Before I go any further, I would like to apologise to Mr Bobby Caldwell, for the artistic licence I took with his lyric. All protocol observed. But it’s true. Ever since I first wrote about Joe in the piece unimaginatively titled “Joseph”, I can’t seem to let him go.

I reckon there’s a tendency to look at Joseph’s life through the lens of the “triumph” of his latter years. You know, that part when he proved the haters wrong, and his dream right, as they knelt before him. The in-flesh realisation of his dream from years past is not what keeps nagging at me about Joseph’s story.

It’s the jail cells. Yes, plural.

Bazakes, we last left Baby Bro Joe in peril at the hands of his older brothers (read the reason why over here). It was at that time that Joe learned that snitches get stitches.

A brief recap: Joseph was his father Jacob’s favoured son, born to the favoured wife Rachel. Never mind that Jake had 10 older sons; Joe was the one who received the gift of the multicoloured coat (a mantle foreshadowing Joseph’s latter years, perhaps?). Joe was the one Jake trusted to supervise and report (read: snitch) on his older brothers’ activities. It was in the process of delivering sustenance to (subtext: gathering intelligence on) his brothers, that they decided to dispatch Baby Bro. Permanently.

Reuben suggested less bloodshed, and more pushing into a pit, with the secret hope of later delivering Joe alive to the Pater Familias.

The first jail cell.

Joseph could probably hear his brothers discussing what should be done with him. He probably also heard them laughing around the campfire, merrily eating the food he had brought along, as it got cold in the evening. Maybe they took turns in taunting him. Maybe he yet held onto hope that it was an elaborate prank, and that they would bring him up out of that pit. They did not.

When Reuben’s back was turned, Judah then suggested human trafficking by way of Ishmaelite caravan to Egypt. This becomes important later.

Genesis offers a summary of the next stage in Joe’s life. He was taken all the way to Egypt. Likely bound in some way. Definitely under a scorching sun. Bewildered. His seventeen-year-old self scared witless. Uncertain of his next meal or drink of water. Until he came to the house of Potiphar.

He was a slave, with no rights or property of his own. He wasn’t even his own property, but he still had a talent for… let’s call it ‘supervision’. A gift for administration, in fact. Joe caused Bra’ Potiphar’s house to flourish under his stewardship, and he looked cute while doing so. Unfortunately. Mam’ Potiphar thought so too, and tried to trap ya boy. He did the right thing by running away, but was later accused of trying to get with his master’s wife.  

At that point, all his faithfulness and consistency in Potiphar’s household was disregarded, and he was thrown in jail. On the word of one lascivious woman. The blood boils to think of the injustice of it all.

(An aside: I wonder what Potiphar and his wife thought when Joe became Zaphenath Paneah, the second in charge to the Pharaoh? THAT’s the revenge story I want to see[1]. But I digress).

It’s this second incarceration situation that gives me pause.

Imagine being Joe.

That first jail cell was unexpected enough, compounded by his brothers’ betrayal (that backstabbing, fam!). But let’s imagine that he reasoned it out in his head: there was no love lost between the brothers (Jake’s fault), and maybe he could admit to himself that maybe he was a bit too eager to report the brothers to their father. He was scared, hungry and far from home, but the God of his father Jacob would surely deliver him. He had a dream, given to him by God, that had yet to come to pass. Imagine that glimmer of hope when he found some semblance of favour with Potiphar, when he moved in his zone of genius.

But then, that second jail cell.

I wonder how he felt at this second crushing turn of events. In jail for trying to honour your God and your earthly master.

Later, the most humble Moses[2] writes that Joseph found favour with even his jailers because God was with him, and showed him kindness[3]. We, the readers of today, have the benefit of knowing that Joseph’s story ended with him in a position of authority in that foreign land.

Joseph did not have the benefit of hindsight, though. All that he knew was that he had gone from being a (favoured) son in his father’s house, to a slave, to a prisoner in a foreign land, in the space of a few years.

I wonder if he just rolled with the punches, shouldering these ever-deepening levels of enslavement, like we have to shrug off the next stage of loadshedding? Did Joe know, in those dark, dingy moments, stripped of the last vestiges of his humanity, that God was with him?

Or did he feel forsaken, depleted, discouraged?

Do we?

Back to Joe. Even in the jail cell, he kept doing what he was good at: administration. And, to no reader’s surprise, he did well. In fact, the prison warden placed all prisoners under Joe’s authority. In carrying out his new duties, he was charged with overseeing 2 royal prisoners: the cupbearer and the baker. These two had dreams; Joe interpreted them. He asked the one who would live, to mention his name to the Pharaoh, to grant him an audience to plead his innocence. But that man, once released and reinstated, forgot about Joe.

It’s almost like a third jail cell: Joe was ^soooo close to getting a pardon for his non-existent crimes. Then he was forgotten.

I’m not going to lie, my lack of the Spirit of Bekezela[4] would have me tempted to forget the whole thing, and just settle in for a lifetime in jail, the only escape being the coffin (I don’t think they had those in Ancient Egypt). I would assume that that was the end of my story and stop torturing myself with hope. To be so close to the connections to ending your imprisonment, and then not. Eish!

And yet. When SpongeBob Cupbearer (of the porous mind) finally remembered Joe 2 (two!) years later, and Joe was called upon to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, our boy said, “I cannot do it, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.” Still believing that God, and God alone, can do the impossible. And it was impossible, because Pharaoh never told Joe what the dream was, but God revealed the dream AND interpretation to our boy.

As a reward, Joe was finally un-incarcerated. PLUS dressed in royal garments. PLUS given the authority to administer the preparations for famine.  

And then, 13 years later, he was reunited with the brothers who had trafficked him. Another moment of true confession: I don’t know that I wouldn’t have sent them back on their way without any grain.

(I can just imagine being him: “Now wait just one hot minute. When I brought y’all food 13 years ago, you threw me into a pit and sold me into slavery. And now—now—y’all want food from me?! If y’all don’t—”)

But Joseph had deeper integrity than I. I think when he had nowhere else to go, and no one else to connect him out of trouble, he leaned on the God who had allowed him to experience the trouble, but had been with him through it all. And that same God worked in Joe a change of perspective and character. Because Joe had nowhere else to run. (There’s a word in that for somebody.)

So much so, that Joe was able to stand and say to his brothers, after an elaborate prank of his own[5], “And now, do not be distressed, and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

Bazakes, after all that life lived, Joseph entrusted himself to God through it all. I reckon, like us, he had times of despair, fear and doubt. But he said, “To save lives, God sent me here ahead of you.” He understood what his seventeen-year-old self didn’t fully appreciate when he first dreamed. He also understood that:

1. His life story was not about him. Joseph’s story is a thread in the tapestry of God’s story. In Genesis 37, the account opens with: “Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. This is the account of Jacob. Joseph, a young man of seventeen…” His whole account is under the subheading of Jacob’s story. An account of how Jacob’s family survived the famine, and flourished into a nation, in a foreign land. It is a story, as one preacher said, of the preservation of specifically Judah, as the one through whom the Messiah would come. The same Judah, mind you, who had sought to profit from the sale of Joseph’s body into slavery. Ruminate on that. The Lord must have beeeeeeeen working in Joe’s heart all those years to forgive the traitors, and to keep his faith in the living God.

2. His dream was not about him. It was about God’s plan to preserve the family of Jacob. So too, our dreams are not about us, but about what the Lord wants to accomplish[6].

3. He could trust in the faithfulness of the God of Israel to fulfill His own good plan. None of us would deny that Joe was used by God. But that involved heartache, betrayal, imprisonment. Basically, being taken into places he would not have chosen. Even in keeping the faith and being obedient to God, it may come with the above. Also, we can trust that God will fulfil His plan, but it may not come in our lifetime (Hebrews 11).

More than a thousand words later, can you see why Joe’s story still haunts me?

The lessons from Joe cannot be copied and pasted to everyone’s lives. But perhaps you, like I, have many treasured dreams. Dreams that seem to be God-given. At first, life is full of hope and possibility, and your dreams fill you with excitement. Then, as life does, it doesn’t proceed how we imagined it would. Granted, we may never face the levels of umgowo[7] that Joe did, but as we grow older, we encounter sickness, tragedy, crushed dreams, obstacles, or perhaps a whole lot of nothing. We may even, like the saints of Hebrews 11, pass away before seeing better days here on Earth.

In that disappointment, there’s plenty of opportunity to fester in hopelessness, and perhaps bitterness. (Just me? Okay then.)

Nevertheless, what we can learn from Joe is that:

• Our life story is not just about us. It is God’s story.
• Our dreams are not about us, but about what God wants to accomplish.
• Even when numerous obstacles come, even when we suspect we won’t see the better days on this side of Heaven, God is with us, ready to show us His faithfulness and kindness.

Therefore, as we, bazakes, deal with life and what life will yet throw at us, let us, like Joseph, trust in the Living God. Even though we will never be able to foresee the outcomes of our trials and how they fit in His plan, know that God sees us, He loves us, and He is good.

Let the church say…

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[1] There’s also a theory in Dr Tony Evans’ Commentary that the person who set Joseph to oversee the royal prisoners WAS Potiphar. In the text of Genesis 40:3-4, the captain of the guard (Potiphar?), and not the prison warden, made this allocation. Perhaps

[2] More humble than any man on Earth, mind you (Numbers 12:3)

[3] Genesis 39:21

[4] Bekezela is a Zulu word that means “to persevere”

[5] This is how I know the Bible is real. Who would’ve thought up the pettiness of Joe in pranking his brothers before telling them that he had, in fact, long since forgiven their sorry—.

[6] Also, He is not obliged to involve us in His plan. If I choose to shrink back or be blatantly disobedient, He can and will accomplish His will using another avenue. We are important, but we ain’t that important to the Lord, if that makes sense.

[7] Umgowo means “going through it” or “trials and tribulations. A colloquialism.

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