Scripture Daily

Context No. 424 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 41:33-45: in context

33“Now therefore let Pharaoh look for a discreet and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt. 34Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint overseers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt’s produce in the seven plenteous years. 35Let them gather all the food of these good years that come, and store grain under the hand of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. 36The food will be to supply the land against the seven years of famine, which will be in the land of Egypt; so that the land will not perish through the famine.” 37The thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants. 38Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?” 39Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Because God has shown you all of this, there is no one so discreet and wise as you. 40You shall be over my house. All my people will be ruled according to your word. Only in the throne I will be greater than you.” 41Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Behold, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” 42Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand, and put it on Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in robes of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck. 43He made him ride in the second chariot which he had. They cried before him, “Bow the knee!” He set him over all the land of Egypt. 44Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh. Without you, no man shall lift up his hand or his foot in all the land of Egypt.” 45Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenath-Paneah. He gave him Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On as a wife. Joseph went out over the land of Egypt.

This is one of the most dramatic reversals in the Bible. In a single day, Joseph goes from a prison cell to ruling all of Egypt. Pharaoh, having heard Joseph interpret his dreams and propose a plan to survive the coming famine, asks his court a question: can we find anyone like this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God? And then he turns to Joseph and hands him nearly everything, his signet ring, robes of fine linen, a gold chain, the second chariot in the kingdom, a new name, a wife, and authority over the whole land, so that only the throne itself is above him. The slave becomes the prime minister between breakfast and dinner.

But the suddenness of that day sits on top of thirteen long, hidden, deeply unjust years. Joseph had been sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused by his master's wife, thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit, and then forgotten there by the one man who promised to remember him. From the inside, those years must have looked like waste, like his life leaking away in a foreign dungeon for nothing. And yet those were the years in which God was cultivating the very wisdom and character that Egypt would need and that Pharaoh, a pagan king, would instantly recognize as the Spirit of God. The elevation, when it finally came, rested entirely on a gift that had been formed in the hidden, unjust seasons, and that others could now see.

That reframes the seasons that feel wasted. When I am in a long, hidden stretch that seems to be going nowhere, or worse, that feels unjust, I assume the time is simply lost. Joseph's story suggests otherwise, that God may be developing, in exactly that obscurity, what some future need will require. Do I despise my hidden or hard or unfair season as wasted, when it may be the training ground for something I cannot yet see, and is the thing that will one day open the door being formed in me now, where no one is watching?

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