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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 123. The Dreamer
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Behold, this dreamer cometh.- Gen_37:20.
The life of Joseph is unquestionably one of the most thrilling chapters in the annals of Israel. The child reads it with wonder, and that wonder is not diminished, but rather increased, with advancing years, when its inward meaning is more fully realized. It is intensely human from beginning to end, and yet it is permeated through and through with the Divine. Distance in time tends to invest it with poetic glamour, so that we instinctively relegate it to the region of myth; but if we penetrate below the surface, we shall find that in its essential features it does not differ from the actualities of present-day experience. Throughout the ages the same hidden forces have been at work in human history, though time and place inevitably colour their visible manifestations. It is this that gives the achievements of heroes, the sufferings of martyrs, and the utterances of prophets such absorbing interest, and makes them yield such weighty lessons to the reflecting mind.
2. Of the historicity of the tale there need be little doubt. The story was probably told again and again by Hebrew rhapsodists at the fireside of Hebrew homes, and a close critical examination of the text makes it probable that the writer of the Book of Genesis has worked into one, two, if not three, different strands. In one the caravan is said to be a caravan of Ishmaelites, in the other of Midianites; in the one Reuben plays the prominent part as trying to save Joseph, in the other Judah; and the exact length of time mentioned differs in different places. But in spite of such trivial discrepancies, the whole narrative is true to life. The changes of Joseph's fortunes are quite natural in Oriental countries; nothing happens to him which might not happen to a clever young Jew or Armenian in Constantinople to-day. No fairy godmother presides at his christening; no deus ex machina unties any knots; no Ariel is at hand to do his bidding; all moves forward within the lines of what is human and natural to an issue which justifies the ways of God to man. Indeed, it is quite extraordinary how Egyptology has shown the history to be consistent with the conditions of Egyptian life. Although no mention of Joseph has been found, yet there is scarcely a detail which cannot be illustrated from the literature and monuments of Egypt. The position which Joseph occupies in Potiphar's house; the temptation by Potiphar's wife; the position of the butler and the baker; the rise of a foreign slave to high political power; the granting of an amnesty on Pharaoh's birthday; the importance attached to dreams and their interpretation; the years of famine; the granaries in large cities; the golden collar put round Joseph's neck by Pharaoh; the new name given to him, the title “father to Pharaoh”; the oath “by the life of Pharaoh”; the concentration of landed property in the hands of the king and the priests;-these all find their exact counterpart.
The supposition that it was under the Hyksos that Joseph was sold into Egypt, obtains stronger probability from the writings of Georgius Syncellus, who states that Joseph ruled the land in the reign of Apophis, whose age preceded the commencement of the Eighteenth Dynasty by only a few years. On the basis of an old inscription at El-Kab, the author of which must have been a contemporary of Joseph, it is possible to establish the proof that Joseph and the Hyksos are inseparable from one another (1730 b.c.). It must be remembered that in the days of the patriarch a seven years' famine occurred, in consequence of a deficiency in the inundation. Although there is no royal cartouche in the tomb to which the inscription refers, there is internal evidence to show that Baba, its owner, must have lived immediately previous to the Eighteenth Dynasty. Baba, “the risen again,” speaks thus: “I loved my father; I honoured my mother; my brothers and my sisters loved me. I went out of the door of my house with a benevolent heart; I stood there with refreshing hand; splendid were my preparations of what I collected for the festal day. Mild was (my) heart, free from violent anger. The gods bestowed upon me abundant prosperity on earth. The city wished me health and a life full of enjoyment. I punished the evil-doers. I collected corn, as a friend of the harvest god. I was watchful at the time of sowing. And when a famine arose, lasting many years, I distributed corn to the city each year of famine.” Not the smallest doubt can be raised as to whether the last words of the inscription relate to an historical fact or not. However strongly we may be inclined to recognize a general way of speaking in the narrative of Ameni where “years of famine” are spoken of, just as strongly does the context of the present statement compel us to refer this record of “a famine lasting many years” to an epoch historically defined. Now, since famines succeeding one another are of the very greatest rarity in Egypt, and Baba lived and worked under the native king Seqenen-Ra Taa III. in the ancient city of El-Kab about the same time during which Joseph exercised his office under one of the Hyksos kings, there remains for a satisfactory conclusion but one fair inference: that the “many years of famine” in the days of Baba must correspond to the seven years of famine under Joseph's Pharaoh, who was one of the Shepherd Kings.1 [Note: Heinrich Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs, 120.]