https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-story-of-joseph/
I dislike Wikipedia because autodidactic amateurs tend to try to pass themselves off as professional scholars and writers. I’m not trying to be snobby, honestly. But just imagine how a lawyer or dancer or skilled tradesperson would feel if some unqualified person decided that he (and it usually is a man of some kind) was an expert in one of those fields and decided to pontificate. The lawyer, dancer, or skilled tradesperson would be outraged. But in my field, it’s perfectly fine for someone who does not know that much about Shakespeare, for example, to offer opinions and leaky old arguments, such as the idea that the playwright did not write his own plays.
With that having been said . . .
The Wikipedia article interprets Genesis 45.5-8 in this way:
The brothers were frozen and could not utter a word. He brought them closer and relayed to them the events that had happened and told them not to fear, that what they had meant for evil God had meant for good.
But guess what, folks? The paraphrase at the end is not entirely accurate, though perhaps in some aspects of Christian commentary tradition, this is how they read it. For instance, see John Calvin’s commentary on 45.8 in this link. Calvin, of course, believed in predestination as St. Augustine had, and though he thought mankind depraved, he often praised the goodness of people in the Bible. Genesis 45.5-8 (Geneva, 1560) actually says at this point:
5 Now therefore be not sad, neither grieved with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you for your preservation.
6 For now two years of famine have been through the land, and five years are behind, wherein neither shall be earing nor harvest.
7 Wherefore God sent me before you to preserve your posterity in this land, and to save you alive by a great deliverance.
8 Now then you sent not me hither, but God, who hath made me a father unto Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
There is no mention of evil, no justification of Joseph’s suffering by the author or by him. He simply assures his awful, undeserving brothers that God is with him and that he is his vessel and means of his people’s preservation. He is a ruler over “all the land of Egypt.” That’s the extent of his pride, so to speak. He does not gloat or lord it over the sons of Jacob. If you look at the Calvin commentary link, you’ll see that this seems to be his conclusion, too.
People often do not understand that though the Bible is holy writ to Jews and Christians, it’s also a book with a literary and textual history. The text is endlessly self-referential and interconnected. Commentary traditions that want to link the Old and New Testaments especially have demonstrated the reading method known as typology. This is a method of reading the OT as a harbinger of events in the NT, especially anything having to do with the life, works, theology, death, resurrection, and sayings of Jesus. If you look at a study Bible, you’ll see in the margins textual references that direct you to some other book. It’s amazing how much of Genesis, for example, has been connected to Paul’s epistles, the Gospels, and the Apocalypse of St. John (Revelation).
Some have read Joseph typologically as Christ, since he is lost and found, identifies himself as God’s agent, has prophecis, and is “resurrected” in the sense that his dirtbag brothers toss him in a pit and he gets out of it. Isaac and Jonah have been interpreted this way. It’s no accident that John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan, the river that the Israelites under Moses must cross to enter into the Promised Land. That’s our next unit.
Joseph predates epic, allegory, and romance, the first great and widely-practiced literary forms. Yet there are aspects of this in Genesis. We’ll talk more about this later.
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