THE LIFE OF JOSEPH

Lesson 1

INTRODUCTION
Genesis 37-50

Aim: To survey the purposes for the Biblical record of

Joseph’s life

Outline:
The Purposes for the Biblical Record of Joseph’s Life
I. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Accentuate His Godly
Character
A. In Contrast to His Brothers
B. In Comparison with the Patriarchs
C. In Comparison with Daniel

II. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Emphasize His Historical

Role in the Life of the Nation of Israel
A. Joseph Is God’s Instrument to Move the Embryonic
Nation into the Womb of Egypt
B. Joseph Is God’s Instrument to Keep the Embryonic
Nation in Egypt until It Has Grown to Full Strength

III. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Magnify the Providence of

God
A. Joseph’s Continuing Awareness of the Continual
Presence of God
B. Joseph’s Patient Endurance of the “Bad” as from
God
C. Joseph’s Humble Acceptance of the Good as from
God

IV. To Present the Similarities of Joseph’s Life to Christ’s

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Life of Joseph, Lesson 01

Introduction: As we begin our study of the life of Joseph,

primarily recorded in Genesis 37-50, it will be helpful to
examine reasons why Joseph’s life is significant and worthy
of extended attention.

Joseph is a Bible character who needs little introduction for

most of us. Our intimate familiarity with the story of
Joseph’s life is commendable, but don’t we often find that
familiarity with Bible passages and stories can unwittingly
mitigate our interest and dull our perception of spiritual
truth?

We know of Joseph as one whose life encompasses more

varied circumstances than nearly any other Bible character.
Details of the first 17 years of his life are largely veiled, and
we can only view them through the lens of the story of
Jacob. The final 71 years of his life are treated with striking
brevity. The majority of the material available to us in
Scripture concerning Joseph encompasses the 23 years of
his life between the ages of 17-40. In that interval, we see
him alternately exalted and debased. In each case, he is
exalted by the primary authority in his life (father, Potiphar,
Pharaoh) but is subsequently brought low by the actions of
others. One student of Joseph’s life writes: Joseph’s
“career, like his coat, is of many colors [pieces], varying
from the most somber to the most brilliant” (Thomas Kirk,
Life of Joseph, 1-2).

The variety of colors in Joseph’s story is complemented by

a variety of purposes for which the story of Joseph is
seems to be recorded in Scripture. A study of his life
displays a beautifully and divinely crafted portrait of the
working of God in the life of a man, a family, a nation, and
the world. In each case there are insights into the
character of God and into principles for the right conduct of
His people. The story of Joseph is recorded in Scripture for
at least four purposes: to accentuate his Godly character;

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to emphasize his historical role in the life of the nation of

Israel, to provide revelation concerning the Providence of
God, and to present the similarities of his life to Christ’s life.

The Purposes for the Biblical Record of Joseph’s Life:

I. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Accentuate His Godly

Character

Let’s take a moment to remember the time when the

book of Genesis was originally written and the people to
whom it was being written. Moses, living well after
Joseph lived, was writing Genesis to a nation of people,
freshly delivered from their bondage in the land of
Egypt. For more than four centuries, Israel had been
living in Egypt surrounded by the glitter of Egyptian life.
Through the centuries, as Israel would later prove in the
wilderness, Egypt rubbed off on the Israelites in more
ways than one. Israel not only served Egypt, but they
came to know Egypt’s gods (Joshua 24:23; Amos 5:25-
26; Acts 7:42-43) and to enjoy the pleasures of the land
(Exodus 16:3; Numbers 11:18).

In the book of Genesis, Moses records for these newly

delivered Jews an account of their election by God
through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God
repeats His covenant multiple times to each of these
men. In the life of each patriarch, God patiently
develops faith in him. But when we come to Joseph at
age 17, he appears before us already with a
comparatively mature faith. Faith in God’s promise –
what a critical need in the hearts of the spiritually
immature Israelites! They needed to learn how to trust
God’s words to them, to be able to cling to them when
the way was long, the water bitter, the food scarce, or
when enemies opposed them. There is a real sense in
which Joseph is being upheld in Genesis as a national

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role model for all of the children of Israel in succeeding

generations – not only as an example of faith, but as an
example of faith that produces obedience. W. E. H.
Lecky (1838-1903), a secular but unbelieving historian,
suggests that one of Moses’ motives in the Joseph
narrative is to uphold Joseph’s character as an ideal
before the infant nation.

In order that the ideals of a race should acquire their

full force, it is necessary that they should be
represented or illustrated in some great personalities
who by the splendor and beauty of their careers
could fascinate the imagination of men (quoted in
Strahan, Hebrew Ideals in Genesis, 275).

Joseph’s example has much to commend it on its own

merits. Joseph’s exemplary obedience to God and his
superlative demonstration of forgiveness, united with a
seemingly unshakable trust in the rightness and
goodness of God, is notable. Joseph had learned to
trust God to do what is right for His own glory and for
Joseph’s good. His testimony is all the more notable
when contrasted with the testimonies of his brothers
and when compared with the other patriarchs or a later
hero of Israel, Daniel.

A. In Contrast to His Brothers

Our memories readily supply the contrasting

character of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph
exudes respect for his father, his brothers trample
on their father’s heart. Joseph portrays a willingness
to accept leadership within his home; his brothers
almost rush to forfeit their roles. Joseph obeys God
when he is alone; the brothers repeatedly fall when
alone and when together. Joseph’s brothers need
the purging of 22 years before they will openly

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acknowledge their wrong and be men of character

as Joseph was when he was but a teen.

B. In Comparison with the Patriarchs

Joseph is unique among the patriarchs (Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob). Not only does the record span
the whole of his life from birth to death, but it covers
his life in more detail than any of the patriarchs.
Also, the record of Joseph’s life does not include the
personal failures that so often beset the patriarchs.

The history of Joseph . . . differs from all the

others which are given at any length in the book
of Genesis in that we are permitted to follow it
almost uninterruptedly from boyhood to old age.
This is one secret of its charm, especially for
young readers; the rather, because the qualities
which appear in him at first are seen only to grow
with his growth and to strengthen with his
strength. In him the adage was pre-eminently
true that ‘the boy is the father of man’; and
though his life had its trials and
discouragements, the conflicts which he had to
wage were all external. . . . From the very first he
seems to have been whole-heartedly on the side
of God, and his struggles were not with himself in
order to maintain that undivided allegiance, so
much as they were with others because he was
determined to preserve it. His character, indeed,
was not perfect, but there was less of alloy in it
than in that of most men. We see in it less of the
alternation between good and evil, between
strength and weakness, than there is in the
majority of those whose biographies are given to
us in this honest book. There is no unwavering
resolution, no petulant impatience, no

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unscrupulous self-seeking; and if he never rose

to those heights of spiritual communion with God
to which Abraham and Jacob were exalted, he
never sank to the depths of deceit into which
both of these patriarchs sometimes descended.
His career is uniquely interesting as that of a
good boy who was not a weakling; that of a
pious man who was not a business failure; and
that of a great man who in the glory of his
exaltation, did not outgrow the simplicity of his
youth (William Taylor, Joseph: Prime Minister,
222-23).

C. In Comparison with Daniel

During the earliest years of the history of Israel’s

development into a nation, through Joseph God
proves Himself through a young man who remained
faithful to Him. Near the close of Israel’s Old
Testament history, God would prove Himself again
in the life of another young man, and He would do
so by putting the second young man in similar
circumstances as the first.

The one stands at the commencement, the other

at the end of the Jewish history of revelation;
they were both representatives of the true God
and his people at heathen courts; both were
exemplary in their pure walk before the Lord;
both were endowed with the gift of bringing into
clear light the dim presentiments of truth which
express themselves among the heathen in God-
sent dreams; both were gifted with marvelous
wisdom and insight, and for this reason highly
honored among the nations (C. A. Auberlen,
quoted in Taylor, 223).

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II. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Emphasize His Historical

Role in the Life of the Nation of Israel

Moses structured Genesis around the theme of the

generations of. He begins with the generations of the
heaven and of the earth, then proceeds to the
generations of Noah, the sons of Noah, etc.

Genesis 2:4 generations of the heaven and of the earth

6:9 Noah
10:1 the sons of Noah
11:27 Terah
25:12 Ishmael
25:19 Isaac
36:1 Esau
37:2 Jacob

When Moses begins to record the generations of Esau

in Genesis 36:1, he traces in a single chapter Esau’s
descendants until the time of Moses. Then beginning at
ch. 37, Moses begins considering the generations of
Jacob until the conclusion of the book. At the book’s
conclusion, Israel is now in Egypt and has been for 71
years (since Joseph was 39; he dies at 110). It
becomes apparent that God uses Joseph as His
specific instrument to move the embryonic nation into
the womb of Egypt for protection and to keep Israel
there until she is numerically stronger as a nation.

A. Joseph is God’s Instrument to Move the Embryonic

Nation into the Womb of Egypt

God desired to move Israel into Egypt for their

spiritual protection. Several times in the book of

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Genesis God has previously warned His people

directly and indirectly of the danger of intermarrying
with the pagan nations around them. Genesis 12-38
reveals the multiple temptations of the members of
the young nation to intermarry, to blend with the
acceptable cultural practices of the pagan nations.

• Sarah and Pharaoh (12:11-20)

• Abraham and Hagar (16:1-4)
• Sarah and Abimelech, king of Gerar (20:1-18)
• Abraham’s charge concerning Isaac’s wife
(24:2-4)
• Esau’s error that grieved Isaac and Rebekah
(26:34-35)
• Rebekah’s desire for Jacob’s wife (27:46)
• Dinah and the Shechemites (34:1-31)
• Judah marries daughter of Shuah, the
Canaanite (38:2)
• Judah marries his son to a Canaanite woman
(38:6)
• Judah bears children from daughter-in-law
(38:28-30)

It is almost as if one of worst possible violations was

saved to the last as an illustration of how wicked the
pagan women could be. Sins of this nature had
entered the house of Jacob before (Reuben, 35:22),
but now the enticing may very well have taken place
in the name of religion. The term that describes
Tamar as she called on Judah from the wayside is
kedesha –“‘A temple harlot’ – a class of women
devoted to lust in connection with religion, and thus
marking the lowest point to which it is possible for
religion to descend” (W. G. Blaikie, Heroes of
Israel, 242).

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God deems it necessary to remove his people from

this setting for 430 years, and during that time the
iniquity of these pagan nations would be filling up
(Genesis 15:16).

The first three generations—Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob—had kept themselves pure; but the
fourth was evidently acquiring the prevailing
taint of the country. It needed to be broken off
from the vile habits it was forming, and started
anew on a more wholesome footing. In
particular, Judah, who was the strongest man of
the older brothers, and to whom a splendid role
was to be given in the future history of the
country, who was also an heir of promise,
needed some strong, uncompromising
discipline to turn him from the course on which
he had entered so thoughtlessly when he allied
himself by marriage to the Canaanites. Judah
appears at this time to have broken away from
his brothers and set up an establishment of his
own in the midst of the heathen. His moral
danger was therefore most imminent. He
seems to have allowed himself the license of
the country; and had he not been plucked by a
strong hand out of the fire, he would have
probably sunk in the mire, and become as bad
as the Canaanites themselves. The great truth
that had already been made plain in the national
history had to be specially demonstrated in his
case—that it was not nature but grace that
made him heir to the blessing (Blaikie, 242-43).

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B. Joseph Is God’s Instrument to Keep the Embryonic

Nation in Egypt until It Has Grown to Full Strength

While in Egypt, Israel was blessed with the choicest

land (Goshen) and lived separately from the
Egyptians (46:34). Some separation would come
about because the shepherds of Israel were an
abomination to the Egyptians. Goshen served as a
sort of cocoon where God could allow His people to
develop and increase with little fear of intrusion. As a
result, the people of God would prosper during their
days in Egypt (Exodus 1:7).

III. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Magnify the Providence of

God (cf., 45:5-8)

A dominant theme that surfaces in the account of

Joseph is the providence of God. In Joseph’s life, God’s
providential dealings are not met with resignation.
Joseph embraces them, and in so doing, teaches us
how to appreciate God’s providential dealings with men.

A. Joseph is Aware of the Continuing Presence of God

We mark . . . in Joseph a constant recognition of

the presence of God with him. That, indeed,
seems to me to be the one great, all-dominating
consciousness of his life. He believed in God,
not as far off, but always near; not as sitting
aloof from all the actions of men, but as
overruling and controlling them; not as an
enemy to be feared, but as a friend to be loved
and trusted and served. No persecution could
keep him from realizing that God was with him,
and no prosperity could blind him to the fact that
it was to God he owed it all. It seems to me, as
I read his history, that it was a constant “walk

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with God.” His faith had almost the strength of

sight. That which his father wrestled for as a
great privilege, and enjoyed but for a brief
season, in a special theophany, he [Joseph]
seemed constantly to realize by faith, so that he
could say, ‘I see God face to face and my life is
preserved’ . . . He felt that the Lord was round
about him, and whatever men might intend he
knows that God always “meant it unto good.”
Now this faith in the constant presence of God
with him enabled him to maintain that
evenliness of disposition. . . . It kept him from
being either very much depressed by adversity,
or exceedingly elated by prosperity. He did not
indeed stoically take things good and bad as
they came, neither did he accept them
thoughtlessly as matters of course, but he
received them as from the hand of God (Taylor,
226).

The consciousness of the presence of God was

evident in the dreams, in his response to Potiphar’s
wife, in interpreting the dreams in prison, in
interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh, in the naming of
his children, in his words with his father, in his words
with his brothers, and in his request to have his
bones taken with them when they departed from the
land.

B. Joseph Patiently Endured the “Bad” as from God

Hence, though his heart was wrung with

anguish when he was cast into the pit, he did
not indulge in unavailing regrets; and though
‘the iron entered into his soul’ when he was in

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the dungeon, he was able patiently to wait for

God’s time for his deliverance (Taylor, 226).

C. Joseph Humbly Accepted the Good as from God

. . . but neither did he forget the Lord’s hand in

his prosperity. This was as undeserved by him
as his adversity had been. Both alike came
from the Most High, and in both alike God
meant it for good. So while he was kept from
despondency in the one experience, he was
preserved from pride in the other. . . God was
with him in the dungeon, and that kept him from
overestimating its hardships; God was with him
in the chariot [of the king], and that kept him
from overestimating its honor. The affliction did
not sour his heart, and the prosperity did not
turn his head, because in both he felt that God
was near him; and when we get to such a faith
as he had in the presence and protection of a
covenant God, we shall be able to preserve an
equanimity like his (Taylor, 26-27).

God works out His great purposes through even

the crimes of unconscious men. There is an
irony, if we may so say, in making the hatred of
these men the very means of their brother’s
advancement, and the occasion of blessing to
themselves (Charles Simeon, Expository
Outlines on the Whole Bible, 1:240).

For the wrath of men shall praise You: with a

remnant of wrath You will gird Yourself
(Psalm 76:10).

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IV. Joseph’s Life Is Recorded to Present the Similarities of

His Life to Christ’s Life

Since the New Testament never specifically

identifies Joseph as a type of Jesus Christ, we must
be careful not to portray him as if he is. However,
the very fact that a caution of this sort is even
necessary emphasizes the resemblance of many
aspects of Joseph’s story to the life of our Lord.
F.B. Meyer observes, the story of Joseph “is Calvary
in miniature. It is the outline sketch of the Artist’s
finished work. It is a rehearsal of the greatest drama
ever acted amongst men” (Joseph: Beloved, Hated,
Exalted, 20).

Others are much more emphatic, declaring not only that

Joseph is a type of Christ, but that he is the best
example of an Old Testament type to be found.

There is not in Scripture a more perfect and

beautiful type of Christ than Joseph. Whether we
view Christ as the object of the Father’s love, the
object of the envy of `His own,’ in His humiliation,
sufferings, death, exaltation and glory—in all, we
have Him strikingly typified in Joseph (C. H.
Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch, 127).

We must assign the character of Joseph the rightful

place, neither diminishing one particle of God’s intention
in relaying the story, nor exceeding it.

Many commentators have considered Joseph to be

an almost perfect type of Christ. Though a number
of interesting parallels can be noted, it should not be
forgotten that the New Testament nowhere speaks
of Joseph as a type of Christ. In view of the dangers
inherent in allegorical interpretation, it is generally

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safest to avoid spiritualizing, allegorizing, and

typological interpretations in general except where
there is explicit Biblical warrant. Since such does
not exist in the case of the narrative of Joseph, it
seems best not to try to view Joseph any special
way as a type of Christ. His story is intensely
interesting and instructive without that sort of
embellishment (Morris, Genesis, 535).

It is proper to identify the similarities in the lives of

Joseph and Jesus, and to acknowledge that Joseph’s
life points us to Jesus and reminds us of Him. Thomas
Kirk acknowledges that “the fact that Joseph resembles
Jesus in his character and career imparts a peculiar
interest to his history” (Kirk, 2).

There is a very remarkable similarity between the

character of Joseph and that of Christ, as well as
between the events of their lives—only an allowance
must be made for the incomparable excellency of
our great Redeemer above all the sons of men. As
the shadow is to the body, so were all the types and
figures of our Lord Jesus Christ to Him, whom they
represented (Lawson, The Story of Joseph, 1).

I would offer a few words on the question whether

Joseph is to be considered as a type of Christ. I am
far from thinking that on every point of analogy
which may be traced by a lively imagination was
designed as such by the Holy Spirit; yet neither do I
think we are warranted in rejecting the idea. We
have already seen that God prepared the way for
the coming of his Son by a variety of things in which
the great principles of his undertaking were
prefigured, and so rendered familiar to the minds of
men; and he pursued the same object by a variety of
persons, in whom the life and character of Christ

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were in some degree previously manifest. Thus

Melchizedek prefigured him as a priest, Moses as a
prophet, and David as a king; and I cannot but think
that in the history of Joseph there is a portion of
designed analogy between them (Works of Andrew
Fuller, III, 146).

Yet, one of the many points of parallel is addressed in

the New Testament. During Stephen’s message, he
demonstrated how a pattern of rejection existed in the
Old Testament. God chooses and/or elevates one to
leadership of His people only to have the divinely
chosen leader to be rejected. Joseph was divinely
chosen and his leadership was rejected. Ultimately this
pattern would reach a fulfillment on the Cross (Acts 7:9,
51-53). The story of Joseph. . .

exhibits . . . as Stephen was to show, a human

pattern that runs through the Old Testament to
culminate at Calvary: the rejection of God’s chosen
deliverers, through the envy and unbelief of their kith
and kin—yet a rejection which is finally made to play
its own part in bringing about the deliverance
(Kidner, Genesis, 179).

Conclusion: God inspires the story of Joseph to

accomplish specific aims. As we prepare ourselves to
delve into the life of Joseph, we must become aware that
Joseph is not merely a story to be relayed to children. God
gave the story to set before us a godly life in the midst of
perversity, to divulge an important part of His covenantal
dealings with His chosen people, to teach His people of His
omnipotent ability to providentially control even evil men
and foreign circumstances in order to fit them neatly into

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His will, and to magnify for us a life that manifests many

similarities to the promised Messiah. Only as our study is
able to magnify these Divine purposes will we be able to
appreciate the depth and splendor of God’s working in
Joseph’s life.

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Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
Copyright, ©1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977
1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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