Of the many biographical sketches in the Bible none for interest exceeds that of Joseph. It therefore attracts those of tender years not yet hardened by intercourse with the world, or sophisticated by the spirit of the age. It is distinguished even among the patriarchs by domestic affections no less than hatred of evil, by personal purity sustained and guarded by faith, by the favor of Jehovah that communicated His secrets to one that feared aim from youth, throughout an unusually diversified life and the extremes of slavery, of prison, and of the highest position next to the greatest throne then on earth without a cloud, the most prudent and kind of viziers in times of abundance no less than of famine, the most skilful of statesmen for his master's interest. Again what can one think of his filial honor to his father? what of his gracious returns to his envious and spiteful brethren (only short of his blood)? And though for a believing Israelite he seems to have gone far in complying with the words of a heathen, and to have risen up to the airs of a great lord as to the manner born, his heart sustained the divinely given hopes of Israel, as evinced by his punctual heed to his father's burial, where lay Jacob's father and his father's father.
Nor did his earthly rank in Egypt dim his own faith before his death, that God would surely visit his brethren and bring them into the land promised by His oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He too took their oath when that day came to carry up his bones hence along with them.
The long desired son of his mother Rachel, herself his father's first and tenderest love, he derived a name from her (Gen. 30:23, 24), Joseph i.e. adding; which pointed to another son, the son of his father's right hand, who was to be the occasion of her death. Sadly impatient with God's dealings in her case, grace opened her heart to Jehovah's goodness and gave her to look on through her son of unexpectedly wondrous destiny to another son, about to be born in Palestine, the little one who should become great both in the land and to the ends of the earth in its own season. For Benjamin figures in that day of earthly power and glory. Joseph is the vessel of divine wisdom in humiliation, despised by his brethren, suffering from them, and sold to Gentiles who punish him yet more; but unknown to Israel, exalted to the right hand of power for unmeasured blessing to both, and married to a Gentile wife, the names of whose sons testify to his forgetting his past toil with his kin, and his fruitfulness in another land. Yet at the end like Christ he that was separated makes himself known to his brethren whom he established in the best of the land. Even from this brief summary the reader will gather how hard it would be in all O.T. scripture to find so rich a mine of typical wealth, so varied and comprehensive a figure of the Lord Jesus.
Hence the history of Joseph abounds in the forecasting of the lights as well as the shadows of Christ, and thus is singularly instructive in the ways of God. This is all the more striking, because it is found in an unvarnished and perfectly reliable history, when man's annals, or even monuments, afford but a flickering gleam But all that these remains tell us goes to prove the perfect accuracy of that which the closing chapters of Genesis disclose of that land which was to be the nursery of Israel, where they were led on from a family group to become a people, Jehovah's people, waked up under oppression to the knowledge of their peculiar relationship to the Eternal, and at length from the furnace of affliction to that deliverance, which had His blessed mission in their midst, of which the second book of the Pentateuch treats so copiously.
It appears (for we must not say more when we go outside scripture) that the ordinary succession of native rulers was interrupted for more than two centuries by the invasion of Shepherd Kings from Syria (Hittite or Khita); and that the sudden rise of Joseph occurred during the reign of Apepi, the last of this foreign or Hyksos dominion. If this be so, it accounts in a great measure for the rupture made with the set ways and jealous forms of an old civilization, in the exalted place to which Joseph was advanced, in his long continued rule, and his marriage with the daughter of Potipherah the priest in On (Heliopolis); still more perhaps for the readiness with which a shepherd people were given a quarter so valuable as Goshen, not far from either the royal residence on one side or the frontier of Palestine on the other. The abomination of a shepherd lay in the native eye, not in those who favored Joseph and his brethren, but in the restored native rulers, who soon after regained the upper hand, knew not Joseph, and proceeded to persecute the chosen people. This providential concurrence we leave. God is above circumstances, though His wisdom is often shown in His availing Himself of them on behalf of His plans.
But whatever be the worth of these thoughts as to the then circumstances of Egypt and its rulers, there is certainty of God's directing hand, in His allowance of all the unworthy ways of Jew and Gentile in Joseph's early history, to bring about that very position of lofty distinction which, when foreshadowed, drew out the hatred of his brethren. His duty changed its form from his father's house to that of a foreign master, and from shame, even in the keep of a prison, to the highest rank in the realm.
But it was everywhere the same obedience in the sight of Jehovah, the same prosperity for all that he touched. He was tender even to tears as he was firm of purpose, clear of insight too, and resolute in execution, a man of mark and modesty, who rose to the command of every occasion without the least self-seeking. Jehovah was with Joseph, as Joseph was subject to Jehovah: a rare man among the Jewish people or any other, look where and when you will.