The Long-suffering of Joseph

“The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.” - Genesis 40:23

Sep 23, 2024

Read Genesis 39-41

The last fourteen chapters of Genesis form what some people refer to as the novella of Joseph. While tying into the book as a whole, and building off themes established in the life of his father, Jacob, the story of Joseph can be viewed as a self-contained narrative and is accessible in a way some other stories of Genesis are not.

In the story of Joseph we can see how patience is not a passive trait, nor does it expect us to allow just any sort of behavior towards us. Instead, patience often looks like practicing being the person God has called us to be, no matter the circumstance we find ourselves in. In the study of patience we will be looking generally at the circumstances a person or people find themselves in to draw our lessons about patience from, rather than focusing on how the terms are employed.

image of the Great Pyramids of Giza — image: Mouad Mabrouk/ Pexels

Joseph the Brat

When the story opens in Genesis 37 and we are first introduced to Joseph, we may not find ourselves to be especially rooting for the hero of the story and consider the only redeeming quality in the 17 year-old to be that he is super hot — and we don’t even get that little nugget of information until 39:6. You may be wondering, are you going a little overboard calling him super hot? The Bible just says “handsome and good-looking” or “fair of form and fair to look at” or “well-built and handsome.” Keep in mind that, unlike the modern novel, the Bible doesn’t really care what a person looks like unless it is exceptional, or a key detail for the narrative or our understanding of their character. So if the Bible takes the time to say he’s handsome, and particularly where this tidbit of information is included in his narrative, then he must be a heartthrob.

Other than being hot, Joseph is a tattle-tale (37:2), perhaps a bit of a bragger (37:5-11 — just because you have a dream about your superiority doesn’t mean you have to go around shoving it in your brothers’ faces), and probably spoiled as daddy’s favorite (37:3-4 — regarding the famous coat, we don’t know what the Hebrew actually means other than it was out of the ordinary, so we’ll just call it popular hot-guy clothes), after all Jacob has already proven he will go through great lengths to protect Joseph (see the incident in 33:1-2).

Needless to say, his brothers “hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” (37:4). So when his father sends him to check up on them (because of the earlier bad report?), his brothers decide that “snitches get stitches” doesn’t go far enough. They start off with “snitches get murdered,” but are haggled down to “snitches get sold into slavery and pretended to be killed by wild animals.” They sell their brother into slavery in his Calvins, taking his fancy clothes back to their father after doing some arts and crafts with it to make sure it looks like Joseph was mauled while wearing it.

In Potiphar’s House

When Joseph reaches Egypt, he is sold “to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard” (37:36). In an early example that the Lord is not bound to specific locations, as were basically all of the other gods of the ancient world, we are told that “the Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man” and that Potiphar saw “that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands,” which led him to promote Joseph to “overseer in his house and over all he had…with him there, he had no concern for anything but the food that he ate” (39:2-6). Joseph may have been introduced to us as a spoiled tattle-tale, but we find out that Joseph is incredibly skilled in the gift God gave him as, to use the Spiritual Gifts terminology, an administrator.

I wonder if Joseph would have had a chance to discover this gift had he remained with his family. While Joseph was his father’s favorite, primogeniture (the rights of the oldest son) was still respected, and Joseph was one of Jacob’s youngest sons (his only full brother, Benjamin, was the baby of the family). Reuben, Simeon, and Levi all ended up disqualifying themselves from the rights of the oldest (sleeping with dad’s concubine — Reuben; and going on a killing spree to avenge their sister’s rape — Simeon and Levi) paving the way for Judah’s rise — but this is all sub-plot; the point is, being a favorite did not change birth order.

I am not in any way trying to make light of the fact that Joseph was a slave, no matter what his position was in the household, but we see him exercising a talent he may not have been called to use in his father’s house, and doing it with aplomb. Sometimes our patience in a situation we don’t want to be in can bring out gifts we might not have otherwise discovered, which will prove useful in other situations.

Sometimes our patience in a situation we don’t want to be in can bring out gifts we might not have otherwise discovered

Joseph’s position in Potiphar’s household takes a dramatic turn when, once again, his clothes turn up without him in them. Potiphar’s wife1 had the hots for Joseph and was very frustrated that he didn’t reciprocate (this plot point is introduced with the statement of Joseph’s attractiveness2). It probably would have been easy for Joseph to give in to her — as the overseer of the house, he likely had the ability to make sure no one ever found out (maybe even get a little revenge for his situation as slave?), but Joseph insists that it would wrong Potiphar and sin against God. So he gets a new outlet for exercising patience because “she spoke to Joseph day after day” but “he would not consent to lie beside her or to be with her” (39:10).

Joseph ended up having to physically leave...unfortunately just in his Calvins again since Potiphar’s wife actually grabbed his clothes. To save face and get revenge, she accuses Joseph of coming on to her when her husband gets home, and we know Potiphar “became enraged” (39:19), but he doesn’t have Joseph executed, which would have been the more expected outcome given that Joseph is his slave, and he is accused of sexually assaulting his master’s wife.

As we looked at in joy, prison wasn’t always used in the ancient world the way we consider it in the modern world — we don’t think twice about someone being tossed in prison for their crimes today, but they tended to carry out consequences fairly quickly, especially for those low on society’s totem pole like Joseph. And since we later find out that Joseph is imprisoned “in the house of the captain of the guard” (which is Potiphar’s job), we’re led to wonder if Potiphar either is suspicious of his wife’s tale, or if he simply liked Joseph enough to overlook her accusations beyond removing Joseph from her presence.

In Prison

It is interesting that in all of the ups and downs of Joseph’s story, all of the injustices he faces, there is only one instance where he voices his opinion of the matter. In prison, Joseph has again gained the favor of the one in charge — the Lord was still “with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer” and the “chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper” (39:21,23). We may be curious about how being unjustly imprisoned, while a slave, was the situation in which God “showed him steadfast love,” but all I can say is that God was with him, and getting him ready for a large task ahead.

It is in prison, when the chief baker and chief cupbearer are thrown in for displeasing Pharaoh (given their positions, it is likely he got sick after something he consumed) that Joseph, while being willing to listen to and interpret their dreams, also actively seeks to change his situation: “But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” (40:14-15). Unfortunately for Joseph, the chief cupbearer forgets about him when he is restored to his position, and it is another two years before Joseph’s situation changes again.

We don’t know how long Joseph was a slave in Potiphar’s house, and then in prison (outside of the two years he was forgotten), but we do know that by the time he is brought before Pharaoh and entered his service, he is thirty years old (41:46). That is almost half his life.

But when Joseph comes before Pharaoh, he doesn’t make snide comments about being forgotten by the cupbearer, or being imprisoned for however many years unjustly, or make sarcastic comments about being a slave. He does the job he was called in to do, and then goes above and beyond what he was called in to do. Pharaoh just wanted his dreams interpreted, which his own court magicians couldn’t do.

Joseph could have easily left it at that — after all, it was the job of the court magician to also help deal with the consequences of a negative dream (usually through incantations). But Joseph, again, goes one step further. He offers a practical solution to the problem Pharaoh’s dream portends. His insight reveals the message, and his wisdom the actionable steps to mitigating the damage. His willingness to keep doing the job at hand and doing it well, no matter the situation, prepared him for the major promotion — he was no longer assistant to the regional manager, but assistant regional manager.

Family Matters

Patience and a willingness to keep working to the best of your ability in any circumstance is not the same as being a doormat, or allowing people to take advantage of you. When Joseph does finally encounter his brothers again, he takes steps to ensure that these men who once contemplated killing him, and then sold him into fifteen-ish years of misery, have actually changed before he reveals himself. When his ten half-brothers showed up to buy grain from him, “he recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke harshly to them,” but “they did not recognize him” (42:7-8).

While he speaks harshly to them, and accuses them of being what he knows they are not, in all his recriminations he never brings up the actual injustice they enacted against him, even after he reveals himself. The only way he mentions it is to assure them that he does not hold a grudge against them, because it was all part of God’s plan (45:5-8; 50:19-21).

This does not mean he lets them off scot-free. He concocts a situation which mirrors his own all those years ago — his brothers are again faced with a son of Rachel being favored above them, and they hold the power of life and death over him (43:26-44:34). Before Joseph reveals himself, and reopens fellowship with his family, his brothers have to acknowledge their crimes and repent. We already see hints of their willingness to do this in his first encounter with them — when they identify themself to Joseph, it is as a cohesive unit, “We, your servants, are twelve brothers” (42:13), and they, at least amongst themselves, not knowing Joseph can understand them, remember their guilt, “now here comes the reckoning for his blood” (42:22). Feeling bad and repenting are two different things, though, and Joseph again exercises patience, a willingness to wait to get news of his father and see him again, until after he is sure the relationship is ready to be mended.

Patience, as we see it in Joseph’s story, is often better described by its other commonly employed translation: long-suffering. He’s not just keeping his cool while people are being obnoxious, he is functioning under duress and injustice. Patience kept him diligently working on the task at hand, and not holding a grudge, but it did not mean that the injustice was excused. When he had the power to get revenge in each of his situations, he sought justice instead and chose a better way forward. When we are called to exercise patience, or long-suffering, we are not being told to just stay in a bad situation because it shows we’re patient — we can actively seek a way out and a better future, we are allowed to call out those injustices. We cannot control the actions of those around us, but we can control our own.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

We can sometimes be guilty of mistaking patience for passive acceptance of a situation. What are some ways Joseph’s story illustrates non-passive patience?
Joseph is revealed to have a talent for administration during his years of endurance within adverse situations. Has there been a time when you were called to be patient in a situation and discovered a new talent in the process?

Christened “Sugar Babe” by my mom when she taught the story in Children’s Church many, many years ago, and I have never been able to think of her otherwise since.

In many of the Qu’ran commentaries on the stories of Joseph, his extreme attractiveness is typically dwelt on to some degree and Potiphar’s wife nearly excused of her behavior “because of the unavoidably uncontrollable love and passion that his countenance would rouse in her.” Maybe she was also attracted to the fact that he probably made sure dishes were washed and trash was taken out before he had been asked to do so 57 times.