JOSEPH: PRINCE OF EGYPT - SIX

Find here posted, the sixth installment of my Joseph series. The previous five installments can be found in my notes. It is my prayer that those who read will find instruction, revelation, and wisdom therein.

SIX

TIME

Two full years passed. Joseph was still in prison, on a trumped up charge. It would be remiss to gloss over this passage of time. Particularly in the unresolved circumstances Joseph found himself. So much about Joseph’s life involved the profoundly uncomfortable phenomenon of time lapse and denied expectations. As a matter of probability, Joseph would not have been unwise to expect his plight to reach Pharaoh’s ear given the intimacies he shared with that king’s Chief Cupbearer. The sheer impact and accuracy of his interpretation should have made Joseph’s plight a priority for that gentleman. It wasn’t as if Mr. Cupbearer tried and failed. He simply bang awfully forgot.

As time passed, Joseph’s expectation would have dissipated till it turned into disappointment. Surely someone who encountered those two senior officials the way Joseph did would be nothing if not memorable for a long time afterwards. One would have thought that the mere circumstances of the meeting, and companionship that ensued, would be in itself a memory aid. The hope being that people tend to remember those who aided them at their darkest hour. Joseph must have divined that that meeting was a divine appointment, for so it was. And yet, the next logical step, the intercession that could have delivered Joseph was deferred along with the memory of the Chief Cupbearer. So close, and yet so far. Joseph must have beat back some gnarly envious thoughts as he pondered the restoration of the Chief Cupbearer on the back of the interpretation he provided, while he languished in prison.

As the last flicker of the hope of human intervention in his matter died, Joseph must have sought and found succor in his God. To be forgotten in this manner, is the very definition of waiting on God in the absence of any hope except in Him. It was not to be a forlorn hope. The same God who invaded the sleep of the Chief Baker and Chief Cupbearer, went one better and took the sleep out of Pharaoh’s eye. It is said that ‘the heart of kings are like rivers of water, and He turns them whithersoever He wills’. Well, God willed it, even if He took His time. And even those who forgot remembered. You are never alone if you are with God, no matter the situation.

For two years it would have seemed like the interpretation Joseph proffered regarding the Chief Baker and Chief Cupbearer was a wasted effort, so little good did it do him. However, when the time came, that premature consideration evolved dramatically. It now took the profound shape of a dress rehearsal and a preparation for the main thing, well in advance of the time. Nothing done for God is wasted, tarry though it may. Indeed, while Joseph tarried, he added another vital dimension to his already impressive competency in dream interpretation, as we shall soon see. Alas, the period of waiting was nary a time of lassitude. Growth and expertise was being garnered. The vessel was being prepared for the prime hour. If the waiting and tarrying seems a bit too much for you, consider the high stakes and the high office Joseph was about to encounter and enter. The wisdom of that time intensive and thorough preparation is beyond reproach. One may even posit with some justification that time itself is a servant of God.

In keeping with the escalating progression of the dreams that were seminal in indicating the seasons of Joseph’s life, Pharaoh had two dreams. The consistent nature of both the number and mode of these revelations should not be overlooked. When Joseph was a teenager in his father’s house, he had two distinct but similar dreams that gave an indication of his great destiny. While in prison, Pharaoh’s Chief Cupbearer and Chief Baker had had a dream. Joseph accurately interpreted the two dreams. Pharaoh’s two dreams were in keeping with this phenomenon, which as we shall soon see, Joseph adroitly explained.

In Pharaoh’s first dream, he stood by the river Nile, and seven cows, well fed; sleek and fat came out of the river. Following the fat cows came seven other cows, lean, spare and scrawny, also out of the same river. The spare and scrawny cows consumed the sleek and fat cows. In his second dream, Pharaoh saw seven healthy and stout heads of grain growing on a single stalk. Following them were seven lean and blighted heads of grain. The blighted heads of grain proceeded to swallow up the seven healthy heads of grain. The emphatic nature of having two similar dreams and the improbability of the sequence of events he had just dreamt of troubled Pharaoh exceedingly. He made it a policy priority to get to the bottom of it.

Like most powerful potentates of the ancient world, Pharaoh had a staff of soothsayers, magicians, wise men, enchanters and prognosticators; whose job it was to explain metaphysical phenomena of this very sort. This time however, they were stumped. None of them could offer Pharaoh any help or direction thereto. With the royal palace in an uproar over the failure of the esteemed and eminent counselors, the Chief Cupbearer remembered whom it was he had forgotten. He spoke up. He first admitted his forgetfulness and then reminded Pharaoh of the period of imprisonment he had endured a few years ago. He explained that there was a young Hebrew servant of the Captain of Pharaoh’s Guard who was incarcerated with them and who accurately interpreted both his dream and that of his erstwhile colleague, the former Chief Baker. Thus, timing and remembrance embraced with divine precision.

Joseph had no knowledge of the circumstances that preceded the summons he was about to get. Long past the time when his hope for a reprieve through the instrumentality of the Chief Cupbearer, Joseph did not have any idea of sequence of events that would soon alter his destiny dramatically and with resolute finality. Observe then the juxtaposition of time lapse and lost hope on one hand and the destiny changing sovereign workings of God on the other. All was not as it may have looked or seemed to Joseph. Even as he lived in one concrete and physical reality, another reality just as substantial was about to replace it and take its place. Reality, one might say then, is defined by Divine purpose, timing and order; for in the end all other realities must yield to it.