Joseph in Prison

’ And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison.” Gen. xxxix. 20.

f ENESIS is at once profoundly artless, and artlessly profound. Its narratives are level to the comprehension of a child and yet uncover the secrets of the human heart. There is in the episode of Joseph’s imprisonment the common play of human motive, and the mutability of human affairs. When Shakespeare wrote, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” he was not thinking of the hatred of anb 0tbtx Snterpretations; a base woman in ancient Egypt for a pure-hearted man, but only of a permanent fact in human experience.

The story would not have been worth preservation, nor would it have been preserved, had it not held a great spiritual truth, the key of which is ‘* But the Lord was with Joseph.” An especial presence is, of course, meant.

In the sense of His everywhereness, God is “with” the entire creation, but in Scripture this phrase stands for a particular nearness, and is vitally connected with the most striking events.

The Lord was ‘* with “Jacob despite his self-confidence, and fleshly ways, until He had made him “Israel, a prince with God.’’ He was “with” Moses, delivering him from the wrath of Pharaoh, conferring upon him the great offices of prophet, lawgiver, interces-Permanent values.

Gen.xxxix.
2, 21.

“‘Iminanuel”

Isa. vii. 14.

Luke i. 28.

Gen. xxviil
15.

Gen. xxxii.
27-28.

Mo yom in tfje 3nn

Josh. i. 5.
Josh. iii. 7.

Divine
providence.

Acts xii.

-10.
Acts xvi.
26.

sor and leader. He was *’ with ‘’ Joshua, magnifying him in the sight of all Israel, making him a great conqueror and deliverer.

This unseen Presence gives the clue to the interpretation of the Biblical biographies — of the book of Esther, for instance, where Jehovah is not mentioned, but where His presence does everything — and to the true philosophy of all history.

It is this which men of faith call divine providence. No better illustration at once of the significance of the phrase, and of the reality of the fact, can be found than this story of Joseph’s imprisonment and deliverance. And the first and most important element in the great fact of the divine interference is, that commonly Providence works along perfectly natural lines. Sometimes indeed an angel is sent to deliver a Peter, or an earthquake to anil 0tftt interpretations; help a Paul, but usually the hand of God is veiled in the seemingly natural.

Joseph, a good man, is in prison for loyalty to right, and the problem is Joseph’s deliverance. Two upper servants of an oriental king incur his displeasure and are cast into the same prison. Nothing could be more commonplace! Such things happen every day. But this most commonplace circumstance is sufficient for the divine use.

The imprisonment of the chief butler was, indeed, to be the means of Joseph’s enlargement and exaltation, but yet we read “Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” How long did Joseph have to wait upon the defective memory of the chief butler? “And it came to pass at the end of two full years.”

Ah, there is the bitterness of the mystery! “Two full years!”

Gen. xl.

1-23.

Gen. xl. 23

Gen. xli. i.

Hope deferred.

io iSiOom in ttie Snn

Matt. xi. 3.

Delayed
answers.

‘* Is this,” a troubled servant asks, “all that it means, ‘The Lord was with Joseph’?” How often Joseph himself may have wondered if indeed Jehovah were God in Egypt, also if there were not truth in the Gentile conception of local and limited gods. He may have wondered if indeed Jehovah thought upon and loved him.

Two years pass slowly in a prison. We read how terribly a prison seems to have tried the faith of John the Baptist, when he asked “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” The caged eagle of the wilderness grew heart-sick! Oh, the mysteries of the silences, of the delays of God!

The delay of His judgment upon the evils which are desolating the earth, the delay of His answer to prayer, the delay of His deliverance of the righteous out of their affliction, the delay of the first advent of the Lord Jesus Christ anb (jitter 3nterpretation£J through slow centuries of evil and darkness, the delay of His second advent — all these are mysteries.

Why should creation be left to groan in the bondage of corruption; the saint to groan “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body;” and the Spirit to groan in His temple of the natural body?

Why does the Prince of Peace suffer still the horror of war on that earth which He has made and redeemed? Why does the Lord of Life permit still that earth to be ridged with graves and drenched with tears?

Over all this, and within all this abides much that is mysterious. But we are not left altogether without light. The two years of the chief butler’s forgetfulness and of Joseph’s continued imprisonment were not, be sure, valueless or wasted years in Joseph’s spiritual and intellectual history.

Rom. viii.
22-26.

i 3iom m tfie Knn

Prov. XXV.
4.

Isa. xl. 31.

He heard much, thought deeply, communed, we may be sure, much with the God of Israel.

He was being tempered in the fire of adversity, that he might be a fit instrument, in the hand of His God, when the time for his deliverance and exaltation should come.

What is our attitude during God’s delays? We may use the time in wicked accusings, or in fretful repinings, or we may use the time in that restful waiting upon the Lord of which the prophet says: ‘^ But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.”