Abraham and Joseph in Genesis

This page is an exerpt from Cycles of Salvation History by Ulrich Utiger

Jan Provost: Abraham, Sarah and the Angel

Page description
The involvement of Abraham in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of Joseph in the Egyptian famine.

Contents of this page
Abraham and Lot
Joseph and his brothers
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Bibliography

Short summary of the previous pages
The life cycle of the angels and man is composed of four phases: peace, sin, judgment and return to peace. The same phases were discovered in The account of the Flood. On the following pages, it is shown that the whole salvation history is composed of eras with four cycles, which in turn are composed of four phases (see Summary of Salvation History). On this page, the third and fourth cycle of the patriarchs' era are presented.

The ancestors of Israel

Abraham and Lot

Abraham’s history begins with chapter 12 of Genesis, which no longer contains multiple references. Hence, the account relates events chronologically. This is why the cycles can be more easily extracted because one only has to recapitulate the text.

The historical context of Abraham is the gradual Semitic ascension in Mesopotamia, the beginning phase of the third cycle of the patriarchs’ era (see here and Summary of Salvation History). Abraham was born around 2160 BC (see appendix C: Classical biblical dates) and lived in the city of Ur (Gen 11:31), which was once the Sumerian capital. God promised Abraham a great posterity in a foreign country and invited him to emigrate there (Gen 12:1-3). So at the age of seventy-five years, Abraham left Ur with his nephew Lot and settled in the country of Canaan (Gen 12:4-5). Abraham’s wife Sarah, however, proved barren. One day, three mysterious men visited him.[40] Abraham invited them in his house and offered them a meal. They announced to him that Sarah, despite her advanced age, would bear a son, Isaac, in order to make true God’s promise (Gen 18:1-15).

The three visitors not only announced the birth of Isaac but also said: “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is loud and their sin is very grievous” (Gen 18:16-20). The wrongdoing of the inhabitants of these cities therefore became intolerable. This of course indicates the phase of sin, which caused the destruction of the region, the phase of judgment. Abraham begged the three men to save Lot from it (Gen 18:23-33), which is a precursory sign of the revival phase. So they took Lot and his two daughters outside the city (Gen 19:12-22). Then, all the plain with its cities and its residents was destroyed by the fire (Gen 19:23-25).

It is likely that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is linked to an earthquake accompanied by volcanic eruptions in the region of the Dead Sea, which forms part of a long crevice in the terrestrial crust. There is further archaeological evidence of five cities in the Valley of Siddim at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea where this has taken place. These cities are also mentioned by the Scriptures, with an overwhelming correspondence of historical and archaeological details.[41]

The survival of Lot and his two daughters, who united with their father to give him a posterity, namely that of the Moabites and Ammonites (Gen 19:31-38), is part of the phase of revival since it is essentially characterized by the formation of new nations from a single man during the patriarchs’ era. Yet the revival applies more to Abraham, who, by insistently praying to God to save Lot, played a more important role and who, as father of Isaac, the son promised by the three visitors, and grandfather of Jacob, became the ancestor of the Israelite people, the holder of a new era.

Joseph and his brothers

Before the birth of this people, there is still a fourth and last cycle in the era of the patriarchs, which begins with the more or less peaceful period in which lived Isaac and his son Jacob (Gen 20-35), the father of the twelve patriarchs of Israel. Jacob is also the father of Joseph, who holds a special role among the patriarchs. Joseph was Jacob’s most beloved son because he was born after a long period of infertility to Rachel, whom Jacob preferred to his other wives (Gen 29:16-30:22; 37:3).

This is why his brothers hated Joseph so deeply (Gen 37:4). When he once told them of his dream, according to which he would become an important man to them, they detested him even more (Gen 37:5-11) and decided to get rid of him as soon as an opportunity arose. They finally sold him to passing Ishmaelites, who took him away to Egypt (Gen 37:18-28).

In Egypt, God made Joseph succeed in all he undertook (Gen 39:1-6). One day, Joseph correctly interpreted a dream of Pharaoh, according to which seven years of great abundance and seven years of famine would occur. This is why Pharaoh gave him a large authority over the Egyptian kingdom (Gen 41:1-49).[42]

During the seven years of abundance, Joseph stored up grain “like the sand on the seashore” (Gen 41:47-49). When the seven years of famine arrived, he opened the stores and all the population of the country came to him to buy grain (Gen 41:53-57). The famine raged not only in Egypt but in the entire region and consequently also in the country where lived his father and brothers, who also came to Egypt to buy grain from him (Gen 42-44). Thus Joseph’s dream, according to which his brothers would one day prostrate themselves before him, was fulfilled.

Hence the phases are manifest: the first phase is the peaceful initial life of Jacob’s family in Canaan. Then, the rejection of Joseph by his brothers, the phase of sin, causes the famine, the judgment. However, only his brothers are concerned by the famine and not the entire population, since Joseph has gathered enough food for the survival of everyone. His brothers are humiliated because they are obliged to go to Egypt and beg for food.[43]

Their journey also leads to the phase of revival, that is to say, to the reunion of Joseph with his father and the reconciliation with his brothers (Gen 45:1-15; 46:28-34; 50:15-21), who stay with him in Egypt (Gen 45:16-47:12), where their descendants become very numerous (Gen 47:27; Ex 1:7).

Notes

[40] According to Genesis 19:1, they are angels. It is traditionally believed that they represent the Holy Trinity.

[41] See http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48931527.html.

[42] This elevation of a foreigner to the rank of viceroy in a country where nomads were so despised (Gen 46:34) is disputed among scholars, mainly because there is no mention of a viceroy in the Egyptian archives, which are the most complete of all the ancient civilizations. However, the Hyksos, northern Semitic tribes, occupied Egypt from 1730 to 1580 BC. This period constitutes a discontinuity in the Egyptian archives (without doubt they wanted to forget this humiliating period). If one asserts that the Exodus took place in 1290 BC instead of 1440 BC and relies on Exodus 12:40, which asserts that the stay in this country lasted 430 years, we arrive to 1720 BC. This is why some scholars hold that the beginning of this stay, that is to say, the arrival of Joseph, and later of Jacob and his sons, coincides with the take-over of the Hyksos, under whom it is much more probable that a foreigner could become viceroy (Werner Keller, The Bible as History). However, according to biblical sources, the Exodus was in 1440 BC (see appendix C: Classical biblical dates). The arrival of Joseph’s brothers in Egypt is therefore shifted back 150 years to 1870 BC and does not coincide with the Hyksos. According to www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a016.html, this date fits the historical data better and according to www.levitt.com/essays/joseph.html it even seems that Joseph’s palace and tomb was found in the land of Goshen.

[43] Joseph distributing wheat announces Christ instituting the Eucharist, and his brothers prefigure the Apostles. There are also other parallels: the twelve brothers are the ancestors of Israel just as the twelve Apostles are the founders of the spiritual kingdom. However, Judas betrayed Jesus to his accusers and was thereby dismissed as Apostle. It is Levi, one of the ancestors of Israel, who announces this dismissed Apostle because the Levites received no territory after the conquest of Canaan (Num 18:20-24). Moreover, the Levites are the tribe of the priests to whom Judas betrayed Jesus and who got him executed. No tribe was attributed to Joseph, but to his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim (Gen 48), which means two things: (1) Joseph, although he is one of the twelve sons of Jacob, announces none of the Apostles but Christ, whose Kingdom is not terrestrial (Joh 18:36); (2) the nomination of Matthias as Apostle at the place of Judah (Ac 1:15-26).

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Bibliography

CASSUTO Umberto, From Noah to Abraham: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Magnes Press, 1944
COLLECTIVE, A Biblical History of Israel, Westminster John Knox Press, 2003
FISCHER Richard James, Historical Genesis: from Adam to Abraham, 2008
FREE Joseph P. / VOS Howard F., Archaeology and Bible History, Zondervan, 1992
HOFFMEIER James K., Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, Oxford University Press, 1999
KELLER Werner, The Bible as History, Bantam, 1983
KITCHEN K. A., On the Reliability of the Old Testament, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006
MOURRE Michel, Dictionnaire encyclopédique d’histoire, Bordas, 1986
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OSMAN Ahmed, The Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt: The Secret Lineage of the Patriarch Joseph, Bear & Company, 2003
PARK Abraham, The Covenant of the Torch: A Forgotten Encounter in the History of the Exodus and Wilderness Journey, Tuttle Publishing, 2010
PARK Abraham, The Genesis Genealogies: God's Administration in the History of Redemption, Periplus Editions, 2009
PELLEGRINO Charles R., Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Harper, 1995
PRICE Randall, The Stones Cry Out: What Archaeology Reveals About the Truth of the Bible, Harvest House Publishers, 1997
VANGEMEREN Willem A., Progress of Redemption: The Story of Salvation from Creation to the New Jerusalem, Baker Academic, 1996
WALTKE Bruce K., Genesis: A Commentary, Zondervan, 2001
ZEILINGER Albert, Die fünf Bücher Mose oder der Pentateuch, 1991

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