Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 45-47.

When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, they were terrified that he held a grudge against them for what they had done.  Their reaction on their first visit indicates that they had been living with guilt for having sold their brother into slavery all of these years.  Now, he had chance to pay them back for their treachery, and they could not blame him.  However, instead of having lived with a grudge against those who had wronged him, Joseph had lived his life making the best out of every situation and worshiping God.  So Joseph saw what had happened to him as part of God’s plan.  Instead of seeking payback against his brothers, Joseph used his position, and his understandings of Egyptian bias, to get his family the land in Egypt best suited for them.   Joseph did not spend his life bemoaning his fate and seeking to inflict suffering on those responsible for his suffering.  In fact, he did not assign blame for his suffering to anyone.  Instead he chose to look at his suffering as necessary steps for God to put him in the place where he could do the most good.  Let us live our lives similarly.

Another interesting thing about this passage is that it allows us to look at the archeological record to see if we can confirm it.   Interestingly, there was a period in Egyptian history where power shifted from a  group of nobles to the Pharaoh in a manner which might match up to that described as happening under Joseph.  In addition, a group of people with ties to Canaan occupied the area of Egypt referred to here as Goshen in a time frame which might be consistent with the way this passage describes Jacob’s descendants settling there.  However, the timing of those two archeological findings are currently believed to have occurred earlier than the biblical account records Joseph as having lived (there are a couple of events which are recorded later in the Bible for which we have solid archeological evidence and dating, and the biblical account gives us a pretty solid idea of how long before those events Joseph lived–it is actually a window of time, depending on how you interpret several passages which give length of time between events).  On the other hand, some recent developments in archeology have led archeologists to question whether a significant portion of early Egyptian history occurred as far back in time as currently believed (to understand this one must understand that the dates for events in much of early Egyptian history are arrived at by counting backwards from certain events which are reliably dated and recent findings suggest that some of that counting backwards was based on faulty assumptions).

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.