Joseph in the Egyptian Marketplace
An economic migrant story: Faith-driven cultural engagement and skill acquisition
In Joseph’s forced migration from Canaan to Egypt, having been sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph was displaced from familial ethnic surroundings and his family’s animal husbandry operations, and cruelly plunged into Egyptian society, the agricultural, military, and financial superpower of that historical era.
The biblical account casts the spotlight on Yahweh’s providence throughout Joseph’s circumstances, and the eventual deliverance of God’s people through Joseph’s participation in the dramatic account of Genesis chapters 37 to 50.
Though low in specifics on the everyday details of Joseph’s survival in the Egyptian society, a consideration of the historical social-economic context, and a study of Joseph’s character and adaptiveness evidenced in scripture, showed faith in Yahweh was his only reliance, as he endured personal and career hardships in his first and second employments, and was granted favor to achieve success in his third career.
#1. In Potiphar’s Employment – Logistics, Finance, and Resource Management
It must have been a shock for a young boy to be wrested from comfort into slavery. Prized son of his father, turned slave for sale. No longer garbed in colors that signified his position in his family, he must have had to learn the posture and prose of a slave.
Scripture does not record the beginning year of his slavery, nor the time it took to rise to prominence in Potiphar’s home. What transpired within those years was Joseph’s on-the-job learning to acquire the knowledge of household logistics. We would be well served to consider the extent of the household, and the number of family members, servants, and guards that would have to be provisioned in a timely and sufficient way. From a shepherding background, Joseph would have to learn from scratch, and through mistakes and failures, the financial systems of Egypt, to ensure the smooth supply of household products, and the soft skills needed to understand the hierarchical dynamics, to set up Potiphar to succeed in his duties to serve Pharaoh.
Understanding Joseph’s trust in God should not allow us to belittle the effort he would have put into being proficient in his duties. The application for today’s Christian? We live in our various contexts in the marketplace. There is, in some, the desire to live in yesteryear, a glorification of the past endeavours of saints gone past. While we aspire to model their faithfulness and trust in God, we must engage in today’s marketplace through a continual pursuit of learning and the upkeep of relevant skills, thereby helping us excel in our vocation. This is not a pursuit of prosperity, but a posture of preparedness for service. As we observed in Joseph’s life, his excellence in his vocation and his faithfulness to God resulted in persecution that led to a jail term. No promise of prosperity here.
#2. In the Jailer’s Employment – Institutional Administration & People Management
Prison, a second career not of his choosing. The author of Genesis does not record the length of time Joseph spent behind bars, a sentence administered by the Egyptian legal system based solely on the charges of Potiphar’s wife, a woman, presumably of high society standing. Disadvantaged and maligned, he would have been a pariah in his beginning season in jail. We have no biblical statement on the verdict of his sentence. However, the observation of the jailer’s trust in Joseph alludes to a possible conclusion of Joseph’s innocence from the indictment. It would make no sense otherwise for the jailer to have such complete trust in someone guilty of the charge.
In his jail-term endeavor, Joseph had to acquire an understanding of the legal framework, the prison’s institutional administration protocol, and also muster the courage to enforce inmate management policies. If we recall Joseph’s relational skills in his privileged childhood, he was not popular among his brothers. Now surrounded by hardened felons and political convicts, it would have been hard work for Joseph to grind away potential rigidity in his interpersonal relationship skills, and be adept at managing an institution of prisoners.
The application to today’s believers? In the changing economic currents of our generation, some segment of Christians may be forced into second careers not of their choosing, surviving with much difficulty and discomfort. The Christian’s yoke is light and easy when it is pulled in a Godward direction. Consider your calling to suffer in light of Joseph’s imprisonment, and examine the sharpening that God's sovereign plan aimed to bring into your sanctification.
#3. In Pharaoh’s Employment – Economic Strategy & Political Relations
A recommendation of national importance by Pharaoh’s cupbearer thrust Joseph into a third career of significant impact in his adopted land of residence, Egypt, and his fatherland, Israel. Through the deciphering of Pharaoh’s dream, seven years of great agricultural and economic abundance, followed by seven years of crippling drought, Joseph’s third career, at least 14 years, saw Yahweh’s orchestration in granting Joseph a political role in pagan Egypt. Pharaoh’s imperial signet ring authorized Joseph’s quick ascension onto the political stage of Egypt. Former convicted slave turned economic czar, A Hebrew Vizier, a historic first.
The formulation of economic strategy to stockpile the abundance of the initial seven seven years, required an acute sense of logistics & supply chain, resource management, and a finance policy that would utilize commodities to exchange for enhanced political standing, in this case, the servitude of the masses of Egypt to Pharoah, and the reliance of neighboring nations on Egypt’s trade surplus and aid. One can only imagine the politically charged environment in which the Egyptian nobility must submit to such an outsider. How often would Joseph have to stomach court intrigue and passive dissent as he carried out his duties and, in later years, received his family into the land of Egypt?
Today, Egyptian history records no account of a Hebrew Vizier called Joseph. Consider how, in your vocation, you are called to faithfulness in your present role, for your present time, for the benefit of your present community. In faithfully serving in his marketplace role for his generation, Joseph’s action saw the deliverance of his father’s people from devastation and kept the nation of Israel in Yahweh’s continued plan for them.
