THE BIRTHRIGHT WAS JOSEPH’S
To arrive at a true picture of today’s events, and to be able to judge properly the significance of each incident as it occurs, it is often necessary to go back, as it were, into the Old Testament and to make a study of parallels, and the experiences of our forefathers. Since the Bible is word for word the true Word of Yahweh, every occasion that is included in the Bible narrative is there for a specific purpose, not merely for interest or as a story.
FOR Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birthright was Joseph’s – (I Chronicles 5:2).
Judah dominated his brothers, and became our Leader, although the Birthright belonged to Joseph – (Ferrer Fenton).
It is somewhat remarkable that when the book of Genesis gives us ‘The generations of Jacob’, it comes to a sudden stop. ‘These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren … and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours’ – (Genesis 37:2,3).
The ‘generations of Jacob’, it would appear, are in and through Joseph. The phrase ‘the son of his old age’ speaks of a future tense, for Benjamin was younger than Joseph. What it really means is that Joseph was the son pre-eminent in his old age. In Jacob’s old age he and his family went to live in Egypt, where Joseph was ruler and governor of all the land. Genesis 38 tells of the immoral acts of Judah, and his sheer hypocrisy in ordering Tamar, his daughter-in-law, to be burnt to death. She was spared when Judah was forced to admit that he was the guilty man. The very next chapter of Genesis (39), in contrast, shows how Joseph refused to consent to the evil intent and immoral thoughts of Potiphar’s wife. Judah had already sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. Now he sins against his own daughter-in-law. After this, with Joseph out of the way, Judah dominated the sons of Jacob, and with great cunning won the confidence of his father Israel. In ‘The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs’, all the sons of Jacob speak of Joseph as ‘the good and holy man’ except Judah, who sold his brother for twenty pieces of silver. It was a bitter moment when later Judah, so proud and haughty, had to kneel before the ruler of Egypt, and beg for his brother Benjamin, having made himself surety for Benjamin to his father Jacob. Judah was bitterly humbled. ‘Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together’ – (Psalm 37:37,38).
Reuben, the eldest son of Jacob, lost the birthright by his unlawful intercourse with his father’s concubine. Simeon and Levi were cursed by Jacob for their brutal murder of the men of Shechem. With Joseph supposed to be dead, Judah the crafty one, by guile won Jacob’s heart, and took an interest in Benjamin, Jacob and Rachel’s younger son. Twenty-two years later, in the time of the famine, Joseph’s dreams came true. They had hated Joseph when he told them of his dreams. Now Yahweh’s purpose and plan for Joseph was revealed. Not Leah’s son, but Rachel’s son, was the saviour in the time of famine. Joseph returned good for evil, and placed them in the most fruitful part of Egypt, the land of Goshen. Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, the happiest years of his life. Joseph was indeed ‘the son of his old age’. ‘Neither was there a man born like unto Joseph, a governor of his brethren, a stay of the people, whose bones were regarded of Yahweh’ – (Ecclesiasticus 49:15). The only man whose bones were regarded of Yahweh.
When Israel later left Egypt, in the time of Moses, they took with them the bones of Joseph, carrying them in the wilderness for forty years, and Joshua, a ‘son of Joseph and Ephraim’, took them across the Jordan into ‘the land flowing with milk and honey’. Jacob, before his death, took the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, and counted them as the two eldest sons of Reuben and Simeon.
Although Moses was given the task of giving the law to the Hebrews in the wilderness, neither he nor Aaron entered ‘the Promised Land’, but Joseph’s son or descendant Joshua was granted that great honor. After giving the birthright to Joseph’s son Ephraim, Jacob, on his deathbed, giving his blessing to each of his sons, said ‘The Sceptre shall not depart from Judah … until Shiloh come’ – (Genesis 49:10). Of Joseph he declared ‘Joseph is a fruitful bough whose branches run over the wall … the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.’ Joseph is, without a doubt, the most perfect type of Yahshua.
Joseph as it were, returned from the dead. ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive again’. The ‘Book of Jasher’ (the Upright) tells of Jacob’s coming into Egypt and says: ‘And Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob, in those days ministered in the land of Egypt.’ The ‘Book of Jasher’ gives the meaning of ‘Shiloh’ as ‘Disbanding’. This would seem to indicate that at the time of ‘disbanding’ the sceptre would depart from Judah. Yahshua Himself said to the Jews the Kingdom of Yahweh would be taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” – (Matthew 21:43). Strange that Joseph’s birthright son was named Ephraim, which means ‘fruitful’.
Joseph was first of all a slave, a servant, and then a minister in the land and Prime Minister of Egypt. He had been personally taught and trained for seventeen years by Jacob his father, a great teacher, the one who ‘ruled with Yahweh’ – ISRAEL. The Psalmist speaks of Joseph in Egypt: “He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: until the time that his word came: the word of Yahweh tried him. The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance: to bind his princes at his pleasure; and teach his senators wisdom” – (Psalm 105:17-22).
Wallis Budge, in his book The Teaching of Amenemapt, in the chapter entitled ‘The Teaching of Ptah-hetep’, says (page 56:12): ‘If thou wouldest be a perfect man and dost possess a house and estate, beget a son who shall be well-pleasing to Yahweh. If he does what is right, and if he imitates thee in thy actions, and hearkens to thy teaching, and his behaving is perfect in thy house, and he cares for thy property as if it were his own, seek thou for him every kind of honor. He is thy son whom thy heart’s desire hath begotten; let not thy heart drift away from him.’ According to Genesis 25:27, ‘Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.’ The margin says ‘a perfect man, dwelling in tents’. According to the Targums, the ‘tents’ were really ‘Academies of Learning’, and Jacob is represented as a life-long scholar. This was the man who taught the boy Joseph. ‘But whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all’ – (Mark 10:43,44).
Although Joseph was the chief son, yet ‘learned he obedience by the things which he suffered’ – (Hebrews 5:8).
Genesis is very emphatic about the fact that ‘Yahweh was with Joseph’. Scholars and, in particular, intellectuals, head men, have never really understood men like Jacob and Joseph but these two were Yahweh’s men. The name of the one was changed to Israel, ‘ruling with Yahweh’, while with the other, everything he did ‘Yahweh prospered it’. Head men, ‘with the vail of their heart’, cannot understand two heart-men like Jacob and Joseph. Nevertheless, it was Jacob who became Israel, and Joseph who was ruler and governor of Egypt, and Joshua who led the Israelites over the Jordan into Canaan. The name Joshua translated into the Hebrew becomes Yahshua. A significant fact, and one which has not yet been fully realized.
In The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Levi says: ‘Whosoever teacheth noble things and doeth them, shall be enthroned with kings, as was Joseph my brother’ (Testament of Levi). The ‘Book of Jasher’ has these remarkable words in it: ‘Joseph was a stranger in the land of Egypt, and he bought Egypt at a price’ (Jasher 4:10). Paul uses a similar phrase when he exhorts the Corinthians to ‘flee fornication’. Paul goes on, ‘…ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify Yahweh in your body, and in your spirit, which are Yahweh’s’ – (I Corinthians 6:19-20). Ferrar Fenton translates this ‘Fly from fornication. Every other sin that a man can do is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against his own constitution. Or, do you not know that your body is a sanctuary for the Holy Spirit, which you had from Yahweh to live? And you are not your own: for you were dearly bought; therefore honor Yahweh with your body’ – (I Corinthians 6:18-20).
This is exactly what Joseph did. In Testament of Joseph he says: ‘How often did the Egyptian woman threaten me with death! How often did she give me over to punishment, and then call me back and threaten me: when I was unwilling to company with her, she said to me, “Thou shalt be lord of me, and all that is in my house, if thou wilt give thyself to me, and thou shalt be as our master”. But I remembered the words of my father.’
Joseph, the pupil, did not let Jacob, the great teacher, down. ‘How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against Yahweh?’ – (Genesis 39:9). Neither Judah, Moses, David, Solomon, or any of the sons of Leah, ever reached the great moral heights of Joseph. Pharaoh and Potiphar could see the holiness and beauty and integrity of this great man of Yahweh: ‘And Pharaoh said, …Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the spirit of Yahweh is?’ Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Yahweh hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art: Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou.’
Thinkers should ponder over these facts, remembering that the great man in Yahweh’s sight in the Old Testament was not Moses or David or Solomon, but Joseph: ‘In all things like unto Jacob.’
