Joseph E-Book

John Lennox

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 352

Beschreibung

"Deep, rich, and nourishing." —Os Guinness The life of Joseph detailed in the book of Genesis is a story of love, hate, slavery, power, and forgiveness. Although written thousands of years ago, it has a timeless quality that still probes the depths of the human experience. In this thoughtful and devotional book, scholar John Lennox emphasizes the major themes present in Joseph's story—such as suffering, temptation, forgiveness, faith, and God's sovereignty—and applies them to readers at a personal level. This detailed look at Joseph's life in its broader context will invite us into a deeper trust of God in the face of suffering and hardship.

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“Deep, rich, and nourishing—Joseph is vintage Lennox. He has the rare gift of opening life as well as the biblical text, so that we come away understanding God’s ways more clearly and trusting him more fully.”

Os Guinness, author, The Call

“I thought I really knew the story of Joseph—but was thrilled by the fact that in chapter after chapter, there were so many fresh insights. If you don’t believe me, just turn to the chapter on Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. John Lennox has written a riveting commentary on one of the timeless characters of the Bible.”

Rico Tice, Senior Minister (Evangelism), All Souls Church, London

“You may think this story is familiar, but again and again Lennox brings forth new gems in this expert guide through Joseph’s dysfunctional family history. Despite the depth of tragedy, God brought hope.”

Peter J. Williams, Principal, Tyndale House, Cambridge

“Joseph is a powerful word for us today. Joseph is tested and trained through suffering and broken relationships to become a forgiving brother, son, and leader, and his relationship with God is not only a stabilizing factor but a sustaining force in his life. Throughout the book, we see how a man with a transformative relationship with God can be used by God in all areas of his life: family, work, bondage, business, government, and faith. Lennox skillfully looks back to the ancestors of Joseph to show how history was repeating in his family, and he looks forward to the life of Jesus to give us hope.”

Bob Shettler, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Gainesville, Florida

“John Lennox, a renowned scientist and Oxford professor, is also a remarkable, gifted expositor and Bible teacher. I had the pleasure of hearing this material when it was initially presented to a large group of European leaders, and I heartily commend it. The deep spiritual understanding and careful research that Lennox brings to Joseph’s story will bring rich dividends to the reader.”

Luder G. Whitlock Jr., Executive Director, CNL Charitable Foundation, Inc.; Former President and Professor Emeritus, Reformed Theological Seminary; author, Divided We Fall and The Spiritual Quest

Joseph

Joseph

A Story of Love, Hate, Slavery, Power, and Forgiveness

John C. Lennox

Joseph: A Story of Love, Hate, Slavery, Power, and Forgiveness

Copyright © 2019 by John C. Lennox

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Jeff Miller, Faceout Studios

Cover image: Thevenin, Charles (1764–1838) / Joseph Recognised by his Brothers, 1789 / Bridgeman Images

First printing 2019

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6293-8ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6296-9PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6294-5Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6295-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lennox, John C., 1943- author.

Title: Joseph : a story of love, hate, slavery, power, and forgiveness / John C. Lennox.

Description: Wheaton : Crossway, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018042368 (print) | LCCN 2018054419 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433562945 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433562952 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433562969 (epub) | ISBN 9781433562938 (tp)

Subjects: LCSH: Joseph (Son of Jacob)

Classification: LCC BS580.J6 (ebook) | LCC BS580.J6 L465 2019 (print) | DDC 222/.11092—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042368

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2019-03-05 04:02:57 PM

Contents

Introduction

Part 1: The Broader Context in Genesis

 1  The Structure of Genesis

 2  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

 3  Isaac and His Sons

 4  Jacob and Family Return to the Promised Land; Meeting God and Esau

 5  Jacob in Shechem; the Violation of Dinah

Part 2: Joseph, His Father, and His Brothers

 6  Preliminary Considerations

 7  The Genesis of Hatred

 8  The Brothers’ Revenge

 9  Judah’s Family Life

10  An Introduction to Egypt

11  Joseph in the House of Potiphar

12  Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife

13  Joseph in Prison

14  Joseph’s Rise to Power

15  The Path of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Act 1

16  The Nature of Forgiveness

17  The Path of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Act 2

18  The Path of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Act 3

19  Israel Comes To Egypt

20  The Last Days of Israel and Joseph

Appendix 1: Major Divisions of Ancient Egyptian History

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

The story of Joseph the son of Jacob has a timeless quality that is undiminished in its capacity to probe the depths, the heights, the sorrows, and the joys that form the intricate tapestry of relationships between men and women and their engagement with God.

In broad strokes, this story, familiar to many people from childhood, tracks the complex path of Joseph’s extraordinary life from his early days in a rather dysfunctional family—on the one hand, enjoying his father’s favoritism, as indicated by the famous coat of many colors; and, on the other hand, in consequence of that favoritism, enduring his brothers’ increasingly hurtful taunts and bullying. His strange dreams that cast him in the role of leader in his family inflame his brothers’ hatred to the point where they determine to murder him when they see him coming to visit them as they tend cattle far from home.

At the last moment fratricide is narrowly avoided when one of the brothers, Judah, suggests that Joseph be sold to a passing caravan of Midianite slave traffickers. The deal done, Joseph is taken to Egypt where he is sold as a domestic slave to Potiphar, a senior official in Pharaoh’s retinue.1 Joseph proves himself an outstanding house steward and is soon entrusted with running Potiphar’s entire domestic economy. However, Joseph becomes the focus of Potiphar’s wife’s desires and, when he rejects her advances, she denounces him to Potiphar, who throws Joseph into prison without a hearing.

Yet even when unjustly incarcerated, Joseph’s administrative skills are put to use, and it is not long before he becomes the trusted administrator of the prison under its director. Nothing much happens until, eventually, two state prisoners are put in his care, Pharaoh’s cupbearer and his baker. They have dreams that they share with Joseph, who correctly interprets them as indicating that the former will be restored to his position and the latter will be executed. Joseph takes the opportunity to explain his own false arrest and incarceration to the cupbearer and asks him on his release to mention him favorably to Pharaoh. However, the cupbearer forgets Joseph for the next two years, recalling him only when Pharaoh himself has disturbing dreams.

Pharaoh summons Joseph, who interprets Pharaoh’s dreams as a message from God that Egypt is about to enjoy seven years of plenty followed by seven years of severe famine. In light of this, Joseph advises that Pharaoh should organize the food supplies for the nation. Pharaoh perceives the wisdom in Joseph’s detailed economic advice and at once makes him Egypt’s grand vizier and minister of agriculture, second only in national ranking to Pharaoh himself.

Joseph, catapulted from prison to high office of state, at once sets about using his consummate administrative skill and his new powers to set up vast storehouses for the nation’s grain. This system works so well that the Egyptian granary storehouses are full to overflowing by the end of the years of plenty.

Then come the years of famine as foreseen in Pharaoh’s dreams. The shortage of food affects not only Egypt but also the surrounding nations that are forced to come to Egypt for food aid. Among those who come for help are Joseph’s brothers, who arrive at a distribution center overseen by Joseph himself. They fail to recognize him although he recognizes them.

The scene is now set for a fascinating and complex human drama in which Joseph, as yet unrecognized by his brothers, uses his power and influence behind the scenes to awaken their consciences to face what they have done. Eventually, when he is convinced that they have repented, he reveals himself to them and publicly forgives and embraces them in one of the most moving scenes in all of world literature.

It is a masterpiece of storytelling. Elegant use of simple, flowing language carries us into a world that seems at first glance utterly removed from our world, and yet, as we think our way into the narrative, it rapidly becomes a penetrating searchlight into the complex psychodramas of our own lives.

Joseph’s story has inspired great literature, for instance, German author Thomas Mann’s four-part novel Joseph and his Brothers, often regarded as one of Mann’s greatest literary achievements. It has inspired great art, such as F. Overbeck’s depiction of Joseph being sold by his brothers; Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari’s powerful representation of Joseph’s blood-sprinkled coat being shown to his distraught father Jacob; Philipp Veit’s rendering of Joseph fleeing from Potiphar’s wife; and, perhaps most famous of all, Rembrandt’s painting of Jacob as an old man blessing Joseph’s second son in preference to Joseph’s firstborn.

It is a story about two cultures—the nomadic culture of Canaan where Joseph spends his first seventeen years, and the high civilization of Egypt where he spends the rest of his life. In this and many other respects Joseph’s story parallels that of Daniel. Daniel’s first fifteen years or so were spent in the small tribal state of Judah and the rest of his life in the high civilization of Babylon. Both men started off as captives and eventually rose to similarly high office in the administration of their respective countries of exile. But there is a very important difference between them. Joseph entered Egypt as a slave to a powerful military man, whereas Daniel, though a captive, was enrolled in the university at Babylon in order to study the culture, language, and laws and enter on a career of administration. There is no record of Joseph receiving any formal education, although it is not impossible.

There are six major empires that bestride biblical history: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Joseph plays a major role in the first, Daniel in the third. Central to those roles was their gift for interpreting dreams.

The relevance of the culture and ideology of polytheistic Babylon to the book of Daniel is fairly easy to see, as I have tried to explain elsewhere.2 We shall have to work harder to see the relevance of the culture of similarly polytheistic Egypt to the story of Joseph, but it is there nonetheless.

The account of Joseph’s life occupies the final movement of the book of Genesis. It begins quite abruptly in Genesis 37:2: “These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers.” This phrase, “These are the generations of,” occurs several times in Genesis and is well recognized as a literary marker that the author of the book uses to divide his long narrative into its major movements.

The emphasis at this point on Jacob and not only Joseph reminds us that this final section of Genesis is not simply the story of Joseph. It is still to be seen as the story of Jacob. In fact, though the book ends with the death of Joseph, the death of Jacob is recorded in the penultimate chapter. Nor is it simply the story of Joseph and Jacob. It is properly to be seen as the story of Jacob and his sons—the “generations of Jacob.” Joseph’s destiny is inextricably entwined with that of his many brothers.

1. The word pharaoh is the Greek form of the Egyptian pero or per-a-a, which was the designation for the royal residence and means “Great House.” The name of the residence became associated with the ruler and, in time, was used exclusively for the leader of the people.

2. John C. Lennox, Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism (Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson, 2015).

Part 1

The Broader Context in Genesis

1

The Structure of Genesis

Complex lives have complex backgrounds, and Joseph’s is no exception, so, before we start to think about the detail of the Joseph narrative, we need to step back and set it in the context of the rest of the book of Genesis in order to give depth to our understanding. Since the narrative of Joseph’s life comes at the end of Genesis, that background is considerable. My view is that the Genesis background enriches the story considerably since the book is a unity. After all, the author of Genesis anticipates that you read all of the book and not just the last part.

As is the custom in that part of the world, Joseph would have grown up on a diet of stories of the great heroes of Israel’s tribal history. He would have been steeped in the fascinating narratives of his father, Jacob, his grandfather Isaac, and his great-grandfatherAbraham. But not only that—he would have been acquainted with their prehistory right back to the beginning. In other words, he would have known a good deal of the plotline of the book of Genesis, so it is there that we must begin, for we need to know some of what Joseph knew.

Genesis is more than a narrative. It is a metanarrative giving us a grand framework for our understanding of the universe and life.

In order to grasp its story—Genesis is, after all, a large book—it is helpful to have some idea of its literary shape. It turns out that the author uses a simple literary device in order to structure his material, the repetition at intervals of the phrase: “These are the generations of . . .” (the phrase occurs at 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1; 37:2). The six main sections the phrase indicates are: 1:1–2:4; 2:5–4:26; 5:1–9:29; 10:1–25:11; 25:12–35:29; and 36:1–50:26. Several of the sections have more than one instance of the repeated phrase in order to delineate subsections.

The first part of the book consists of three sections that record the creation of human beings in the image of God. The second part of the book consists of three sections that cover the lives of the patriarchs. The first section in the second part ends with the death of Abraham, the second section with the death of Isaac, and the third section with the deaths of Jacob and Joseph.

Above all, Genesis tells us about the God in whom Joseph believed, the God he learned to trust.

Section 1: Creation (Genesis 1:1–2:3)

The book begins with the origin of the universe in the mind and creative energy of God: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1). This first majestic sentence undergirds and gives meaning to the developing saga that follows. It asserts that the universe we inhabit is a creation. The world did not generate itself. It did not spring into being spontaneously from nothing. God caused it to be.

By asserting the existence of a Creator, the opening words of Genesis constitute a frontal attack on the materialist atheist philosophy that dominates so much of the Western world today. That philosophy has a long history reaching back beyond the atomism of the ancient Greek thinkers Democritus and Leucippus to the essentially materialistic theogonies of the ancient Near East—the birthplace of the Genesis story.

The book of Genesis was penned long before the ancient Greek philosophers had begun to formulate the ideas that are typically taken to represent the beginnings of philosophy. The lofty monotheism of the ancient Hebrews predates the Greek philosophers by centuries, a fact that is often lost in the current attempt to validate naturalism or materialism as the only worldview that holds intellectual credibility. Furthermore, in contradistinction to the Greeks, the Hebrew thinkers did not have to purge their worldview of a pantheon of god-projections of the forces of nature for the simple reason that they never did believe in such gods in the first place. The God of the Hebrews was not a projection of any force of nature. He was the Creator without whom there would be no forces, or, indeed, any nature in the first place.

The current naive trend of dismissing the God of the Bible as just another of the ancient mythical gods completely fails to grasp this distinction. Werner Jaeger, an expert on the gods of the ancient Near East, makes the point that those gods were descended from the heavens and the earth whereas the God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth. This holds in particular for the gods of the land of Egypt, where Joseph spent most of his life.

This briefest of brief histories of time opens with an elegant and fast-flowing account of the creation of the universe and of life in all its marvelous variety. The creation and organization of the cosmos proceeds in a series of steps, each of which is initiated by God speaking: “And God said . . .” These creative speech acts are summed up in the opening statement of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made through him” (John 1:1, 3). This is the way things are. The Word is primary; the material universe is derivative and not the other way around, as popular secularism imagines.1

The final step that climaxes the sequence is God’s creation of human beings in his own image. Though the heavens reflect the glory of God, human beings are made in God’s image. Only humans are. Humanity is unique.

Just what being made in the image of God means and how special human beings are is gradually revealed as an integral part of the biblical storyline. However, several very important aspects of that “image” are communicated in the early chapters of Genesis. The first is that after the sequence of repetitions of the phrase “And God said,” we read something strikingly different: “And God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply” (1:28). Human beings are the kind of creature that God can speak to. They can hear and understand his words—and respond to them. It is that verbal relationship that is central to the biblical storyline.

Section 2: Human Life and Death (Genesis 2:4–4:26)

In the second major section we are told much more about the nature of human life. Human beings have a material substrate—they are made of the dust of the ground. They possess an aesthetic sense; they live in a world whose trees have been created good to look upon. They inhabit an environment that they can both cultivate and explore. They can enjoy that special relationship between man and woman, a relationship of beings created with equal status but as complementary rather than identical.

With deft strokes the author builds up a picture of the various features that make human life remarkable. But there is one more feature yet to be mentioned. It is by far the most important and, once again, it has to do with the word of God. It is that God spoke to the humans about the nature of life in the garden. He gave them permission to eat of every tree in the garden except for one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This tree was in the middle of the garden, along with another special tree, the tree of life, to which they also had free access. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God said: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (2:17).

There is much discussion among scholars as to the status and meaning of this portion of the story, and I must refer the reader to them for their comments. I wish to concentrate on what is often missed in such discussions: what the story is actually saying. For here we have a very clear, simple yet profound statement of the essence of morality—what it means to be a moral being. And morality is at the heart of the Joseph narrative.

First, the origin of morality, like the origin of the universe and of humanity, is to be found in God. This immediately brings to mind the famous statement of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov: “If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.”2 Dostoyevsky was not, of course, suggesting that atheists are incapable of moral behavior. That would be a slanderous lie. After all, from the biblical perspective, all human beings are made in the image of God and so are moral beings, whether they believe in God or not. Hence atheists (or anyone else) can put others to shame by the quality of their moral behavior. Dostoyevsky was suggesting that there is no rational basis for morality if God does not exist, an issue that is as hotly debated today as is the parallel question of whether the universe itself is a creation of God or not. This book is not the right place to debate either of those issues.3

What is important here is that morality involves the capacity to decide whether to obey an injunction. Genesis here traces the moral order to God, who placed the first humans in a garden and gave them permission to eat from all the trees in that garden with one exception—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It is obvious that the command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would have been meaningless if humans were not free to eat it. Thus, although human beings are clearly restricted in innumerable ways (they are not free, for instance, to run at 100 miles per hour), it is surely evident that they were not created as predetermined robots. They had real choice; they could choose to obey or disobey God’s word, to eat or refrain from eating the forbidden fruit. This capacity to choose between alternatives is often described (somewhat misleadingly) as “libertarian freedom.”

This Genesis account goes to the heart of the age-old complex and often impassioned debate about determinism and free will or the parallel, though not completely identical, debate about the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility.4 It is to be noted that there are two separate questions here:

1. Does Scripture teach both that God rules and that humans have a certain degree of freedom?

2. If the answer is yes, how can this be so?

If we do not distinguish between these questions, there is a danger that failure to find a satisfactory answer to question 2 leads to reluctance to answer question 1 in the affirmative. This response is somewhat strange since there are many things in nature that we do not understand completely. For instance, it is well accepted by scientists that light behaves both like particles and waves. Understanding exactly how this works is another matter entirely.

We should note in passing that the assumption that human freedom is part of human dignity lies at the heart of all civilized societies. This is evidenced by the fact that such societies hold human beings responsible and answerable for their actions, hence the existence of legal institutions and procedures for law enforcement.

The analogy from science cited above may suggest a possible approach to the question of divine sovereignty and human freedom, and that is to see how they actually work out in the details of everyday life as recorded in Scripture. It is no accident that in connection with this issue the New Testament directs our attention specifically to the latter part of Genesis and the accounts of Isaac, Jacob, and their sons (see Romans 9–11). It will, therefore, be part of our story.

More in due course. For now the important thing to grasp is that the central feature of morality as described in the Genesis account is that it focuses on obedience to the word of God. By this, I mean that the humans had only God’s word to tell them that eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was potentially lethal. So the key question for them was simply this: Were they prepared to trust God’s word? That was the thrust of the Serpent’s temptation: “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Gen. 3:1).

The Serpent represented God as repressive and tyrannical: “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:4–5). This was a devilishly clever half-truth in its appeal to the apparently irresistible aesthetic and intellectual desirability of the one forbidden fruit in the beautiful garden.

The first humans took the fruit, ate it and died—not at once in the physical sense, but that would eventually follow, for death is the unweaving of life. Life at its highest is a moral and spiritual relationship with God that is bound up with trust in and obedience to his word. So, according to an inexorable logic, death began with the disruption of that relationship. However, it did not end there. Aesthetic and physical death followed in due course, but death had begun its cruel tyranny, and the humans fled the presence of God. And, one might add, we have been running and hiding ever since.

Indeed, the topic of deception runs through the whole biblical storyline. In particular, it will form an important part of the story of Joseph, son of Jacob whose very name means “deceiver.”

The biblical account of the way in which sin entered the world and brought disaster is not without its objectors. Indeed, many people not only refuse to take it seriously but also think that it presents a concept of God as repressive and anti-intellectual, determined to keep humans enslaved in naive and unworthy dependence. I wish to suggest that this is culpable misrepresentation arising through failure to read carefully exactly what the text of Genesis says.

Nowhere is this misrepresentation more publicly evident than in a fascinating piece of outdoor art on the campus of the University of California at San Diego. It is called Snake Path and was conceived and executed by well-known artist Alexis Smith. It forms part of the Stuart Collection, the website of which informs us that Snake Path

consists of a winding 560-foot-long, 10-foot-wide footpath in the form of a serpent, whose individual scales are hexagonal pieces of colored slate, and whose head is inlaid in the approach to the Geisel Library. The tail wraps around an existing concrete pathway as a snake would wrap itself around a tree limb. Along the way, the serpent’s slightly crowned body circles around a small “garden of Eden” with several fruit trees including a pomegranate. There is a marble bench with a quote from Thomas Gray: “Yet ah why should they know their fate / When sorrow never comes too late / And happiness too swiftly flies / Thought would destroy their Paradise / No more, where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.” The path then passes a monumental granite book carved with a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost: “And wilt thou not be loath to leave this Paradise, but shalt possess a Paradise within thee, happier far.”5

The website further explains:

These pointed allusions to the biblical conflict between innocence and knowledge mark an apt symbolic path to the University’s main repository of books. The concept of finding sanctuary within oneself—outside the idealistic and protected confines of the university—speaks directly to the student on the verge of entering the “real world.”6

However, the tree in the biblical account of the garden of Eden was not the tree of knowledge. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is a completely different matter. The snake did not open up a path to the myriad kinds of knowledge that we associate with a university that could lead to human flourishing but only to one specific kind of knowledge—the knowledge of good and evil. That knowledge, gained by the first humans, was grim, dark, and painful and led to a rupture between them and God. That was not human flourishing; it was death in the making.

When the website claims that the Snake Path contains “pointed allusions to the biblical conflict between innocence and knowledge,” the idea here seems to be that God holds people captive in a state of ignorance, withholding from them the knowledge that would lead to the realization of their full potential. This erroneous idea is the seedbed of much atheism. But it is a completely false reading of Genesis. Indeed, the idea that innocence was in the garden and knowledge outside it is the very opposite of the truth, as the biblical story makes very clear.

As we have seen, Genesis 2 describes how the garden was designed to be the place where the humans could develop their creative potential. The tragedy is that misreading this story has led to the perpetuation of the slander that God is the enemy of human flourishing rather than its author.

The Seed Project

To the Serpent that deceived the humans with that lie God says:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:15)

It is a judgment, but it also forms the basis for an astonishing expectation for the future. By promising that the offspring of the woman is to triumph, God is declaring that humanity is not finished—far from it. The human story will be complex and full of frustration and difficulty; nevertheless, says God, a human will ultimately defeat the enemy.

This is not simply a prediction that God will triumph, an issue that was never in doubt. It is a prediction that humanity will triumph. In the end it will be the “seed of the woman,” a human being, that will conquer the enemy.

Thus begins the story of the seed that, according to the New Testament, finds its ultimate focus in the One whom Paul calls the seed, or the offspring—that is, Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:16). Genesis contains the account of the initial trajectory of the seed. With the birth of Eve’s first children, Cain and Abel, that trajectory begins. Far from life in that first family being harmonious and idyllic, the dire effects of the entry of sin into the world are revealed with devastating swiftness when Cain murders his brother Abel.

The life of the first human family is marred by fratricide in the first generation—a grim indicator of the difficulties that will lie in the path of eventually getting the seed into the world. Eve is left with one son—a murderer. But then she gives birth to another son, Seth, and with him the Seed Project regains its momentum: “To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26).

Section 3: Judgment (Genesis 5:1–9:29)

The third major section of Genesis begins with the marker phrase in this form: “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (5:1). It then rapidly traces the offspring of Adam down to Noah. It chronicles increasing violence on the earth with some notable exceptions such as Enoch and Noah. The wickedness of humanity nevertheless reaches such a pitch that God decides to blot out human beings (6:6). At first sight this would seem to bring the Seed Project to a complete end. But there is a caveat in God’s assessment: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (6:8). Accordingly, the text subsequently narrows its focus to the seed of Noah, noting this important transition by the use of the marker phrase once more (6:9). The rest of the section is dominated by the judgment of the flood through which Noah and his family are saved by the ark.

It is not our intention to discuss the flood narrative here except to point out that Jesus himself referred to it when discussing his return: “As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt. 24:37). Jesus uses the events surrounding the flood as a thought model to help his hearers understand something of the suddenness and unexpectedness of his future return “on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (v. 30).

The topic of judgment is understandably not very appealing to those who do not readily think of a final judgment as in any sense glorious. Yet this is a superficial reaction since the judgment of God is the obverse side of his love; in other words, a God who does not ultimately deal righteously with evil cannot be a God of love. Indeed, the fact that there is a final judgment tells us that our sense of right and wrong, our moral conscience, is not an illusion.

Contemporary atheists wax vitriolic whenever the judgment of God is mentioned. They claim to be interested in justice. Yet, according to them, the vast majority of human beings will never get justice for the simple reason that most do not get it in this life, and there is, according to them, no life after death in which there could be a final assessment. The terrorist or tyrant who murders his fellow human beings and eventually turns his gun upon himself escapes justice, according to atheism. This is deluded thinking, for we live in a moral universe, and God will see to it that justice will not only be done but will be seen to have been done. The famous Marxist thinker Max Horkheimer, of the celebrated Frankfurt School, once said that he feared there might not be a God because, in that case, there would be no justice. He need not have feared on that account; this is a moral universe and God will see to it that justice will not only be done but will be seen to have been done.

To summarize: the first section of Genesis tells us that human beings are made in the image of God. The second section focuses on one important aspect of that image—that humans are moral beings. It then tells of the great deception that introduced sin into the world and gives intimations of how that damage will one day be undone as the seed of the woman triumphs. The third section points to the ultimate validation of that moral status in the judgment of God, a judgment tinged with mercy as Noah and his family are granted salvation.

Hence, another way of looking at the first part of Genesis is to see it as anticipating three major Christian doctrines: (1) creation; (2) sin and redemption; and (3) judgment and the last things.

1. For more detail from both a biblical and a scientific perspective see my Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning according to Genesis and Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011).

2. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), 589.

3. See my Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists Are Missing the Target (Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson, 2011).

4. For an extended treatment of these topics see my Determined to Believe?: The Sovereignty of God, Freedom, Faith, and Human Responsibility (Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson, 2017).

5. Alexis Smith, Snake Path, 1992, UCSan Diego website, accessed September 6, 2018, http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/smith-a.html.

6. Ibid.

2

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

We mentioned earlier that there are six major sections in Genesis. The final three sections are devoted to the family history of the patriarchs. After the familiar section marker, “These are the generations of . . . ” (10:1), the fourth major section of the book initially moves swiftly down the generations as it outlines the beginnings of the great civilizations of the ancient Near East and their cities, such as Babel and Nineveh, that were to become famous as centers of great empires.

The active intervention of God at Babel to confuse the languages of the peoples is followed once again by a narrowing of the focus of the Seed Project to the descendants of Shem (11:10) and subsequently Terah and his son Abraham (11:27). Abraham was a towering figure that bestrides not only Genesis but also the whole biblical storyline. He was also Joseph’s great-grandfather, and it is surely to be taken for granted that Joseph’s early upbringing was filled with the exploits of Abraham. In order to understand Joseph’s story, it will therefore be necessary to sketch in the stories that filled his childhood, memories of which may well have played a formative role in his life. At this point we shall trace the storyline briefly and only later add in detail as it becomes relevant.

Section 4: Abraham and His Sons (Genesis 10:1–25:11)

The account of Abraham’s life starts when God makes a promise to him that has huge implications for the subsequent history of the world: “I will make of you a great nation . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:2–3). The remainder of the book, indeed of the Bible, tells us how that promise was and yet is to be fulfilled. However, within Genesis the first indicator of the scale of the blessing comes with Joseph, when the storyline widens out from the nomadic family of Abraham, his children, and grandchildren to Joseph, who is catapulted into a crucial position as governor of the empire of Egypt and in that capacity brings relief to a large part of the ancient world.

The promise of becoming a great nation naturally implied that Abraham and Sarah, his wife, would have children, and yet it soon became clear that, in their case, something had gone wrong with the physical processes involved in the transmission of life. They, like many other couples, seemed incapable of producing children. It is this circumstance that forms the initial focus of one of the major themes of the whole book: faith in God.

The Lord appeared to Abraham in a vision and spoke to him: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” (15:1). Abraham’s response showed his pain at being childless: “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless” (15:2). Abraham pointed out that because he had no natural heir, his servant Eliezer would become his legal heir, and the family would die out. Not so, said the Lord: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir” (15:4). The Lord then bade Abraham count the stars and said: “So shall your offspring be” (15:5). Abraham’s reaction was as brief as it was profound: “He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (15:6).

With that statement we have reached the central theme of Genesis: trusting God and his word. There is a powerful logic here. The fatal wrong turn away from God consisted in putting trust in a voice other than God’s—a constant danger for all of us in a world where we are bombarded with a multitude of voices all clamoring for our undivided attention. The way back to God must therefore be learning to listen to his voice and to trust what he says.

Abraham is held out to us in the biblical record as an outstanding example of what it means to trust what God has promised. As a result of his faith in God, Abraham was accounted righteous. That is, he was declared by God to be in a right relationship with him. In the language of the New Testament, he was justified by faith.

Abraham, though the most prominent, is not the first person in Genesis to trust God. The record of men and women of faith in Hebrews 11 includes Abel, Enoch, and Noah, who lived before Abraham. Nor is Abraham the last, for he is followed in that record by his wife, Sarah, then by his son Isaac, by Isaac’s son Jacob, and finally (in Genesis, that is) by Jacob’s son Joseph.

What is at once clear from the biblical record is that the Seed Project involves two things that operate simultaneously. There is the physical transmission of life through genetic processes with which we are all familiar. Children are born into the world without their permission. Each of us wakes up (so to speak) to find ourselves already here. That is the first process. The second element in the Seed Project is not a physical process at all. Nor is it automatic. It has to do with personal faith in God.

The New Testament captures this difference very well. According to John, faith is the essential prerequisite for the new birth. It is said of Jesus