Genesis 40-43

Joseph is still in prison, seemingly lost and wasting away. Although he has some authority, he is stuck in prison with no foreseeable release. When he interprets the dreams of two of Pharoah's servants (check that -- as Joseph points out it was God doing the interpretation), Joseph seemingly has a ray of hope. Sure the baker is going to be executed, but the cupbearer has promised to remember him upon regaining his position with the ruler. Despair slowly reenters Joseph's life as he is literally forgotten, as is the promise the cupbearer made to him.

It was more than two years before Joseph is remembered. It takes the occasion of Pharoah's dream to jog the memory of the cupbearer. Again, when called to interpret, Joseph is careful to note that he cannot interpret dreams but that God can. It must have seemed like a minute distinction to Pharoah and his staff.

Joseph was allowed to shave and change clothes before being presented to Pharaoh. How much "shaving" was necessary for a Hebrew? Did all still wear beards at that point?

God gave Pharoah parallel dreams. He was repeating Himself. Joseph states that the dream came in two forms because "the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon." (41:32) Many commentators point out that when God repeats Himself in Scripture, we should pay even closer attention than normally.

The dream is interpreted and Joseph is the one to come up with a plan of action. Pharoah is taken with the Hebrew and puts him in charge of everything. At 41:40 we see a telling verse: "Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you." That's quite a comment from one with that kind of power.

Pharoah renames Joseph and gives him all the authority in the realm. All this at the age of 30. During the next seven years, Joseph puts his skills to work. Egypt is well prepared for the coming seven years of famine. The storehouses are not even opened to Egyptians until the famine had spread and was being felt all over Egypt. Then Joseph provided relief. He sold the grain -- he didn't give it away.

Word of the presence of food in Egypt reaches Jacob, so he sends ten of his remaining eleven sons off to buy food. He was afraid of something happening to Benjamin, the last remaining son of his beloved Rachel. The loss of Simeon would be bad, but the loss of Benjamin would probably mark the loss of Jacob.

Jacob's treatment of his family is curious. Is he exacting a little revenge? Is he thinking that the brothers will reject him and keep him from his father? His questioning of the brothers seems like he is putting on a front, but certainly if he had revealed himself at the outset, the brothers would have been happy to have brought the rest of the family to Egypt, wouldn't they?

The brothers take the rough treatment and Joseph's insistence upon seeing Benjamin as punishment for what they did to Joseph years earlier. Reuben is even using the "I told you so" approach with the others. Joseph, who had been speaking through an interpreter could hear the "private" conversations and what he was hearing was enough to bring him to tears, but not to reveal himself.

Simeon is bound and jailed while Joseph tells the servants to plant the silver back in the bags of grain, rather than to take them into the treasury. Mind games once again. The nine brothers who return to Jacob are scared to death at finding their payment returned to them in such a way as to suggest they had stolen what they had received. Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go to return, counting Simeon as good as dead, apparently. Finally when the food runs out, Jacob is forced to allow his youngest to accompany his brothers back to Egypt, as Joseph had told them he would not see them again without Benjamin. First Reuben, then Judah promises his father that Benjamin would be safe. Reuben even tells his father to kill Reuben's own two sons if Benjamin doesn't come back safely, in an effort to reassure Jacob of the brother's true intentions.

A double portion of silver is packed along with some gifts and the boys head back to Egypt to buy more grain. Joseph sends instructions to take the family to his own private residence for a meal. The brothers are reassured that the silver they found in their sacks is not stolen, but that God has blessed them.

The brothers bowed low to Joseph -- just as in his boyhood dream -- upon his arrival at home. The meal was served to Joseph by himself in one room, to the brothers as a group in another room, and to the Egyptians in a third location. For some reason, Benjamin got five portions to his brothers' one.