Day 9: Genesis 42-46, Matthew 13

Genesis 44
Joseph sets up his brothers, threatens to keep Benjamin as a slave so that he can force Jacob to come to him. Jerk!!!

Genesis 45:24
Web Joseph sends his brothers to retrieve their father, he tells them not to quarrel along the way. Even after all the time he's been away (which I think totals about 22 years) he still knows his brothers, and knows what they are inclined to do. They are prone to anger and jealousy.

Matthew 13:54-58
I wonder how Jesus felt when he had been rejected and when the people of his town, whom he must have cared for greatly, didn't understand what he was saying or how he possibly could have known what Jesus was talking about. How unbelievably frustrating and discouraging.

Today's ponderments:
Joseph is kind of a jerk. Sure, he's been dealt a pretty crappy hand of cards in his life, but in the end, it all turns out better than fine. He is ruler over all of Egypt, and he basically gets credit for saving not only Egypt, but the surrounding nations that come to him for food. That's a pretty lofty position to be in considering he started out as a guy whose brothers sold him into slavey for 20 pieces of silver.

But it irks me how cruel he is to his brothers and his father. Yes, they sold him into slavery, and yes, his father played favorites and he was mocked as a result, but did he really need to do what he did? It wasn't enough that his brothers came to him, begging for their very lives when the asked to buy grain. He had to throw them in jail, and then force them to do his bidding, bringing Benjamin, and then he frames them as thieves. Does that really sound like someone who is looking to the Lord for guidance, someone who is attentive to what God would want to happen in a particular situation?

No. Joseph puts his own bitterness, anger, and loathing above everything else. He wanted to see his brothers grovel, to see them humiliated, before he showed compassion and benevolence to them, which I think is actually meaner than humiliating them. From that day on, they would know that he was the reason that they were alive, that he was 'the bigger man'. Even his compassion and help was another way to stuff their noses in the fact that they were nothing, an he had everything.