Jacob, Joseph and good pharaoh: Dynamics of respect and trust in leadership (Genesis 46–47)

Hallel Fellowship

In this study

1. R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: Find out what it is supposed to mean
2. Genesis 46:1: Why did Ya'akov exclude Abraham from his offering to Elohim before moving to Mitzraim?
3. 'Good and faithful servant' for Egypt and Israel

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: Find out what it is supposed to mean

A common proof passage for respect of governmental authorities is Rom. 13:1-7, although some recent commentators connect this admonition to respect for ecclesiastical rather than civil leadership.¹ We are also given examples that when the governmental or ecclesiastical authority contradicts God’s authority the latter takes priority, even over those who pretend to speak for Heaven.

Respect for one’s parents is a big deal for Heaven — think the Fifth Commandment:

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.”

Exodus 20:12 NASB95

In the Torah reading וַיִּגַּשׁ Vayigash (“he approached,” Genesis 44:18–47:27), Ya’akov (Jacob) respected the God of his fathers Abraham and Yitzkhak (Isaac). In response, Heaven reaffirmed the covenant with Abraham’s third generation.

Yosef was thrown into slavery at the age of 17 and passed around to various masters. Would we have been mature enough at age 17 to see God’s hand in such suffering, as Yosef did? His struggles made him stronger and more mature, and he did not let the sufferings he endured weaken his faith in God (James 1:2-8; 1Pet. 1:7; Heb. 6:12; Luke 21:19).

Egypt was known for its agriculture and her people were farmers, while the Hebrews were shepherds, who lived a nomadic lifestyle, minding their flocks. The two people groups mutually disdained each other to some extent (Gen. 46:34; Ex. 8:26; Josh. 5:9). This is why Yosef ensconced his family up in Goshen, which is located in the Nile Delta area and has the best land for pasture. There are still canals in the area named after Yosef himself that he commissioned to artificially expand the Nile Delta further south to increase Egypt’s inhabitable land and agricultural capacity.

Fortunately for Egypt, God warned them through Yosef about the famine well in advance how to hoarded their agricultural produce for seven years, rather than eating and spending it all. The “father of Egypt” during this time was not Pharaoh, but Yosef (Gen. 45:8).

In Western culture, we have lost a lot of respect for our parents and for our elders, but to Heaven, respect for one’s parents is intimately intertwined with respect for Him.

However, even though Romans 13 tells us that we should endeavor to respect those in authority, we are not called to blindly follow whatever the government tells us to do, particularly if they issue commands that violate our obligations to Heaven and to our fellow man.

It’s embarrassing that many churches in the U.S. and the West blindly followed government edicts to shut down their congregations during the pandemic, using Romans 13 as an excuse. It appears that God blessed the congregations that refused to go along with the government shut downs. Their attendance has returned to pre-pandemic levels, while those churches who obeyed the government rather than God lost attendance and still have not recovered nearly three years after the strictest rules lifted.

Remember when the Apostles were dragged before the Sanhedrin and commanded to stop preaching the good news about the Kingdom of God via Yeshua (Jesus; Acts 5:27-29)? How did they respond? They refused to hide the truth. They refused to hide their light (Matt. 5:14-16). Even when faced with long prison sentences, stoning, scourging and even death, they refuse to recant or be silent. They still met together regularly for worship and fellowship, just as the underground body of believers today meets secretly in places like North Korea, China, Iran and other oppressive nations.

Ya’akov respected the Elohim (God) of his father, Yitzkhak. He reaffirmed the covenant that Abraham and Yitzkhak established with God, that through them, all the nations of the world would be blessed. God also reassured him that it’s safe for Ya’akov to leave Canaan and to live with his son in Egypt, and that the Creator of Heaven and Earth will bring his children back to the land when the time is right.

Ya’akov had to build up his trust in God, just as Abraham and Yitzak did before him. Ya’akov’s trust in God was built up through his wrestling with his brother Esau and then with his uncle Laban and even in his wresting with the ruler of Egypt, which he didn’t know at the time was his son Yosef. Ya’akov had to learn to trust God, through hard work.

This pharaoh respected the Elohim of Yosef, and Ya’akov blessed this pharaoh. But we will see in the Torah reading Shemot that a Pharaoh will rise up who did not respect God (Ex. 5:2). This difference between the two Pharaohs is was day and night, light and darkness.

Genesis 46:1: Why did Ya’akov exclude Abraham from his offering to Elohim before moving to Mitzraim?

So Israel set out with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. “I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes.”

Genesis 46:1–4 NASB95

You have to respect your father before you can respect your grandfather or ancestors, according to ancient Jewish commentators on this verse.

11th century Jewish commentator Rashi: “A man is more obligated to give honor to his father than to his grandfather.”

Michael Carasik. Genesis. The Commentators’ Bible. Accordance electronic edition, version 1.4. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2018.

11th century Jewish commentator Rambam/Nahmanides: “Jacob’s intent was to establish peace between himself and all the different divine aspects, beginning first with the aspect of Might, which was the closest to him. (That is what the expression from Genesis Rabbah cited by Rashi means; you are required to greet the student before you can approach the teacher.)”

Michael Carasik. Genesis. The Commentators’ Bible. Accordance electronic edition, version 1.4. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2018.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: “I circulated among all of the aggada experts in the south so that they would explain this verse [Gen. 46:1] to me, but they could not tell me [the explanation] until I stood with Yehuda ben Pedaya, the son of ben Kappar’s sister. He said to me: ‘If a teacher and disciple are walking on the way, one first inquires after the wellbeing of the disciple, and then one inquires after the wellbeing of the teacher.'”

Rav Huna said: “When Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi came to Tiberias, he asked Rabbi Yoḥanan and Reish Lakish. Rabbi Yoḥanan said: ‘A person is obligated in the honor of his father more than the honor of his grandfather.'”

Genesis Rabbah 94:5 (Jason Rappoport, managing editor. The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, English translation by Joshua Schreier, online, Sefaria.org, 2022. Accessed Jan. 6, 2024.)

Your parents are your first introduction to your family’s traditions and values and if your parents did their job properly, they taught you the family’s legacy that they received from their parents, grandparents, etc.

In cultures such as a number of places in North Asia and Africa, the honor one presents to parents is very literal. Children would prostrate themselves to the floor when greeting one’s parents. They don’t just shake their parents hands, they bow deeply in respect to their parents because their parents are, in a small sense, their creator and just as we owe the Creator of Heaven and Earth great respect, we also owe our parents some of the deference that we give to God.

A groom and his party prostrates before the bride’s parents at a Nigerian wedding. (Image: Herilume Photography)

In Korea and China, every Lunar New Year, they have a special ceremony where the children come and bow deeply before their parents and grandparents to remember where they come from.

On lunar new year’s day in Korea (Seollal), children perform a deep bow (sebae) in front of their elders. (Image: Korean Cultural Centre UK)

Through much of Genesis and even in most of the Torah, God is referred to as the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Yet here, just as Jacob is preparing to go to Egypt, God introduces Himself only as the God of Isaac. Strangely to many commentators, Abraham is not mentioned.

One ancient explanation for that omission is one has to have respect for one’s father before one can really have respect for grandfathers and the elders before them. It’s easy to respect someone who’s not directly involved in your life, but it’s harder to respect someone who’s directly involved in your life. It’s easier to respect the grandparents who are farther away or the ancestors before them who are dead and buried than it is to respect one’s parents who are alive and well and involved in your life. It’s important to first acknowledge the generation that’s right ahead of you, which is your mother and father.

We are the first contact that most people will have with our family and our family’s culture. Are we reflecting it respectfully and accurately? We have lost this imperative in our modern western secular culture. Many of us barely knew our grandfathers and grandmothers. Do we know our great-grandfather or great grand mother? Do we know our great-great-grandfather or grandmother? It’s difficult, do we know anything of what they believed or how they practiced their faith? It’s important to remember where you came from the generation before, rather than just dreaming about the things that happened.

For some of us, there may be some good generational overlap. Some people have active memories of their grandparents and even great-grandparents. But in modern times, there are many who have no generational overlap at all, either due to death or because people often live far away from their extended families.

However, like with Yitzkhak’s wife Rakhel (Rachel), there are some family traditions that need to be left behind and not carried forth, namely the hoarding of the family’s false idols. But the legacy of your whole family and what they stand for, is important to carry on. Every generation has the opportunity to discard the traditions that violate God’s standards and to carry on those that represent our family and God Himself in a proper way.

Ya’akov expressed his respect for God and for his parents. Ya’akov fought tooth and nail to be the one to carry on Yitzak’s legacy of fear, respect and reverence for God to the next generation, which he did, particularly to Yosef but to all his sons, too.

Yosef’s hedge against seduction: Respect for what’s not yours

Yosef also had a legacy of respect in fearing and respecting God. Potiphar respected Yosef and put his entire household, except his wife, into Yosef’s care.

But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge. “There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?”

Genesis 39:8–9 NASB95

Potiphar trusted Yosef so much that he didn’t know anything that was going on in his own home. You have to plan well in advance how you will respond to temptation. If you wait until the temptation is upon you, it’s much harder to resist. The fact that Yosef was able to reject her offer so bluntly, shows his maturity even at his young age, at an age when succumbing to sexual temptation would be so easy.

The Torah distinguishes between assault and adultery/fornication based on whether the fiancee cries out for help and whether the location is rural or urban. If the woman is in the city and doesn’t cry out, she is liable with the alleged attacker (Deut 22:23-34). However, not only is the victim responsible to cry out for help, the witnesses are also responsible to step up and stand up for the victim. If the woman is in a rural area, where rescuers would not be able to hear her, then only the attacker is liable (Deut. 22:25-27).

If the victim is not betrothed, the attacker must marry the woman be financially responsible for her for the rest of his life. There’s no certificate of divorce that can get him out of this. There are real consequences upon any man who does not control his passions.

‘Good and faithful servant’ for Egypt and Israel

In Yosef’s case even after being thrown into prison after the accusation of violating his trusted duty over the household, the warden grew to respect Yosef and put the prison operations under his control (Gen. 39:22).

Pharaoh respected Yosef because of the true interpretation of the dreams (Genesis 41). Imagine how much Pharaoh trusted Yosef’s interpretation to the point that he gave Yosef the power to implement his solution to confront the famine. Imaging trusting a young man who you just dragged up out of a dungeon enough to not only free him from prison but to make him second in command of your entire kingdom? The Apostle Paul said in the book of Romans that God gives everyone the gift of trust and we certainly see that in Pharaoh’s interactions with Yosef.

The pharaoh who knew Yosef was blessed when he put his trust in Yosef and in Yosef’s God. Yet a pharaoh would came along a few generations later who did not know Yosef — and did not learn to respect his Elohim. As a result, Mitzraim suffered great punishments as Heaven made an example of the nation as a witness where the world should really put its trust.

Yosef’s brother Yehudah had a similar learning curve in his interactions with his daughter-in-law Tamar (Genesis 38). Initially out to execute her for adultery against her dead husband’s family line, Yehudah ultimately declared her “more righteous” than himself. He had put her in a position of having to masquerade as a prostitute to fulfill the oath to her husband, caring more about carrying on Yehudah’s name than Yehudah himself did.

Tamar forced Yehudah to step up and fulfill his responsibilities, rather than shirk them. It’s important to stand up for victims and not turn a blind eye to injustice. That experience laid the foundation for how Yehudah steps up to fulfill his responsibility to Benjamin and the rest of his family in the next reading.

Summary: Tammy

1 “(W)hat has bothered commentators, ancient and modern, is that in moving to an apparent exhortation regarding the Roman government officials and their rightful place in God’s over all plan, Paul appears to have made a very abrupt break from his former exhortations which involved ‘one another,’ ‘saints,’ ‘those who rejoice and weep with you,’ and even ‘those who persecute you’ and desire ‘revenge.'” (Tim Hegg, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 2. TorahResource, 2007, p. 393.)