The Absence of Joseph

Exodus 3:1-6

Sermon by Dan Schrock

October 25, 2009

¹ Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Contrary to what you might expect after hearing this passage, I do not want to talk about Moses. Instead I want to focus on a little detail of this text that maybe we never thought about. It’s that phrase near the end which reads, “ I am the God . . . of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” You know, of course, that the three men named in this phrase represent the first three generations of Hebrew faith: Abraham and Sarah were the ones God initially called into covenant, followed by their son Isaac and his wife Rebekah, followed in turn by their son Jacob and his wives, Leah and Rachel. But have you ever asked yourself why Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, is not named in this list? After all, Joseph was easily the most prominent and successful member of the fourth generation. Why doesn’t the text say, “I am the God . . . of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of Joseph?”

At least eight times, the Bible uses some variation of this phrase “the God . . . of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3:6, 15-16, 4:5, 1 Kings 18:36, 1 Chron 29.18, 2 Chron 30:6, Matt 22:32). But in none of these references does the name of Joseph ever appear. In fact, nowhere does the Bible, in either the Old or the New Testament, speak about “the God of Joseph.” The Bible speaks in glowing terms about the God of Joseph’s daddy, his granddaddy, and his great-granddaddy—but it never speaks about the God of Joseph. Why not? Why is Joseph absent from these lists of famous ancestors?

Consider this anomaly by reflecting on four facts. These four facts would ordinarily give Joseph the privilege of being named in the list of famous ancestors in the faith. First fact: Joseph was the darling son. He had eleven brothers, many of them older than he; but out of twelve sons, Joseph was the favorite. Daddy loved him more than any other son in the family (Gen 37:3). So beloved was Joseph that daddy gave him every material comfort, including plenty of food, housing, and clothes. Why, daddy even gave him a special coat, which some translations say was a coat of many colors, while other translations say was a coat with long sleeves. Either way, none of Joseph’s eleven brothers had a coat like it, and it made those brothers insanely jealous. You could argue that daddy’s favoritism for Joseph got the family into a truckload of trouble, and you would be right. The fact still stands, though, that Joseph was the darling son of the promise.

Second fact: from an early age, Joseph was trained in the faith of his family. He had learned how to worship God, and he had a superb Sunday school education. He had heard the stories of how Yahweh called his distant ancestors Sarah and Abraham, how Yahweh blessed his grandparents Rebekah and Isaac, how Yahweh sustained his parents, Rachel and Jacob. Joseph was trained as a child in the way he should go, so that when he became an adult he would not depart from it.

Third fact: Joseph was a great success story. No matter what awful things happened to him, he overcame those awful things again and again. Sold into slavery by his envious brothers? Not a problem: through outstanding mathematical and managerial ability, Joseph becomes the lord of Potiphar’s house, second only to Potiphar himself. Falsely accused of a crime he did not commit and tossed into jail? Well, that turned out ok too, because once again his competence took him to second in command in the jail. True, he was still a prisoner himself, but still, a prisoner in charge of all the other prisoners. Tested to see if he could accurately interpret the meaning of Pharaoh’s nightmares? Piece of cake: Joseph knew the meaning of those dreams without batting an eyelid; and politically astute young man that he was, he used his knowledge of those dreams as a means to get a new job as Pharaoh’s number two man. Once installed as vice-Pharaoh of the empire, Joseph—tall and handsome in his fine linen clothes, with a gold chain hanging around his neck and Pharaoh’s own signet ring flashing from his finger—does his job in a way to make any technocrat proud. It doesn’t matter how bad the economy gets, the thought of firing Joseph never crosses Pharaoh’s mind. Joseph is too valuable to the empire to fire. Pharaoh wouldn’t know what to do without him.

Fourth fact: Joseph’s personal, one-on-one morality is flawless. When he’s tempted to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph runs the other way. When the skunks otherwise known as his brothers slink into town, Joseph refuses to get revenge on them, and ultimately he  even forgives them for selling him into slavery. Throughout his life, Joseph has ample opportunities to steal from his employers because he keeps the accounts and controls vast sums of money. But he does not siphon off profits into his own pocket. His personal morality with his employers is impeccable. The man is a stellar employee.

So given these four facts, these unusual blessings and accomplishments, why don’t the biblical writers uphold Joseph’s religious faith? Why doesn’t the Bible point to him as a model for how you and I might live?

I suggest to you a simple answer: people were never sure which god Joseph actually worshipped.

Think about it. The evidence is thin that Joseph ever paid much attention to Yahweh. Oh yes, in Genesis 39 Joseph says that adultery is a sin against God. In Genesis 40 and 41 he piously points out that all dream interpretations come from God. And in Genesis 41 he gives his sons names that refer to God, but in terms of positive evidence for any faith that Joseph may have had in Yahweh, that’s about it. In the stories about Joseph, there is very little evidence that he had a robust faith in God.

In fact, there is significant evidence that Yahweh was not very important to Joseph. First, let us notice that nowhere do we ever read that Joseph built an altar to Yahweh, prayed to Yahweh, worshipped Yahweh, or sacrificed anything to Yahweh. This is a striking contrast from his daddy Jacob, his granddaddy Isaac, and his great-granddaddy Abraham, all three of whom talked with God in prayer, built altars to God, or otherwise worshipped God. All three generations of Joseph’s ancestors worshipped Yahweh; but Joseph, he of the fourth generation, did not.

Second, let us notice the new name Joseph that accepted for himself when he became the vice-Pharaoh: he took the name Zaphenath-paneah (pronounced Zaph’e·nath-pa·nē’ah). It’s a mouthful of a name, but more to the point, it’s an Egyptian name. It signals that Joseph—oops, I mean Zaphenath-paneah—now aspires to become a full and authentic member of Egyptian society. The new name suggests a new identity: he is no longer one of those Hebrew peasants who wander around across the face of the earth, living in dirty tents; he is instead a settled and cultured Egyptian, comfortable with Egyptian habits and Egyptian worldviews.

Third, let us notice the kind of woman that Zaphenath-paneah married. The name of his wife is Asenath, and she was the daughter of Potiphera, an Egyptian priest in the town of On (Gen 41:45). These tidbits of information are pregnant with meaning. The name Asenath means “she who belongs to the [Egyptian goddess] Neith.” Neith was the Egyptian goddess of war and creation whose primary temple was located in the northern part of Egypt, close to where the Hebrews later settled. Joseph, you see, is married to an Egyptian woman whose life has been formally dedicated to a goddess who was in direct competition with Yahweh. Egyptians claimed that their goddess Neith somehow created the world; while Joseph’s people, the Hebrews, knew that Yahweh created the world. I think Genesis wants us to realize that in Joseph’s own household—in his own marriage—there is a competition for loyalty. Which god will this husband and wife worship:  Neith or Yahweh? Will they worship the goddess of war or the God of shalom?

There’s more. Joseph’s new wife was also the daughter of Potiphera, whose name means “the one whom [the Egyptian god] Re gave.” And this man was himself a priest in On, later called Heliopolis, a city that was dedicated to the worship of the sun god Re—who, by the way, was the son of Neith. This means that the life of Joseph’s father-in-law is completely devoted to the service of the sun god Re, a major god in the Egyptian pantheon. In other words, this marriage has deeply enmeshed Joseph in the loyalties and theology of Egyptian religion. Given the kind of wife and father-in-law had, do you really think Joseph is going to be loyal to Yahweh?

And fourth, let us notice what kind of social and economic policies Joseph institutes in Egyptian politics. During seven years of abundant harvests in Egypt, Joseph taxes all farmers at a rate of 20% per year. In the name of the empire, Joseph siphons off one-fifth of the grain harvest and socks it away into storage bins. Then when the seven years of bad harvests arrive, with famine in the wake, Joseph cannily sells this stored grain back to the same peasants who grew it. Do you get that? The peasants were forced to give up one-fifth of their harvest, and now they have to buy back that same grain in order to avoid starving. I tell you, Joseph is some operator!

But it gets worse. When the peasants run out of money to buy the grain they themselves had grown, Joseph sells it to them in exchange for their livestock. When the peasant’s livestock is gone, Joseph tells the peasants to sell him their land in exchange for food; and once Joseph owns their money, livestock, and land, he finally, tragically, demands that if the peasants want more food to eat they will have to sell him their own bodies (Gen 47:13-21). Joseph turns them all into slaves. Let me say this another way: according to the story, Joseph’s unjust and inhumane policies create the institution of slavery—slavery that will one day engulf his own people, the Hebrews, and inflict them with tremendous suffering.

Maybe you can now guess why later generations of Israelites were deeply ambivalent about Joseph. When they got around to writing the stories about him, they were not at all sure which god Joseph actually worshipped. Did he serve Yahweh or the Egyptian empire? Was he devoted to Yahweh or money? Did he honor Yahweh or Neith, the goddess of war and creation? Did he look to Yahweh for guidance, or did he look to Re, the god of the sun? In each case, strong evidence suggested that Joseph’s devotion to Yahweh was not very strong at all, and that he had instead given himself to several other gods. And so when the people of Israel recited that formula “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” they stopped the sentence right there and refused to name the God of Joseph because they couldn’t be sure which god Joseph actually served.

When I read the story of Joseph, I ask myself: which God do I worship? To what do I give my allegiance? When and in what ways have I compromised to get ahead, to get along, to get to the top? Where do I need to take a good, hard look at myself? What will future generations say when they look back on the way I lived my life?

I don’t know, but perhaps you too will want to ask those questions.