Even though Joseph himself was not paid for any of his work, the blessing of the Lord was upon him, and therefore his master got blessed because of him. Despite this, despite slavery and then imprisonment, God said Joseph was prosperous and successful (Genesis 39:2-3, 23). Had they not sold Joseph into slavery, they very well might have killed him-that was what they meant to do at first, after all. Even so, their response to him shows how evil his brothers were, at that point. (Pretty foolish of Jacob, too.) It’s no wonder this galled them.
Also, with the exception of the death of his mother when Benjamin was born, Joseph had presumably lived a charmed life: the coat of many colors that Jacob had given him was the attire of a great landowner, even though Joseph was the second youngest of twelve brothers. He was only seventeen at the time, after all. The one charge leveled against Joseph by some is that he started out arrogant: after all, what was he thinking, telling his brothers (whom he knew already envied him, due to his father’s blatant favoritism) that God had told him he would rule over them? Maybe this was arrogance, or at best, a decided lack of wisdom. It’s fitting that the first dream showed his brothers’ sheaves of grain bowing down to his, considering it was the famine and grain distribution that propelled him to second in command of Egypt in the end. All Joseph had to go on were two cryptic dreams… but it was enough. Moses had not yet written Deuteronomy, telling him all the blessings he could expect if he remained faithful to the Lord. He couldn’t read about the 13-17 years between King David’s anointing and when he finally became king, for instance. While Abraham his grandfather had to wait 25 years for the promised child, the circumstances had little in common with Joseph’s own circumstances. He wouldn’t have even had an oral tradition of previous faith heroes similar to himself. This is even more incredible when you consider that Joseph had no written scriptures to cling to like we do. Yet if he ever wavered in his faith that God would fulfill what He showed him in his two dreams, we have no record of it. It took thirteen years for his reversal of fortune to finally occur, and another nine years after that for the complete fulfillment of God’s promise to him. Introduction: Joseph is one of my favorite biblical characters he’s such a great example of faith. This retelling comes from Genesis 37, 39-45, and it appears in Blood Covenant Origins: Biblical Retellings.
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