Great Moments in Bible History
Number 51
Who is the greater ?
A Visit to Pharaoh
Without question, Pharaoh was the most powerful person that either Joseph or his father Jacob ever met. It is even possible that he was the most powerful person on earth at the time. So it must have been quite an event when Jacob was invited to meet Pharaoh. That is certainly how we would feel if we had been Jacob, but it does not appear to be his opinion. “Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.” (Genesis 47:7) In the book of Genesis, whenever someone blesses someone else, the one doing the blessing is always considered the greater. In most cases, God is the one doing the blessing. In other cases, when a father got old, he blessed his son. It would be inappropriate for a son to bless his father, and certainly no human is in a position to bless God.
Some readers may think of an expression that is common in the book of Psalms: “Bless the Lord.” (Psalms 103:1, among many examples). But in those cases, the phrase means to thank or praise the Lord, not to give Him a blessing. When Jacob blessed Pharaoh, on the other hand, he really was giving him a blessing.
Our story emphasizes this idea that Jacob blessed Pharaoh. It begins with Jacob blessing Pharoah and three verses later it ends the same way: “And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh.” The story in between those two blessings gives us a hint as to why both Jacob and Pharaoh thought it was appropriate for Jacob to do the blessing. Pharaoh began the visit with a question, “How many are the years of your life?” Jacob replied, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years.”
I wonder if Jacob might have been the oldest person Pharaoh had ever met. In the brief account we have of that visit, Jacob’s age was about the only thing they discussed. In ancient societies old people were respected because of their age. We are not used to that today. Our society values youth and beauty rather than age and wisdom. A lot of advertising aimed at old people tells them how to dye their hair or color over the age spots on their skin, so they won’t look so old. Our society does not like to think about old people because that reminds them of dying, and they really do not want to think about that.
The most valuable thing Jacob had gained by living such a long life was a close relationship with God. That relationship was what enabled him to offer a blessing to Pharaoh, even though Pharaoh was richer and more powerful than Jacob ever was. In the next article we will look at how God used Jacob’s long life to give him that close relationship with Him.
How to make them better
Evil Years
When Jacob answered Pharoah’s question about how old he was, he gave a strange answer. “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” (Genesis 47:9) I assume the reason he said that his days were few was because his father Isaac had lived to the age of 180 and his grandfather Abraham had lived to 175. When Jacob died 17 years after this story, he was “only” 147!
But why did Jacob say that his days were evil? He did not mean evil in the sense of sinful, but evil in the sense of difficult and painful. In that sense, he was telling the truth. Compared with the lives of his father and grandfather, he really had it rough. He got tricked into marrying the wrong sister at his wedding. He ended up with two wives and they were constantly competing for his attention. Later his daughter was raped. Then two of his sons obliterated the town that belonged to the rapist. His oldest son committed adultery with one of his wives. His favorite wife died giving birth to her second son. A few years later his favorite son disappeared. Jacob thought he had been killed by a wild animal. The list goes on and on. How many of us would want to trade places with Jacob?
But there is an important connection between those evil years and Jacob’s ability to bless Pharaoh. Jacob did not start out having a close relationship with God. The earliest stories of his life tell of him beating his brother out of things that Jacob wanted. The last story before he left home tells of how he lied to his father, pretending to be his older brother Esau, so that his father gave him the blessing. That is not the picture of someone who has a close relationship with God. It was not the relationship God wanted Jacob to have with Him. How was God going to change that relationship? He did it by giving Jacob evil years. It was only a few years after Jacob lied to his father about which son he was when Jacob’s future father-in-law tricked Jacob into marrying the wrong daughter. I’m sure Jacob saw the connection. He learned how it felt to be deceived. Painful but necessary.
If we are going to be true children of God, God will give us some hard times too (Hebrews 12:6-8). My prayer is that we will use those hard times to grow closer to God—the way Jacob did.
Bury Me in Canaan
By the time Jacob reached his final age of 147 it was obvious that his family was going to be in Egypt a long time. God had told his grandfather Abraham that it would be 400 years (Genesis 15:13). Like a lot of old people, Jacob was concerned with where he was going to be buried. If he did nothing about it, no doubt he would be buried in Egypt. As far as where his spirit would end up after he died, it would not matter where his body was buried. But he wanted to make it clear where his heart was. His descendants were going to live in Egypt a long time. Egypt was not such a bad place to live. They might easily forget God’s promises that they were going to inherit Canaan. By choosing where he would be buried, Jacob could teach one last object lesson about where his family would ultimately end up. That was important, because they needed to cooperate with God to bring about His promises.
He told his son Joseph, “Do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers. Carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place.” (Genesis 47:29-30)
Volunteering to Become Slaves
The last time our story discussed the famine in Egypt, there were five more years to go. Our author wraps the story up in Genesis 47. In order to understand the story, we have to keep in mind that there was no welfare system in ancient society. The idea of welfare for poor people actually came from the Bible—and that hadn’t been written back when Joseph ruled over Egypt. So the citizens of Egypt had to buy food from the government to survive the famine. If it hadn’t been for Joseph, the government wouldn’t have had food to sell, and they would have died. Nevertheless, if they wanted food to eat, they had to pay for it. They were able to manage that for several years, but a seven-year famine is really long. Eventually, everyone in Egypt ran out of money. Joseph suggested a barter deal. “Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.” (verse 16) That worked, but at the end of that year, the famine was still going on. This time, the people themselves suggested a deal. “Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh. And give us seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.” (verse 19)
To us today their offer sounds extreme, but it was understood back then that if you couldn’t pay your way, you might have to sell yourself into slavery (which is what the word “servants” in this story means). Joseph accepted the offer and the people made it through the famine without dying. When the famine was over, Pharaoh owned both them and their land. Joseph had them go back to work farming their land with the understanding that they had to give a fifth of the produce to Pharaoh.
This seems a strange story to get included in the Bible, but it makes more sense when you read the next book—Exodus. In that book we learn that a later Pharaoh forcibly made the Israelites slaves and treated them far worse than just having to give a fifth of the produce of their farms to Pharaoh. The point our author (Moses) seems to be making is that Joseph saved the lives of the Egyptians and they voluntarily became slaves in return for the food they needed to survive. The later Egyptians, though, had so little appreciation for the kindness of Joseph that they forced his family against their will into bitter slavery.
When God sent plagues on Egypt (also told in Exodus), Egypt clearly deserved them.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible.