Mount Sinai, when the covenant was established, at the occasion of the golden calf, the building of the tabernacle, and when the people were punished because of the negative report by ten of the twelve spies regarding the inhabitants of Canaan, which resulted in another forty years’ march through the desert before they were allowed to enter Canaan. And when, against the Lord’s command, they set out anyway, the Amalekites and the Canaanites defeated them all the way to Hormah (Numbers 14:45).

A crowd on the run that had to carry Joseph’s coffin along with them! An entire generation was buried in the desert because of their unbelief—but the coffin remained as a ‘significant’ evidence, even when the people eventually entered Canaan and had to march around Jericho seven times with the ark of the Lord’s covenant and the priests blowing the ram’s horns. Eventually Joseph’s bones were buried in Shechem, in a plot of land which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor (Joshua 24:32).

Shechem

A town with a turbulent history.

This was where Abraham settled down after having left the area of the Tower of Babel. He travelled until he came to a place called Shechem, near the terebinth tree of Moreh. The Hebrew word ‘moreh’ means ‘teacher’. So one could say that Abraham entered the land of Canaan until he reached the ‘teacher’s tree’. This is where the Lord appeared to him and promised him: “To your offspring I will give this land.” And this is where Abraham built an altar for the Lord.

Jacob pitched his tent east of the town of Shechem, after returning from Paddan Aram (Genesis 33:18-19). There, he bought the plot of land where later Joseph would be buried. Jacob also set up an altar there and called it El Elohe Israel (Israel’s God is God).

It was in Shechem that the bloody ‘ecumenical’ event took place between the nascent ‘church’—the family of Jacob/Israel—and the family of the Canaanite Hamor, who might be considered to be part of ‘paganism’ (Genesis 34:2-26).

Jacob buried all his sons’ foreign gods and the rings they wore in their ears under the terebinth tree near Shechem (Genesis 35:4).

Jacob also sent his son Joseph to Shechem to inquire after the well-being of his brothers and the sheep, in order to report back to him. This mission became the beginning of Joseph’s ‘via dolorosa’. This is where, after a long and moving history, his bones were finally buried. Joseph’s life circle seems to close there.

Shechem remained an important place even after the era of the patriarchs.

It became a city of refuge for people accused of murder (Joshua 21:21). And after Joshua’s moving farewell speech at the end of Joshua 23, we read in Joshua 24:1:

“Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.”

Joshua subsequently recalls the whole history of their deliverance, and he presents the people with a choice:

“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (24:14-15).

And in the very place where Abraham and Jacob had built an altar for the Lord, the people answered Joshua: “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! (…) For the Lord is our God …” (24:16-17).

“On that day, Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there, at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws. And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak, near the holy place of the LORD” (24:25-26).

History continues.

Many more events were to take place in the town of Shechem. This pericope is mainly meant to show how the patriarchs, after being dispersed among the deified totalitarian states, time and again returned to Shechem, and settled there: Abraham, Jacob and, as regards his bones, also Joseph, and eventually the entire nation (Joshua 24).

So it cannot be a coincidence that Jesus, the Messiah, in whom all the lines of the old covenant converge in fulfilment of God’s promises, was instructed to go through Samaria, where He met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, which was situated about 800 meters from Shechem. He had to go through Samaria (John 4:4).

This ‘had to’ was not a geographic necessity in order to reach Galilee. It is the ‘had to’ of God’s decree.

In Israel, ‘the doors’ were closing. This is evident from the cleansing of the temple in John 2 and the conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, in which Jesus admonishes him: “You are Israel’s teacher ... and do you not understand these things? I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony” (John 3:10-11).

“The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptising more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptised, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee”
(John 4:1-3). This ‘critically’ counting how many people were being baptised was also one of the signs that ‘His own’ would not receive Him (John 1:11).

The following words are stated in immediate connection with this: “And he had to go through Samaria.” Jesus had come to savingly gather together, as the prophets before Him had done.

In the ‘fulness of time’, the people of Israel had also been ‘scattered’ under a pyramidal deified totalitarian state, Rome, and they were longing to be delivered. However, just as in the ancient history of Joseph, the ‘restoration’ and the ‘gathering’ of the entire family took place by way of the pagan country of Egypt, so likewise, the ultimate deliverance of Israel will take place via the gentile world.

The feet of the Messiah would, in His life on earth, walk the way along which He will gather the one flock under the one Shepherd after being exalted by the Holy Spirit, so as to bring to fulfilment the Kingdom of God within the framework of world history.

After His conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well near Shechem, Jesus is not able to eat. His food is to reap ‘God’s harvest’. He can already see the full ‘harvest’ shining behind the one ‘stalk’ of the Samaritan woman.

The crucial point of His conversation with the Samaritan woman was: “…and the man you now have is not your husband” (4:18).

With these words, Jesus metaphorically summarises the entire world history. A world history with many gruesome pyramidal deified totalitarian states with whom His people cannot enter into a ‘legal marriage’. God is a jealous God, who does not tolerate that His people serve other gods or submit to any deified king or emperor. Time and again, Scripture uses the word ‘harlotry’ in this context. [58]

In fact, in the past, God has given the sign of deliverance from a ‘pyramidal’ situation of distress three times: Abraham was led out of Babylon and settled in Shechem, Joseph and his people were led out of a pyramidal, idolatrous Egypt and was buried in Shechem after a victorious life, and likewise, Israel will be led out of the equally pyramidal and deified Roman empire by the Messiah. But this deliverance will come about according to God’s eternal council through what He does in the gentile world.

Jesus had to go to the area of Shechem.

The basis for the gift of ‘living water’ as opposed to all idolatry will be found in the great sacrifice on Golgotha.

That is where the Messiah was wounded sevenfold.

Both His hands and both His feet were pierced by nails.

His back was whipped in a dreadful manner.

A crown of thorns was put on His head.

His side was pierced with a spear.

But His bones remained unbroken.

The hammer was not lifted!

This already contained a foreboding of the fall of the pyramidal Roman Empire. Scripture says: “They will look on me, the one they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10; John 19:37; Revelation 1:7).

These words point to the symbolic meaning that had been attached to the bones of the righteous since ancient times.

The symbolism of the bones

In the Scriptures, the meaning of the symbolic usage regarding the ‘bones’ is rich and profound. After the Lord had created the woman for Adam and had brought her to him, Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh …” (Genesis 2:23).

By the words ‘bone of my bones’, Adam expresses the ‘being’ and the ‘identity’ of himself as creation, as opposed to the other ‘creations’. Eve is of the same ‘kind’ as he is.

The concept ‘bones’ is also used as an indication of the individual identity of man. Thus it becomes clear why Isaiah says the following in connection with the solace God gives to Jerusalem:

“And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb …” (Isaiah 66:14, [kjv]).

And in his penitential psalm, King David implores:

“…Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice” (Psalm 51:8).

In another Psalm, when David is in the middle of a battle with his enemies, he praises God’s omnipotence by saying:

“And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord; it shall rejoice in his salvation. All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee …?” (Psalm 35:9-10, [kjv])

Bones are able to mourn and rejoice, and so the term is used in poetic language in particular as the real ‘I’ of man, as his personality. The Scriptures are rich in this poetic use of the word ‘bones’ to convey man’s most profound being, the root of his identity. Psalm 34:19-20 for instance speaks of the ‘bones’ of the righteous:

“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken”.

A verse which is quoted from the Psalms by the apostle John with respect to the bones of Jesus, says:

“These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken’” (John 19:36).

King David, who celebrates the marvel of his birth, devoutly acknowledges:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:13-15).

Here the poet confesses that God has seen the essence of his life, the core of his being, that He has noticed how his ‘bones’ were formed in his mother’s womb from the beginning, like an embroidery.

No wonder, that the identity symbolism of the bones was directly linked to the hope of eternal life! Whenever the bones of a man were crushed by a wild animal, such as a lion, or if they were burned by a fire, the religious Israelite would feel that as a direct attack on the identity of that person. To die in that way was perceived as frightening, not only because of the terrible way in which one died, but especially because of the religiously anchored hope of the resurrection, which was related to the symbolism of the bones.

An example of this is found in 1 Samuel 31:11-13 concerning the death of Saul and his sons. The Philistines had hung their dead bodies on the wall of Beth-Shan. When the inhabitants of Jabesh heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, they set off to remove the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth-Shan, after which they burnt them. But as soon as the fire had devoured the flesh, it was extinguished and the bones were buried under a tamarisk tree.

A devout Jew respects the bones of his fellow man!

Anyone who harms the bones of a man, harms his ‘hereafter’!

Symbolically, his bones are already part of that which lies beyond life on earth. God alone has control over that.

So now it is clear what Isaiah wants to say in chapter 66:24 regarding the people who have become apostate from the Lord: “...their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” If the ‘worm will not die’, the bones, which are the essence of the person, his identity, will be affected!

In Mark 9:43-44, Jesus quotes the last lines of Isaiah 66, when He says: “It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.” “...where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (verse 48). In this way, Jesus outlines a picture of hell.

Looking at it from this perspective, the judgment on Jezebel is so horrifying. In 2 Kings 9, we read that nothing else of her body is left except her skull, her feet and the palms of her hands, according to the word which the Lord had spoken through His servant, the Tishbite Elijah: “On the plot of ground at Jezreel dogs will devour Jezebel’s flesh. Jezebel’s body will be like refuse on the ground in the plot at Jezreel, so that no-one will be able to say, ‘This is Jezebel’” (2 Kings 9:30-37; 1 Kings 21:23-24).

So, the issue is that Jezebel’s identity had disappeared when her bones and all that was left of her ended up as refuse on the ground.

The eternal night had come over Jezebel!

She was the fanatical opponent of the servant of the Name I AM, WHO I AM, and therefore a typical representative of the kingdom of darkness.

The severe judgment God passed on Jeroboam’s ‘schism altar’ needs to be seen in the same light. This king of the ten tribes which had been torn away from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin at Shechem (!), established a new type of worship for the inhabitants of his kingdom, and for that purpose, he made two calves of gold and said: “Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (I Kings 12:28). What he did caused the people to fall into sin. Moreover, he appointed priests from other tribes, who were not Levites, and he built an altar in Bethel. But when he went up to the altar in order to put fire to the sacrifice, a man of God, by the word of the Lord, came from Judah to Bethel, and preached to the altar, saying:

“O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.’ That same day the man of God gave a sign: ‘This is the sign the LORD has declared: The altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out’” (1 Kings 12:25-33; 13:1-5).

The division of the kingdom into two was a deed of God (1 Kings 12:24), but the division of the people concerning being loyal and serving the one God was Jeroboam’s real sin. God punished this sin by splitting the altar that Jeroboam had built, along with the announcement that human bones would be burnt on it.

This means as much as ‘infernal flames on the altar’.

God truly hates false synthesis and equally much guilty schism.

Even today, all church policy resulting in a division of the church experiences the same radical judgment of God. We find an admonition to unity in the statutes on eating the Passover lamb: Exodus 12:46: “It must be eaten inside one house; take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones.”

The atonement in the blood of the Passover lamb is indivisible. The same goes for the identity of the lamb, because of the inviolability of its bones. This ‘Passover rule’ was miraculously and inscrutably fulfilled at Golgotha.

For centuries, the priests had to leave the bones intact when they killed the Passover lamb. Their knives were not to touch them. The Roman soldier, who, at Golgotha, stood ready to smash the bones of those crucified will certainly not have realised why his hammer remained unused in respect of Jesus’ bones.

The high priests and the elders would have preferred to see Jesus delivered to be killed on another day than the Feast of the Passover. Their wish was: “But not during the Feast ... or there may be a riot among the people” (Matthew 26:5). However, the Lamb of God was slain exactly on the Feast of the Passover. They also wanted to have His bones broken (John 19:31). However, the Father in the highest heaven was in full control of every detail of the sacrifice of His Son. The fulfilment of the old shadow service was complete. Scripture cannot be broken.

However fervently Satan wished for Jesus’ bones to be smashed so that nobody could ever say: “This is Jesus”, the Father watched over the Scriptures and over Him, who is the Word of God having become flesh. “For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). In Him, the Name I AM WHO I AM has appeared among us and has made His dwelling among us. We in faith behold His glory.

Jesus Christ is THE SAME, yesterday and today and in all eternity.

His identity has not gone!

Every eye shall see Him!

His unbroken bones are the sign and pledge of His return: “They will look on the one they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10; John 19:36-37). And when He returns, the Groom will recognise His bride, and as the second Adam, He will say: “This is now bone of my bones!”

Whoever, in this life, accepts Him, Who, at Golgotha, made the Passover Sacrifice to the Lord, shares in His inviolable bones, and on the Day of Christ, he will be identified. But those who “... do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus—they will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-10).

Israel’s identity

There is another identity that remains preserved: the identity of Israel.

It should be emphasised here that ‘Israel’ in this book always stands for the Jewish people as a whole, and not the State of Israel of today.

The prophet Zechariah already said: “…they will look on me, the one they have pierced”. By ‘they’, Zechariah very clearly means ‘Israel’, because in this context, the prophet speaks about the ‘house of David’—“they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son”—each clan separately (12:10-14).

In His eschatological speech, Jesus twice pronounces the word ‘generation’ in connection with the worldwide responsibility of the Jewish people, spanning all ages. In Matthew 23:36, Jesus proclaims: “I tell you the truth, all this (ταυτα παντα—tauta panta—all these things) will come upon this generation (γενεα—genea)”. And in Matthew 24:34, He says: “I tell you the truth, this generation (γενεα) will certainly not pass away until all these things (παντα ταυτα) have happened.”

So in fact the word ‘clan, or family’ (γενεα) should not just be translated by the word ‘generation’. In our text, this word twice has the meaning of ‘people’. The Jewish people will have to bear the responsibility for all their wrongdoings towards God’s servants before the time of Jesus, and also after (Matthew 23:34-35). In Matthew 24:34, the word ‘generation’ is also used for the people; they will remain—i.e. will not lose their identity—until the end of the age. The identity of the Jewish people will be preserved, and from the words that immediately follow this announcement, it becomes clear, how the divine preservation of this identity is closely connected to Jesus’ words, which will for ever be in force: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35).

The ‘Israel family’ is in the service of the eternal Word of God, and in this perspective, it is also stated that not a bone of the Lamb of God shall be broken, so “they will look on the one they have pierced.” Jesus’ identity as the Lamb of God is unbreakable. He is the fulfilment of God’s intentions with the Passover lamb. The reconciliation through the blood of an eternal covenant is unbreakable and indivisible.

The Lamb had to be eaten in one house (Exodus 12:46).

It was forbidden to carry part of it from one house to another across the street. This ancient commandment should to this day be regarded as an ecumenical warning.

The one undivided Table of the Lord must be established.

Christ is not divided (1 Corinthians 1:12), neither in His expiatory death, nor in the power of His resurrection.

His identity remains, as does the identity of His people out of Jews and Gentiles, in judgment and mercy, in fall and rising.

The prophet Ezekiel comes with a similar message. He confirms that God not only preserves the bones of the individual believer, but also that the identity of the entire house of Israel will be maintained by Him.

By the spirit of God, Ezekiel is placed in the middle of a valley full of bones (Ezekiel 37:1). These bones are described as being ‘very dry’. Ezekiel then has to prophesy to these bones: “…Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life…” (37:4-5). As soon as he prophesied, there was noise and movement, and finally breath came into the bones, they came to life and stood up on their feet, and together, they formed a vast army. After that, God Himself explained the meaning of this vision to him:

“Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD’” (Ezekiel 37:11-14).

It goes without saying that the word ‘bones’ is used in a figurative sense here to depict the people of Israel being without hope. For the Israelite, however, this imagery was clear enough, because they were familiar with the traditional symbolism attributed to the bones. Here too, the identity of the people was preserved, in their fall as well as in their rising.

In a period of exile, the destruction can go very far. Satan hates the identity of the chosen people of Israel. Time and again, his aim is their total destruction. In his way, he also has an ‘election’: an ‘election’ to the death of all the Jewish people. That is why, for ages, he has focussed on the ‘bones’, i.e. the religious aspect of the ‘identity’ of this nation.

During the Second World War, Satan did his utmost to annihilate Israel and to totally burn, mind you, indeed burn the Jewish people, so that nobody would be able to say any more: “This is Israel”.

Israel’s identity had to be wiped out, and on that basis, hell wanted to establish a ‘Thousand Year Reich’.

What a marked antithesis is God’s plan for the establishment of the Kingdom of Peace. His plan is based on the salvation of ‘all Israel’, which is at hand.

A spear and a hammer

What is the connection between a spear and a hammer?

This question approaches the limits of our cognitive faculty. Human beings have quite a capability of understanding the difference and the connection between things. Here, however, we have reached the point where we can no longer fully analyse things. The apostle Paul states: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33).

There are ‘depths of God’: depths of unfathomable plans and inscrutable ways.

Jesus’ suffering and death are also evidence of this. In this situation, we see two ‘delegations’ acting in opposite ways. Both these ‘delegations’ go to Pilate. We read the following about the first delegation: “Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down” (John 19:31). Appealing to law, they made a request to the representative of the deified totalitarian state of Rome to have the bones of their fellow countrymen broken. The Jews in those days would certainly have known about the symbolism of the bones and how respectfully one had to handle them.

This request of breaking the bones of the crucified men was atrocious, and, moreover, difficult to justify from the perspective of the Torah. At any rate, it is not according to the spirit of the Torah. Deuteronomy 25:3 sets a limit to the measure of punishment, so that a brother would not be affected by unnecessary cruelty or would be looked upon as contemptible in the eyes of his fellow men.

Being surrendered to the cruel Roman punishment of crucifixion as well as having subsequently the bones broken, is overstepping the bounds set by the Torah.

There was a special reason for breaking the bones. ‘Execution by crucifixion’ was usually employed for criminals and rebels who revolted against the Roman oppressors. Now it sometimes happened that people who had been crucified and who had been hanging to die for days were taken from the cross by comrades from resistance fighter groups or by a gang of criminals, and they would recover after receiving medical care. In principle this made it possible for them to re-join their fellow resistance fighters or their gang and be active once again. However, if their bones were broken in the final phase of their execution and they were then taken away, they would irrevocably die of wound fever. Sometimes they even were burnt.

Pilate was at a loss by their request. If he would not finalise the execution according to the Roman model, he would irrevocably run into trouble with the emperor. Meanwhile, this request put Jesus on the same level with terrorists, who intended to combat the Roman occupation with force, or with criminals in general.

Jesus, however, had emphatically stated: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36).

There are strong exegetical arguments to believe that the men who were crucified next to Jesus were indeed freedom fighters. Both, the Greek word ληισται (leistai)[59], [which is translated by ‘robbers’ in Matthew 27:38] as well as the answer Jesus gave to one of the crucified men at his question: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”, point in this direction. For, that is what the freedom fighters were fighting for. They wanted to turn the Promised Land into a paradise again, and so they had to defeat the tyranny of Rome by whatever means possible.

To put Jesus on one line with the other crucified men, who had a more or less zealotic attitude, was in itself reprehensible. However, by their request to Pilate that Jesus’ bones be broken, they took the risk, consciously or unconsciously that Jesus would end up as dung in a field, thus sharing Jezebel’s fate, and nobody would ever be able to say: This is Jesus.

Three times, a delegation of the Jewish people tried to call in the help of the Roman authorities to strike Jesus. The first time was when they requested Pilate to have Him crucified, with the words: “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God” (John 19:7). The second request was to have His bones broken and his body taken away because of the Great Sabbath (John 19:31). The third time, the High Priests and the Pharisees jointly requested Pilate to secure the tomb until the third day, for fear that the disciples might take His body away and say to the people that He has been raised from the dead. So they got a guard for the tomb (Matthew 27:63-65).

Three times, they called in the help of a pagan ‘pyramidal’ deified state authority to oppose Jesus’ Messianic claims.

A time will come when God Himself will bring in the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ with the purpose of revealing to Israel, through the Holy Spirit, Whom they have pierced. For this purpose, all ‘pyramidal’ structures in the gentile world, both in the church and in the world, will have to be overturned. For the Gentiles have also pierced the heart of Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, with ‘the spear’.

There will come a preliminary round in history, before the end and His appearance on the Day of the Lord. Then everybody will see which Shepherd was pierced in the heart by the rebellion of mankind. In both cases, in the preliminary round as well as at the end of the age, the collision between the ‘depths of God’ and the ‘depths of Satan’ will be unimaginably fierce (Revelation 2:24).

With the request of the Jews to have Jesus’ bones broken, we ought to remember immediately what Peter has said about this great lawsuit: “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders”, and immediately, he adds: “But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer” (Acts 3:17-18). The Saviour Himself also pleaded with the Father because of the ‘ignorance’ of the people, when He prayed on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Caiaphas, too, did not know what he was saying when he spoke the words: “You know nothing at all! You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” (John 11:49-50).

Caiaphas prophesied beyond his comprehension.

In itself, this statement of Caiaphas, which he made in his office as High Priest, was perfectly true, but he meant it in absolute contradiction to God’s plan of redemption. In Jesus’ death, the words of John the Baptist, the ‘Elijah’ of the New Testament were fulfilled: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). This fulfilment had already been announced in the age-old shadow service (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12; Zechariah 12:10) and at the last day, the truth about this will come to light before everybody (Revelation 1:7).

The only criterion the Roman soldier—who had been ordered to break the bones of the crucified men—used in his decision to just pierce the body of the one crucified in the middle with a spear rather than also breaking his bones with a hammer was the fact that he had already died. Stabbing him with the spear was only meant to prove that fact. What did he know of the statutes written in the Torah concerning the Passover lamb? He acted totally pragmatically. But meanwhile, the eternal Counsel of God was brought about.

This entire event was included in a special providence of the Father.

When the blood of the eternal covenant has been shed, reconciliation has, in principle, been accomplished, and so the hammer of Roman violence must remain silent. At that time, even the symbolism of the bones of the righteous cannot be harmed (Psalm 34:20-21), and the sign that Jesus really is the Lamb of God must be beyond question.

This is the mystery of the relationship between the ‘spear’ and the ‘hammer’.

The reconciliation that was accomplished wards off the hammer from the bones of God’s Passover Lamb! “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Since by His expiatory death, sin has been taken away for everyone who believes in Him, and He has therefore fulfilled His task on earth, there is no reason any more for the Father to leave His Son in the grave and to allow His body to decay.

Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures (Isaiah 53:5-12), and He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)!

Peter testifies about this on the day of Pentecost, with a quotation from Psalm 16:10: “…because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay” (Acts 2:27).

The supernatural light of the unbroken bones shines clearly in the blood of the Passover Lamb. The light of imperishableness shines clearly in the blood of the eternal covenant. It is the light that radiates from the Name ‘I AM WHO I AM’, Yahweh! It even reveals the ‘identity of God’.

The prophet Zechariah connects the fact that Jesus’ bones were spared directly to the identity of God with the words: “They will look on the one they have pierced.” John sees this prophecy fulfilled in the sparing of Jesus’ bones. (John 19:37).

What the people did in their rebellion to God, the Great Shepherd, was done here to Jesus. The apostle John thus consistently regards Jesus and the Father as being One. He pursues the line of his prologue in chapter 1 of his Gospel until the scene of the ‘spear’ and the ‘hammer’. His prologue begins with:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. (…)

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (…)

No-one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1: 1-18).

Because Jesus is the Word of God made flesh, His unbroken bones now also radiate the light of God’s identity.

The ‘spear’ and the ‘hammer’!

The spear causes total bloodshed. The ‘silence’ of the hammer, by which Jesus’ bones remained intact, is the prelude of His resurrection. ‘Spear’ and ‘hammer’ are in a certain sense related to each other as ‘the cross’ and ‘the resurrection’.

Joseph got a coffin with a Future, Jesus got a tomb with a Future!

Joseph may have been rejected by his brothers, but whatever evil intentions they had for him, God changed them for the better, in order to keep a great nation alive.

Accordingly, there is nobody on earth who could justifiably plead not guilty of Jesus’ rejection. Nobody can say: I did not use that spear at Golgotha to pierce the Shepherd’s heart of Jesus. If we are honest, we should acknowledge with the poet Jacobus Revius:

“I am the one, O Lord, who brought you there,

I am the heavy cross you had to bear,

I am the rope that bound you to the tree,

The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,

The blood-stained crown of thorns you had to wear:

It was my sin, alas, it was for me.”
[60]

However, what mankind meant for evil, God has turned for good, in order to keep a ‘great nation’ alive today, and to save all mankind from death and eternal damnation.

This is the unfathomable depth of God’s plan of reconciliation: as the blood of reconciliation has been shed at Golgotha, so His unbroken bones already speak of a resurrection to life!

The mystery of godliness is great!

Jesus’ life bears witness to God’s majesty. His suffering and death and everything that took place around it were also majestic.

The final scene of the ‘spear’ and the ‘hammer’ and everything that happened around His death at Golgotha also radiate God’s majesty: The sun was darkened; the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; the Roman centurion testified that this man truly was the Son of God; the crowd that had gathered at the sight beat their breasts; the earth shook and the rocks split; the tombs broke open, and the bodies of many holy people who had died came to life, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

The same is true for Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus when they took Jesus down from the cross. That this Jewish ‘delegation’ also went to Pilate with a request, arose from the depths of God.

Whether both men went to Pilate is of minor importance in the context of this heroic deed. It has been established for sure that Joseph of Arimathea was the spokesman and requested Pilate’s permission to take Jesus’ body from the cross in order to bury it. Nicodemus may have joined him later.

It is written about Joseph of Arimathea that he was an honourable member of the Council, a good and righteous man, who himself was also expecting the kingdom of God. We also read that he had not agreed to Jesus’ condemnation by the Council (Luke 23:50-51). Nicodemus is mentioned three times in the Scriptures: In John 3, where he comes to Jesus in the night, in John 7:51, where he stands up for Jesus with the words: “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?”, and the third time when Jesus is taken from the cross.

Nicodemus also belonged to the notables of the nation. He was one of the Pharisees.

These two notables in Israel’s society were in the service of the revelation of God’s holy Name.

It was quite a risky thing to go to Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus (Mark 15:43). It might have been regarded as criticism of his policy and certainly as interfering with the plans of the Sanhedrin.

Moreover, courage was needed to go to that ‘gruesome’ hill of Golgotha, where the atmosphere was still vibrating with the tensions that had prevailed during the crucifixion. But the only thing that drove them to do so was their reverence for the Crucified One, whom they had both acknowledged as their Lord. This is also evident from the profuse homage they paid to Jesus: Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of spices, a mixture of myrrh and aloe.

On the Sabbath eve, they took the body of Jesus from the cross, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth together with the spices and placed it in a new tomb, which Joseph of Arimathea had had hewn out of a rock for himself and where never before a body had been laid. God directed this ‘delegation’ of men, who were also from the Jewish nation, to honour His Son in a way due to Him as King.

Taking Jesus down from the cross, the spices they had brought, the great care they took for His burial, it was all a homage to Jesus and it emphasised the majesty of His expiatory death.

But He rose from the grave, and in doing so, He powerfully proved to be the Son of God (Romans 1:4).

Jesus’ suffering and death were majestic; so was His resurrection, and so will be His return.

54 See Shofar-series Volume 2, page 23-27 about the mysticism of the primeval mount

55 André & Lynette Singer: “Mystiek en magie”, page 170-173, Kosmos-Z&K Uitgevers, Utrecht/Antwerpen, 1996

56 Dr. C. van Gelderen: “Geschiedenis van Voor-Azië met Egypte en van Israël”, in “Bijbels handboek”, page 118, J.H. Kok NV, Kampen, 1935
“Vermoedelijk was bij Jakobs dood Zuid-Egypte onder Sequenen-Ra reeds opgestaan tegen Apepi. Maar in Noord-Egypte waren de Hyksos nog sterk, en de weg naar Kanaän stond hun nog open, zodat Jozef gelegenheid vond zijn vader in Hebron te gaan begraven (Gen. 50:13) Met het jaar van Jozefs dood echter staan we heel dicht bij de finale verdrijving der Hyksos. Misschien was de toestand reeds zo kritiek, dat aan een begrafenis in Kanaän niet meer viel te denken. Hoe dit ook zij, het lijk van Jozef bleef in Egypte. Doch de zonen Israëls hadden hem moeten zweren, dat ze het bij hun uittocht zouden meevoeren naar Kanaän; Gen. 50:24-26. En zo is het ook geschied; Ex. 13:19; Jozua 24:32.”

57 Translated from Dutch

58 More about this in volume 4 of the Shofar series: ‘The Fulness of the Gentiles’, which is still to appear.

59 Gerhard Kittel: “Theologisches Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament, Band 4”, page 267, Verlag von W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1942

60 Translated from Dutch by Henrietta ten Harmsel (1968)

7. JOSEPH’S BLESSING

The farewell

For the patriarch Jacob, the end of his life is at hand. Joseph is informed that his father is ill, and so, he sets off with his two sons to the death-chamber of the patriarch. This place is the site of an extraordinary ‘service’ to which the sons of Jacob are called together, and where an ‘inheritance’ which is equally extraordinary, will be distributed.

Jacob’s call is solemn: “Gather round so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come. Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel” (Genesis 49:1-2).

When the future is at stake, Israel as a whole is concerned. The words are: Gather round and listen!

Jacob does not summon his sons for a ‘congress’ or a ‘conference’. He does not give them the opportunity to dialogue with him or to start a discussion. Rather, the dying man gives an order. The words are spoken in the imperative mood.

Gather round—and listen!

This way of summoning, in itself, radiates a heavenly authority. Jacob will speak by the authority of the Most High. Before he dies, he will bless his sons and the blessing that he will pronounce on each of his sons is, by virtue of this divine authority, identical to ‘distributing the future’.

Jacob’s ‘blessing’ is prophesying in the name of God!

It is much more than uttering a few ‘pious wishes’.

For some of his sons, this ‘blessing’ even implies a ‘judgment’. Think of Reuben, or Simeon, and Levi.

In the Old Testament, ‘blessing’ is a highly charged notion. It may even be used in a serious judgment, such as after the destruction of the people who had worshipped the golden calf during the exodus. When, at Moses’ command, the Levites had killed their brothers and closest relatives, he spoke the following words: “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day” (Exodus 32:29).

When Jacob summoned the patriarchs, they were placed before God.

A death-chamber as a courtroom.

His statements have an irrevocable validity. ‘Appealing to a higher court’ will not be possible. That is what Esau had experienced, when Jacob deceitfully had stolen the blessing inherent to Esau’s birthright. Although Esau, angry and in tears, had begged his father Isaac to revoke or change the blessing, Isaac could not change or take back any of his words, because they were sacred (Genesis 27:30-40; Hebrews 12:17).

Jacob knew the value of words of blessing!

They are as words of God!

This ‘official authority’ did not disappear after the time of the patriarchs. It was passed on to the priests. In Numbers 6, we read how God says to Moses:

“Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace. So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them’” (Numbers 6:23-27).

Much later, the authority to bless was passed on to our Lord Jesus Christ. He said: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” (…) “And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them” (Mark 10:14-16). Jesus travelled around the whole country blessing people by word and deed. And when He ascended to heaven, He did not clench His fists to take revenge for everything that had been done to Him on earth. His ‘vengeance’ would be merciful:

“When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven” (Luke 24:50-51).

This farewell blessing is irrevocable as well and will overcome all opposition. Jesus “ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10 NKJV).

The adoption

There is much to be said about the hands that Jacob raised over his sons’ heads in order to bless them. During his entire life, he had fought, deceived, prayed, struggled and blessed with these hands.

He had even used his hands before he was born. While he was still in his mother’s womb, he had taken hold of Esau’s heel, to which he owes his name: Jacob, he who grasps the heel—deceiver. Later on in life, his behaviour shows how this name fits him. He steals the blessing of the firstborn from Esau by deceiving his father Isaac. He covers his hands with goatskins, which makes his blind, old father think that he is Esau. In this way, his hands desecrated the ‘right of blessing’ given by God to Abraham and his descendants. In doing so, Jacob’s hands grabbed at a ‘high voltage line’. He became aware of how serious this was at Peniel. That was where his arms and hands had to fight with an angel of God. Hosea says about this: “In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel; as a man he struggled with God” (Hosea 12:3).

At Peniel, Jacob was confronted with ‘Hands’ stronger than his. This wrestling with God is also called a ‘physical prayer’. He wept and pleaded with the Lord in his struggle with the angel. However, in his capitulation to the sovereign mercy of God, he prevailed and received a new name: Israel, Prince of God.

Jacob’s hands also used a sword and a bow in order to snatch a mountain ridge from the hands of the Amorites (Genesis 48:22).

Later, when he arrived in Egypt, the hands of the one hundred and thirty years old Jacob were lifted in a blessing over the then highest authority of the world, Pharaoh, and in doing so, he was Pharaoh’s superior. On account of his spiritual status as Pharaoh’s superior, Jacob was authorised to bless Pharaoh, who, because of his social status, was in fact far superior to him. In this act, Jacob experienced in essence something of the fulfilment of the divine promise: “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

In the end, Pharaoh was blessed through Joseph, who was Jacob’s offspring.

This same universal intention prevails in Jacob’s attitude to his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh, who had Egyptian blood in their veins.

The ‘service’ in Jacob’s death-chamber, during which all Jacob/Israel’s sons were blessed by him, and in which he spoke his last words to them, was preceded by another ceremony. We read how Joseph, as soon as he heard that his father was ill, took his two sons along with him and hurried to see his father (Genesis 48:1-2). When Jacob was told that Joseph was coming, he strengthened himself and sat up on the bed. And immediately after he had spoken about his remarkable encounter with God, in which he received the promise: “I am going to make you fruitful and will increase your numbers. I will make you a community of peoples, and I will give this land as an everlasting possession to your descendants after you”, he says: “Now then, your two sons born to you in Egypt before I came to you here will be reckoned as mine; Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine” (48:4-5).

Jacob ‘adopts’ Joseph’s two sons, even though they were born of an Egyptian mother. This adoption is clearly emphasised here. Jacob implies that Ephraim and Manasseh, in spite of their Egyptian blood, belong directly to him, and, in fact, as ‘first-born’ of the family, for—as Jacob says—“…(they) will be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine.” Two grandsons with ‘pagan’ blood receive the status of first-born of Israel.

This adoption has far-reaching perspectives!

It is like a prelude to what is later called: the grafting of the ‘wild branches’ in the trunk of the ‘good olive tree’ of the patriarchs (Romans 11:17 and 24)

Centuries later, Jesus will have a conversation with the Samaritan woman in this area which would belong to Ephraim and Manasseh. It is a conversation that ends in an adoption which has the symbolic traits of a ‘bridal acquisition’(John 4).

Jacob adopted Joseph’s sons, and the words he spoke at that occasion deeply impressed Joseph. Jacob makes a direct link between this adoption and the divine promise at Bethel, where he heard God speak at the top of the ladder which reached to heaven, and where the covenant was renewed (Genesis 28:13). And now, Jacob is ready to bless Joseph’s sons as the first ones. Joseph realises that something is going to be said from out of eternity, from out of the council of God, and he bows with his face to the ground in worship. Joseph does not prostrate himself before the patriarch Jacob as a human being, but because Jacob acts officially in the Name of the Most High. Joseph knows that in the blessing that Jacob pronounces over his sons, mysteries of God are distributed from out of His fulness.

Joseph brings his two sons to his father, and places Ephraim at Israel’s left hand and the older, Manasseh, at Israel’s right hand (48:13).

But then something unexpected happens with Jacob/Israel’s hands. He stretches out his right hand, and puts it on Ephraim’s head, although he is the youngest son, and he puts his left hand on Manasseh’s head; he put his hands crosswise, although Manasseh was the first-born. “Then he blessed Joseph and said, ‘May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all harm—may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth’” (Genesis 48:15-16).

Jacob crossed his hands in blessing Ephraim and Manasseh!

It characterises the entire adoption.

Crossed hands

As mentioned before, Jacob’s death-chamber was the place of an exceptional ‘service’. However, Jacob’s farewell was also in a real sense a ‘service of blessing’. This service was characterised by the crossing of hands over the heads of Ephraim and Manasseh. The fact that Jacob distributes God’s future in this way, i.e. with crossed hands, is in itself a prophetic parable.

It was God’s Spirit that made Jacob do it in this way. With his eyes growing dim, he read in the book of the future and saw its reality. This reality also made him adopt his two Egyptian grandsons as his ‘first-born’.

Ephraim and Manasseh submit themselves to what Israel says. The two boys, who have been educated in Egypt and are used to the luxury of the Egyptian court because their father Joseph is a high-ranking official there, come to Jacob’s house to stand in profound dependence under the hands of their dying grandfather.

When Ephraim and Manasseh stand at his knees, Jacob sees his own life file past as in a film. How often had the Eternal One acted with ‘crossed hands’ in his own life. He had lost Rachel, whom he had loved so deeply, on his way to Bethlehem. And not she, but Leah, will be the ancestress of the Messiah. Jacob prophesies the following about Judah, Leah’s son: “Judah, your brothers will praise you. (…) The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his” (Genesis 49:8-10).

Again, it was not Esau, the first-born, who was Isaac’s favourite, but Jacob. When they were still in their mother’s womb, the Lord spoke to Rebecca, saying: “…and the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).

Looking back even further in history: it was not with Ishmael, the older of Abraham’s sons, but with Isaac and his offspring that God would establish his covenant.

And now, with his eyes enlightened by the Spirit of God, Jacob sees that it is not Manasseh, but Ephraim, who will be considered as the first-born. In the scrolls of the future, he reads how God will extend the lines of His sovereign election of the past into a far-off Messianic future.

Jacob crosses his hands.

In this deed, he reflects God’s election and God’s sovereign action. In this way, Jacob affirms that God is not bound to the ‘oldest letters’, nor to seniority from the bottom up. This deed is truly a prophetic parable.

When one day, in the Messianic time, the Kingdom of God is to break through, God will, once again, cross His hands in blessing, and His fulfilling intervention in the Gentile world will precede His fulfilling acts in Israel.

It is a mystery!

When, historically speaking, the fulness of the Gentiles will come about, all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:25).

God crosses His hands in blessing!

Jacob crosses his hands under the irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit. It was the revelation of a mystery. Joseph, who, with regard to the blessings, had placed his two sons under his father’s hands in the right position, gets a fright and intervenes. He interrupts his father and says: “No, my father!” Joseph, a great prophet himself, whose life clearly showed how his dreams had come true under God’s crossed hands, thought for a moment that things were going wrong. My father cannot see clearly any more which of the two is the elder: he puts his right hand on the younger and his left hand on Manasseh, the elder.

Joseph grabs his father’s hand to take it from Ephraim’s head in order to place it on Manasseh’s head, and he says: “No, my father!” In a liturgical sense, he had properly placed the elder at the right hand and the younger at the left hand. His father only needed to lift his old hands. But no, Jacob crossed his hands!

It was a great surprise!

But wasn’t it a great surprise, too, that the chosen family was saved via the pagan world—a salvation, in which Joseph himself had been fully involved, and in which he had even played a crucial part? And will it not be just as great a surprise when the entire ‘chosen family’, ‘all Israel’, will be saved through God’s fulfilling deeds in the Gentile world?

Are not the inscrutable ways of God in the road to the end of the age depicted in the crossed hands?

So, although we, Christians out of the Gentiles, have been ‘adopted’ and grafted as wild branches in the trunk of the good olive tree, this does not give us any right to boast over the natural branches. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare us if we do not continue with heart and soul in the grace of God (Romans 11:17-24).

Jacob blessed Joseph’s two sons. A blessing was pronounced under his left hand, too. It was said of both Ephraim and Manasseh: “In your name will Israel pronounce this blessing: ‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’” But he set Ephraim before Manasseh. Ephraim would become greater than Manasseh, and his offspring would become a fulness of nations.

When God crosses His hands, Jews as well as Gentiles may receive a full blessing, even under the left hand, and they may become a ‘proverb’ in the Millennium of God’s peace over all the nations. But we will always have to be aware of what Paul says in Romans 11:18: “You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”

This order of things, in which Israel is and remains the first, and in which God’s universal plan of salvation and His private involvement with Israel coincide, will, under His crossed hands, only find complete expression in the last phase of history, so that no flesh may boast.

The Messiah comes to ‘His own’—this is and remains God’s sequence. And if ‘His own’ do not receive Him, God crosses His hands and the Messiah will first be ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles’ and after that ‘for glory to your people Israel’ (Luke 2:32).

Still, salvation is and will always be from the Jews!

When great decisions will have to be made during the worldwide turnabout which is at hand, many people will certainly call out: “Not this way, heavenly Father, not this way! Your right hand ought to bless our oldest church, our institution, our books of canon law, our censers!”

But God will pass all that by. He will also have the ‘flesh’ of all the churches and congregations, of councils and synods die.

The great temple cleansing is at hand!

Not our ‘proper liturgy’ or our ‘oldest testimonials’ will be decisive at the breakthrough of His kingdom, but it will be our broken hearts and the awareness of our ‘ecclesiastical’ guilt. For centuries, we have shown the Jewish people a ‘caricature’ of the Gospel by our attitude, and we have contributed towards preventing them from accepting Jesus as their Messiah. If we, with our broken hearts, bow down before God with our faces down to the ground, saying: “O God, be merciful to us, sinners”, we may, as the Church of Jesus Christ, become once again a city on the mountain, the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

God crosses His hands!

We can not programme His ways as we do a computer, neither in the great events of the world, nor in the coming of His kingdom or in our personal lives. Who among us has never experienced that God crossed His hands? Who among us has never more or less rebelliously said: “Not so, my Father! This is not the way you should act!”

But then the heavenly Father says: “I know! I know!”

He directs His hands with divine wisdom over world events and over our personal lives.

Whoever submits to this, will be made a ‘proverbial blessing’ in His kingdom, just as Ephraim and Manasseh.

The fruitful vine

The patriarch is fully aware of his approaching end. After having blessed Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob/Israel says to Joseph: “I am about to die, but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers” (Genesis 48:21).

It sounds like a simple statement, but it shows great trust in God’s faithfulness to His covenant.

“God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers.”

What a promise!

What firm trust in God’s faithfulness!

Later on, Joseph would repeat this promise, with the same trust, and connect to it the request to carry his bones back to the Promised Land when the people would leave Egypt.

The certainty of this return in the soul of the dying father is so great, that, as if it were already true, he can already give part of the Promised Land to Joseph: “And to you, as one who is over your brothers, I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow” (Genesis 48:22).

It is characteristic of prophets to say things that have not yet come to pass as if they already have become reality. The same thing occurs here. It not only arises from their inner certainty, but it is also the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that causes the future to be drawn so near that things are experienced as if they were happening today.

Jacob gave Joseph a gift ‘over his brothers’. Many years earlier, the patriarch had already given Joseph something ‘over his brothers’: a royal robe. Besides, he had also ‘kept’ the contents of Joseph’s dreams ‘over’ the contempt that his brothers had for them. Jacob took these dreams seriously, and even though he didn’t understand them at first, he pondered them in his heart, in the same way as Mary did later with the words that came to her through the shepherds (Genesis 37:11; Luke 2:19).

Moreover, he had a special love for Joseph. Altogether it was a gift ‘over his brothers’. Eventually, Joseph’s dreams came true in a wonderful way, and he was proven true by a word of the Lord (Psalm 105:19), and, together with that, the patriarch Jacob/Israel was put in the right as well.

Jacob summoned his sons to let them know what they would experience in the time to come. Also for his other sons, he ‘distributes the future’. And, in a figurative sense, he also crosses his hands when he pronounces the blessing. Reuben, the firstborn son, hears him say: “Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, the first sign of my strength, excelling in honour (…) you will no longer excel” (Genesis 49:3-4). The rights of the firstborn were given to Joseph and his sons, as is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 5:1-2. These words must have been bitter for Reuben, but neither he, nor any of the other brothers interrupts their father, calling out: “No, my father!” A silent, reverential submission prevails when they hear the blessings pronounced.

Joseph receives the rights of the firstborn, together with his sons.

Here again, the ‘sheaves’ and the ‘stars’ bow down before Joseph when he receives this birthright.

The patriarch speaks with full authority from God.

We, too, should show the necessary reverence for the message that comes from this death-chamber, because its significance reaches across all time until the end of the age.

The exuberant imagery the patriarch used in his blessing for Joseph also bears witness to an unlimited fruitfulness of ‘the prince among his brothers’:

“Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall. With bitterness archers attacked him; they shot at him with hostility. But his bow remained steady, his strong arms stayed supple, because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, because of your father’s God, who helps you, because of the Almighty, who blesses you with blessings of the heavens above, blessings of the deep that lies below, blessings of the breast and womb. Your father’s blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills. Let all these rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince among his brothers” (Genesis 49:22-26).

Joseph is called a fruitful vine twice in this text, and the second time Jacob adds the following: “even a fruitful vine near a spring; whose branches run over the wall.”

What wonderful imagery!

A wall is built by people, but a fruitful vine grows by the power that God gives to nature. It might even be possible that Jacob, by using the word ‘wall’, alludes to the sojourn in Egypt. Abraham’s vision must have been verbally passed on to Jacob. In this vision, the following is announced: “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13).

In the last period of Jacob’s life, there were already signs of political instability in Egypt. The ‘wall’ that made it impossible to leave Egypt would soon appear.

Walls can be built for several purposes.

A wall may be built for protection, as for instance around an orchard. But a wall can also be used in a negative sense, as a barrier or even as a prison wall. Walls may even be built to divide nations into two separate parts. There are examples of this in history. In the latter case, the wall is intended to curtail people’s freedom of movement.

The conclusion to be drawn from Jacob’s words immediately following the imagery about the wall is that the patriarch meant to say that Joseph could not be kept imprisoned, and that he would become a symbol of freedom for the entire nation. He overcomes every kind of opposition and obstruction.

Quite a few ‘walls’ had been built as barriers in Joseph’s life! First of all, there was the hatred he had endured from his brothers in his early youth, and their disbelief and contempt as regards his dreams. And in spite of his beautiful dreams, his life initially seemed to take quite a different turn. He was sold to Egypt! A higher ‘wall’ of impossibilities is hard to imagine. In Egypt, his chastity was assaulted by Potiphar’s wife: another ‘wall’. As a consequence, he was imprisoned, where he was confronted by the ‘wall’ of oblivion, upon the release of the cupbearer of the king, exactly in accordance with Joseph’s interpretation of his dream. For many years, it seemed as if none of his dreams were coming true.

On the contrary!

Yet, he scaled each ‘wall’, however high or thick it was.

His branches ran over the ‘wall’ of the opposition of his brothers: eventually they all bowed down before him.

His branches grew higher than the ‘wall’ of oblivion in prison: he was summoned by Pharaoh himself and he became his ‘equal’; it was only the throne that made Pharaoh his superior.

His branches grew higher than the ‘wall’ of impossibility, when as ‘a reputed criminal’, he became the viceroy of Egypt and hence the saviour of Egypt as well as of his own family.

Ultimately, he also bore the fruits of his testimony across the impossible ‘wall’ of the oppression by Pharaoh, in the course of which every little boy was to be thrown into the Nile. His bones were taken along as a ‘sacrament’ by the people who left Egypt, and in that way they reached the land of Canaan.

Jacob speaks of archers who tormented him, shot at him, and hated him, but also of Joseph’s bow, that remained sturdy, and of his strong hands that remained supple. The secret of this charismatic strength is strongly emphasised in the blessing that Jacob bestows on Joseph by the fivefold title, he ascribes to God: “The mighty God of Jacob; the Rock of Israel; his Shepherd; the God of your father; the Almighty.”

These titles express the superiority of God over the glory of the Pharaohs, who embellished their deified kingship with a fivefold idolatrous title.

‘Joseph’, the fruitful vine, was planted near a spring. The spring is the everlasting covenant with the living God, who shaped Joseph’s story into a prophetic parable of the Messianic future. The ‘branches of this fruitful vine’ grew higher than any ‘wall’ due to the power of being chosen, even when in the last round of world history another ‘Pharaoh’, an ‘Antichrist’ will appear, who knows nothing about ‘Joseph’. At that time, the ‘sturdy bow’ of Him who will bring complete fulfilment of the old prophetic ‘Joseph parable’, our Lord Jesus Christ, will prevail over the ‘beast from the bottomless pit’ and will put an end to the last great tribulation.

In conclusion

We should not forget that, even though Joseph’s brothers’ bowed down before the ‘star’ in their midst—the chosen one from among Jacob’s sons—they were referred to in Joseph’s dreams as ‘stars’ and ‘sheaves’. Abraham’s posterity remains a ‘nation of stars’, in times of fall and rising. They are ‘stars’ that give light in the night of times, and are instrumental to the guidance of the nations which is indispensable.

A battle is being fought!

In his speech about Israel’s future, Paul speaks about the depth of the wisdom of God (Romans 11:33). However, according to Jesus’ letter to the church of Thyatira there are also depths—‘deep secrets’—of Satan (Revelation 2:24). When these depths start conflicting, a turmoil will occur in which we, small human beings, cannot do without guidance from heaven.

This twentieth century, the end of the second millennium, looks like a ‘battlefield’, in which the depths of God and the depths of Satan are at war with each other, an unprecedented violent war, with the aim of establishing the Millennial Kingdom of Peace on earth.

But how striking is the sharp contrast between God’s plan for establishing this millennial kingdom and the plan of the prince of darkness.

According to the Scriptures, God’s plan was to be realised through God’s fulfilling actions in the Gentile world and the conversion of His people Israel, to which the binding of Satan would be connected.

The aim of the prince of darkness appeared to comprise an attempt at a total annihilation of the ‘nation of stars’, coupled to a glorification of own ‘blood’ and ‘soil’. This deification of their own race was carried to such extremes and the aversion to the Jewish people became so intense, that the distinction had to be visible on every piece of clothing. Every Jew, from young to old, was obliged to wear a ‘yellow star’. This humiliating stigmatisation, however, was not the only measure that the ‘black dragon’ from the bottomless pit used to make the people suffer. In the end, he ‘swished away’ with his tail ‘one third of the stars’ into the ‘black pit’ of the Holocaust. However, he could not achieve an Endlösung, i.e. a total annihilation. The plan of the prince of darkness, which aimed at establishing his millennial kingdom on the basis of the extermination of the Jewish people—as was literally proclaimed by his ‘manager’—was unsuccessful.

Yet, there is a reverse side to this history of destruction.

Up to the day of Jesus’ resurrection, ‘the third day’ occupied a key position in the systematic dealings of God [61], all through the Scriptures. Time and again, ‘the third day’ proclaims a resurrection, a salvation, a positive opening up.

And now that we are standing at the threshold of the third millennium, we may, by virtue of this systematic acting of God, hope that the third day of God, the third millennium, will bring an opening up that is positive and full of salvation.

A blessed reflex of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

As the story of Joseph teaches us, God turns everything that was meant for harm to the good.

The symbol of ‘the third day’ gets an even deeper dimension if we bear in mind that, counting from our era, we are not only entering the third millennium, but also the fifth millennium, counting from the calling of Abraham.

About two thousand years before Jesus was born, God called Abraham away from the ends of the earth to a land that He would show him, and He gave him the promise: “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” When Abraham was chosen, God set apart a nation with the purpose of revealing His Name in the world, a mission which was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the great Son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (John 17:6).

Almost two thousand years have gone by since Jesus came to this world, and so we will soon reach the third millennium, which at the same time will be the fifth millennium, counting from the calling of Abraham.

In the Scriptures, the symbolism of the number five is closely connected to the proclamation of God’s preponderance over all deified totalitarian states and idolatrously worshipped rulers and powers. When God’s kingdom breaks through—for which millions of believers for ages have prayed for—the prince of this world will be condemned through the working of the Holy Spirit (John 16:11).

The breakthrough of the kingdom of God within the framework of time and history entails the judgment of Satan as the prince of this world. The advent of the kingdom of God, however, cannot be realised without the ‘nation of stars’ bowing down before the One ‘Star’ out of Jacob (Numbers 24:17), the Lord Jesus Christ, who is announced by the prophet Isaiah by the fivefold title of:

“Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

“Yours, O God, is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever!”

AMEN!

61 See Shofar series, volume 2, chapter 6 concerning the symbolism of the third day.

The Shofar series consists of

Introduction – A call to the Church and to Israel

1 – The man with the Jar (2008)

2 – The Seven Shofarim in the Apocalypse (2011)

3 – Joseph’s Cup (2012)

4 – The Fulness of the Gentiles (2016)

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. Joseph’s Robe

2. Joseph’s Dreams

3. Joseph’s Journey

4. Joseph’s Tears

5. Joseph’s Cup

6. Joseph’s Bones

7. Joseph’s Blessing