Joseph

Joseph (Hebrew Yosef, "may he add") was the eleventh son of Jacob and the firstborn of his beloved wife Rachel, and the subject of the longest sustained narrative about any single person in Genesis (chapters 37–50). Doted on by his father, who gave him a richly ornamented robe, and emboldened by dreams of his family bowing before him, Joseph drew the bitter envy of his brothers (Genesis 37:3–11). They stripped him of his robe, cast him into a pit, and sold him to passing traders, who carried him down to Egypt — staining his coat with blood to deceive their father (Genesis 37:23–28).

In Egypt Joseph's life became a school of integrity under testing. He prospered as steward of Potiphar's house, for "the LORD was with Joseph"; yet when he refused his master's wife with the words "How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" he was falsely accused and imprisoned (Genesis 39:2–20). There he interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker, and at last was summoned to interpret Pharaoh's own dreams of seven fat and seven lean years. Confessing that interpretation belongs to God, he foretold famine and counselled wise provision, and Pharaoh set him over all Egypt as vizier (Genesis 41:38–43). Through his administration the land was preserved through seven years of famine.

The famine drew his brothers to Egypt to buy grain, and Joseph — unrecognized — tested them until he saw their changed hearts, especially in Judah's willingness to be enslaved for Benjamin's sake. Then, weeping aloud, he disclosed himself: "I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?" (Genesis 45:3–4). He settled his family in the land of Goshen, and the aged Jacob came down to Egypt and blessed Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, who became tribes of Israel (Genesis 47:11–12; Genesis 48:5). After their father's death, when the brothers feared revenge, Joseph spoke the narrative's theological summit: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive" (Genesis 50:20). Dying, he made Israel swear to carry his bones up from Egypt — an act of faith in the promise (Genesis 50:24–25; Hebrews 11:22), fulfilled at the Exodus and the conquest (Exodus 13:19; Joshua 24:32).

Joseph stands as a model of purity, perseverance, and forgiveness, and of the providence that weaves human evil into divine good. Christian readers have long seen in him a foreshadowing of Christ: the beloved son, rejected and as good as dead at the hands of his own, humbled before he was exalted, and made the savior of the very brothers who betrayed him. The name belongs to others in the New Testament as well — above all Joseph of Nazareth, the carpenter of David's line, husband of Mary and Jesus' legal father, a righteous man who obeyed the angel's word (Matthew 1:19–25; Luke 2:4) — and Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy councillor who courageously gave his own new tomb for the Lord's burial (Matthew 27:57–60; John 19:38).