Scripture Daily

Context No. 4073 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 41:46-52: in context

46Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt. 47In the seven plenteous years the earth produced abundantly. 48He gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities. He stored food in each city from the fields around that city. 49Joseph laid up grain as the sand of the sea, very much, until he stopped counting, for it was without number. 50To Joseph were born two sons before the year of famine came, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore to him. 51Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, “For”, he said, “God has made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” 52The name of the second, he called Ephraim: “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

Joseph, now raised to power in Egypt, has two sons, and the names he gives them tell the story of what God had done in his heart after all his years of suffering. The first he names Manasseh, saying, God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house. The second he names Ephraim, saying, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.

These two names capture a beautiful work of God's grace. Joseph had endured betrayal, slavery, false accusation, and imprisonment, years of real suffering and loss. And God had done two things for him. God had healed the sting of the past; Joseph could say that God had made him forget his hardship, not that the memory was erased, but that its bitterness no longer poisoned him. And God had made him fruitful, not somewhere else, after the suffering was over, but in the very land of his affliction, in the place of his pain. God is able to heal the bitterness of what we have suffered, and to make us fruitful in the very place of our affliction, bringing good out of the ground where we were hurt.

Do I trust that God can heal the bitterness of my past hardships so they no longer poison me, and make me fruitful, like Joseph, in the very place of my affliction, bringing good out of the ground where I was hurt?

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