The history of Joseph was something more than remarkable from its commencement, lighted up as it was with the love wherewith his father Jacob loved him.
It was, as we know, typical of Him that should come after him—and precious prefigurings these were, from first to last.
“The coat of many colors” which his father had made for him tells how the patriarch was guided in his thoughts to a greater than his son; and this might have been a shadow to all that generation (if they could have received it) of the coming One, “in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” The mind of Jacob was as wittingly guided, in thought and deed, about his Joseph, when the coat and its many colors were to represent another, as when; afterward, Israel crossed his hands on his deathbed, and laid his right for blessing upon the head of Ephraim, the younger; and thus set aside Manasseh, the firstborn “according to the flesh,” for such is the order of God.
So also, when Joseph dreamed, and told out the mystery of the future to his brethren, when he and they were binding up their sheaves, and his arose and stood upright, and their sheaves made obeisance to him, if they had possessed the faith of Joseph, to fashion their expectations more in the light and truth of things not seen as yet, than of things as they appeared, they would have read their fortunes in his coming glory, as believers in Christ now do; but to them he was only “a dreamer.”
Moreover, in spirit he dreamed yet again, and exceeded the disclosures of the sheaves in the wheat field; for this time all in heaven, the sun and the moon and the stars became tributary, and made obeisance. But “his brethren only envied him; nevertheless his father observed the saying.” These revelations of Joseph’s personal greatness and coming glory shot forth their many colors, which fell variously on the eyes of those around; as when Jesus Himself was upon this earth, some saw no beauty in Him that they should desire Him, whilst others said, “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Here we may add, as a consequence of His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, that the Father hath highly exalted Him, and given Him “a name which is above; every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess;” and this is what Joseph in earlier days dreamed, when all made obeisance to himself.
Beyond his personal and relative glories there lay his service and interest for his brethren and his father; so that, when Jacob sent him to see how they and the flocks did, they seized upon him and shut him up in the pit, and finally sold him for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites. As for the coat of many colors, which none but he wore, they took it off him, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood, and sent it to their father, who “mourned for his son many days.” How unmistakably does all this tell us of Him who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and for whose vesture they cast lots; yea, of the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot unto God. The bird killed in an earthen vessel, over running water—or the living bird, with cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop, dipped in the blood of the one which had been killed—or Joseph’s coat of many colors, dipped in the blood of the kid, and then sent to his father—what are all these to is but shadows of one and the same thing, the body of which is Christ?
Not to pursue this striking analogy further between Joseph and the Lord—who was cut off out of the land of the living, and who in the days of His flesh was taken from prison and from judgment—we may notice how, by resurrection out of the pit, as well as by deliverance from Egypt’s dungeon, and as the revealer of all Pharaoh’s secrets (chap. 41.) he was publicly owned as “the man in whom the Spirit of God is.” And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, “Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled; only in the throne will I be greater than thou.”
But we may leave Joseph at this point, and pass by his installation into office and government, and his might, and the times that went over him, as the Saviour in Egypt, to consider him in the light of prophecy, when Jacob called unto his sons, and gathered them together to tell them what should befall them in the last days. Here again Jacob is wittingly guided by the Spirit, in chapter 49, saying, “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall;” and this prophecy is made true to us by Him who took the place of this foreshadowing, and said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” In New Testament fulfillment this fruitful bough and the well are nothing else to us than Christ and the Spirit:— “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him should receive consequent upon the Son of Man being glorified, or, in typical language, “whose branches run over the wall.”
Again the prophetic Spirit said, “The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob (from thence is the shepherd—the stone of Israel).” These are no longer mysteries to us, who know the sufferings and persecutions He endured from, the archers. Though crucified in weakness, He liveth by the power of God, and the triumphant morning of His resurrection from the grave is to us the proof “that his bow abode in strength, and that the arms of his hands were made strong” by the glory of the Father. Blessed it is for us to know that “from thence” (on the other side of the devil’s power and the cruelty of the archers, where He now is, as well as of the wrath of God in judgment, as a sacrifice for His brethren) comes forth the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, and the stone, disallowed indeed of men; but chosen of God, and precious, “ in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.” Consequent on this work of redemption, accomplished by the death of Him who “was grieved and sorely wounded,” but whose arms were made strong in resurrection, follow the sure mercies to Israel in the millennium, as well as the greater blessings in the heavenlies, to men who are now one in Christ.
And here it is important to notice that all blessings are from the God of our Lord Jesus, the Father of Glory, and are witnessed to us by the Holy Ghost, who is the earnest of them and the seal as regards our acknowledged title. In advance as all this is of Jacob’s days, yet he looked in the same direction as to the only unfailing source of life, and so connected them as to prophecy with “the God of thy Father, who shall help thee; and the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of the heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.” Guided wittingly as to the blessings and the promises, as he had been previously in making the coat of many colors for the person, he was carried out by the Spirit to say, “he blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brethren.”
We have learned from this outline of a typical Joseph, that in figure his father and the brethren were gathered round him, and the sun, and moon, and stars bound up with his person; moreover, that the secret of these glorious though future associations with Joseph was through his sore grief and wounding by the archers, and his own brethren (as well as by the coat of many colors dipped in blood) when he was put into the horrible pit and sold for twenty pieces of silver. Nor will the many colors be complete if we do not add to this his resurrection out of the pit in order to be relatively as great in another country as he was personally glorious in his own. “Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck,” and they cried before him, “Bow the knee!” And he was ruler over all the land of Egypt.
Further, we have seen that in the person and work of Joseph, by his typical death, in humiliation and rejection at the hands of his brethren, and in the possession of power and place by exaltation through Pharaoh, all blessings flowed in upon the head of him that was separate from his brethren, “unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills.”
Let us now turn from this family picture of Jacob and his sons in Genesis to the “blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel” centuries after the death of Jacob, in Deut. 33.
It is very necessary to observe that when the Spirit of God takes up a typical man such as Jacob, or his son Joseph, or Moses, or Aaron, the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ puts some of the honor and luster of “the coming One,” in whom all the pre-eminence and the fullness dwell, upon these figure men. A prism, for instance, when applied to light, which is in itself white or colorless, brings out and reveals the seven beautiful colors which lay concealed and form the magnificent bow which spans the horizon of our sight. So the Holy Ghost, between the Man in glory, and the image man on the earth, shines in the face of Moses, or brings down the garments of glory and beauty with all manner of sparkling stones, for clothing a high priest like Aaron as the representative to the eye of faith of the Son of God passed through the heavens; or like the Joseph, only second to Pharaoh in the throne and kingdom, with whom we are now more particularly concerned.
Passing these considerations, we may remark the difference between Joseph and his father’s blessing upon his head; and Joseph in relation to Moses, the man of God, “who was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together.” It is in this corporate character that Moses views the eons of Israel and Jacob—no longer in their relation to their father merely, but as connected with Israel nationally. “Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency!” This difference explains the contrariety which else exists between the blessings pronounced by Moses and Jacob’s intercourse with his sons upon “what should befall them in the last days.” For example, in Genesis, Reuben is looked at in his trespass against his father, and this act is the rule before Jacob’s mind; whereas Moses says, “Let Reuben live and not die, and let not his men be few.” A more striking instance is supplied in the case of Simeon and Levi, for in Genesis they are viewed in reference to their conduct about Dinah, their sister, and the Shechemites; whereas in Deuteronomy they are blessed according to their zeal for Jehovah’s glory when outraged by the idolatry of the golden calf.
In many respects the blessing of Joseph, whether by Jacob or by Moses, is similar; though the king in Jeshurun adds, “the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush,” as a special deposit between Jehovah and Moses, for Israel and its tribes. But now this is transferred to the head of him that was separated from his brethren. The blessings, too, which were given in principle and in power to Joseph, as by a father to a son, are seen in Deuteronomy in result to the nation and the millennial earth, to fill the face of the whole world with fruit in a twofold way, for “his glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns,” and also “with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth; and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim and they are the thousands of Manasseh.”
The gem that sparkles in its own brightness is, however, the one which Moses bequeathed in the line of Joseph to all Israel, “the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush.” The knowledge of its value and preciousness led the man of God to declare finally, “There is none like to the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heavens in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms, and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee, and shall say, Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew. Happy art thou, O Israel!”
The faith and hope of God’s elect are now of another order being formed under the revelations of the Holy Ghost, which tell us what the Father hath counseled for the glory of His, Son. Under this anointing, we are carried in communion beyond “the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush,” in the days of Moses; or the sun, and the moon, and the stars, when “they made obeisance to Joseph.” The God and Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ reserved the fullness of all perfect blessing for the true Joseph, and He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself; “that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him.” Blessed it is for us to know that in our Joseph “we have obtained an inheritance,... that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” J. E. B.