Joseph’s Rise to Power

For Joseph, Pharaoh’s dreams revealed what God was “about to do”

(Gen. 41:28, NKJV) in the land. Joseph, however, does not call on

Pharaoh to believe in his God. Instead, Joseph’s immediate response is

action. Joseph proposes an economic program. Interestingly, only the

economic part of Joseph’s discourse is retained by Pharaoh, who seems

more interested in the economic lesson than in the spiritual meaning of

the dream and God’s role in producing it.

Read Genesis 41:37–57. What is God’s place in the success of Joseph?

Pharaoh selects Joseph to take charge not so much because he has

interpreted his dreams correctly and revealed the forthcoming problem

of the land, but because he has a solution to that problem, because his

“advice was good” (Gen. 41:37, NKJV), an opinion also shared by

Pharaoh’s servants. Pharaoh’s choice seems to have been more prag-

matic than religious. And yet, Pharaoh recognizes that the presence of

“the Spirit of God” (Gen. 41:38) is in Joseph, who is qualified as “dis-

cerning and wise” (Gen. 41:39), an expression that characterizes the

wisdom that God gives (see Gen. 41:33; compare with 1 Kings 3:12).

All the details reported in the biblical text fit the historical situation

of Egypt at that time. Politically, the fact that Pharaoh appoints Joseph

as vizier is not unusual in ancient Egypt, where cases of foreign viziers

have been attested.

The next seven years are years of abundance in such a marked way that

the grain production becomes “immeasurable” (Gen. 41:49, NKJV), a sign

of supernatural providence. The comparison “as the sand of the sea” (Gen.

41:49) reveals that this is God’s blessing (Gen. 22:17). Joseph personally

reflects that blessing in his own fruitfulness, a coincidence that evidences

the presence of the same God behind the two phenomena. Joseph has two

sons whose names show Joseph’s experience of God’s providence, which

has transformed the memory of pain into joy (Manasseh) and the former

affliction into fruitfulness (Ephraim). What a powerful example of how

God turned something bad into something very good!

What are ways that others should be able to see, from the kind of

lives that we live, the reality of our God?