JOSEPH #56 | JOSEPH IN EGYPT #38 | LAST WORDS OF JACOB #27
Pastor Christopher Choo
Lesson 3652
JOSEPH #56
JOSEPH IN EGYPT #38
LAST WORDS OF JACOB #27
11. JOSEPH #3
“Pharaoh called Joseph by the name Tzafnat-Pa‘neach and gave him as his wife Asenath the daughter of Poti-Fera priest of On.“-Genesis 41:45
Moses, who wrote Genesis, did not answer the question of why Joseph married an Egyptian from the line of Ham.
Several reasons have been given by scholars throughout the ages.
1. The New Student Bible comments: “Proud Egyptians did not care for Hebrews. In order that Joseph’s ethnic past to be erased as quickly as possible, Pharaoh gave Joseph an Egyptian name and married him into a prominent Egyptian family. Joseph gave his own sons Hebrew names, however, a practice that suggests he maintained his own identity.”
2. The name given Joseph is an Egyptian one probably meaning, ‘the God speaks and he hears’…, a pagan testimony to the reality of God in Joseph’s life.
Altogether, these changes wrought by Pharaoh were a message to others that Joseph, though a Hebrew, was fully accepted at the Egyptian court and integrated into the Egyptian way of life.
In particular, Joseph’s Egyptian wife was a visible sign that Joseph as the prime minister of Egypt was ‘one of us’.
3. Nevertheless God has the last word. He sovereignly allowed the inclusion of the half-Egyptian sons of Joseph as a prophetic prefigurement of the inclusion of the Gentiles into the commonwealth of Israel under the leadership of Jesus the Messiah of the Jews and the Lord and Saviour of the Gentiles.
4. The names of the two sons of Joseph were also prophetic.
Manasseh ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’, and
Ephraim ‘God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes’.
Notice that both these names are Joseph’s point of view, not Asenath’s.
Centuries later, Ephraim was the main tribe that ruled over Israel, the Northern Kingdom.
Despite being born of an Egyptian daughter of a pagan priest, Ephraim and Manasseh were full-fledged Israelites.
What lesson is there for us?
It is God's sovereign choice in allowing this mixed marriage even as He directed Jacob to bestow greater blessings on the younger Ephraim instead of the elder Manasseh against the conventions of their times that the firstborn gets the first blessing.
Some commentators note that Ephraim's association with idolatry ( through his Egyptian mother's lineage ) later turned the 10 lost tribes away from Judah who became the sole leader of the remnant who remained faithful to God. The modern-day Jews are the descendants of Judah.
There are many stories about the identity of Joseph's Egyptian wife - some of which are far-fetched. But the inclusion of Ephraim and Manasseh into the 12 tribes of Israel is a prophetic reminder to Gentiles that we as wild olive shoots are grafted into the Tree of Israel whose roots we share in common.
As Paul taught in Romans 11:17 ( NLT )
"But some of these branches from Abraham's tree--some of the people of Israel--have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God's special olive tree.
