Joseph

The name Joseph belongs first to the eleventh son of Jacob, the patriarch whose Egyptian career carries the family of Israel through famine into slavery and out again. The same name is borne in the New Testament by the husband of Mary and by Joseph of Arimathaea, the councilor who buries Jesus. The patriarch is the principal entry; UPDV's coverage is uneven in the New Testament, so the patriarchal narrative bears most of the weight.

Birth and a Father's Favoritism

Rachel bears Joseph at the close of Jacob's service to Laban, naming him after her own petition: "she named him Joseph, saying, Yahweh add to me another son" (Gen 30:24). The name is thus a prayer for further sons, not a backward look. When Esau approaches in Gen 33, Jacob arranges his household defensively, and "Rachel and Joseph" come last (Gen 33:2) — already singled out for protection.

By the time Joseph is seventeen the favoritism is open: "Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors" (Gen 37:3). Joseph's report on his half-brothers (Gen 37:2) and two prophetic dreams of family obeisance (Gen 37:5-11) sharpen the brothers' resentment to the point of murderous intent.

Sold into Egypt

The brothers strip Joseph of the coat, throw him into a pit, and at Judah's instigation sell him to a passing caravan: "they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty [shekels of] silver. And they brought Joseph into Egypt" (Gen 37:28). The bloodied coat is brought back to Jacob, who concludes that "an evil beast has devoured him" and refuses to be comforted (Gen 37:33-35). Joseph is purchased in Egypt by "Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard" (Gen 37:36; Gen 39:1).

The Psalter compresses the trajectory: "He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a slave: His feet they hurt with fetters: His soul was laid in iron, Until the time that his word came to pass, [The Speech of] Yahweh tried him" (Ps 105:17-19).

Yahweh's Presence in Potiphar's House and in Prison

UPDV marks the divine accompaniment with the bracketed Speech-formula: "And [the Speech of] Yahweh was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man" (Gen 39:2). Potiphar sees as much, sets him "Overseer of the House," and "the blessing of Yahweh was on all that he had, in the house and in the field" (Gen 39:4-5). When Potiphar's wife propositions him with the verb UPDV renders "Plow me" (Gen 39:7), Joseph refuses on covenant grounds: "how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Gen 39:9).

Falsely accused, Joseph is jailed; the same divine companionship resumes: "But [the Speech of] Yahweh was with Joseph, and showed kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison" (Gen 39:21). The keeper hands the running of the prison over to him because "[the Speech of] Yahweh was with him; and that which he did, Yahweh made it to prosper" (Gen 39:23).

Pharaoh's Dreams and the Vizierate

Pharaoh, troubled by paired dreams of cattle and grain, sends for the imprisoned interpreter (Gen 41:14). Joseph deflects credit at the outset: "It is not in me: God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace" (Gen 41:16). He explains the seven good years and the seven of famine, then offers Pharaoh administrative counsel — appoint overseers, levy a fifth, store grain in the cities (Gen 41:25-36).

Pharaoh's response is theological as well as political: "Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the spirit of God?" (Gen 41:38). He elevates Joseph to second in the kingdom, gives him the signet ring, robes him in fine linen, sets a gold chain on his neck, and renames him: "And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphenath-paneah; and he gave him as wife Asenath, the daughter of Poti-phera priest of On" (Gen 41:42-45). Joseph is thirty years old when he stands before Pharaoh (Gen 41:46).

The Famine Administration

To Asenath two sons are born before the famine — Manasseh, "for [he said], God has made me forget all my toil," and Ephraim, "for God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction" (Gen 41:51-52). When the seven lean years come, "in all the land of Egypt there was bread" (Gen 41:54), and Pharaoh's standing instruction to the Egyptians is, "Go to Joseph; what he says to you⁺, do" (Gen 41:55).

The narrative reports the policy in unsoftened terms: Joseph gathers all the silver of Egypt and Canaan into Pharaoh's house (Gen 47:14); when silver is gone, he buys the cattle (Gen 47:16-17); when the cattle are gone, he buys the people and the land (Gen 47:20-21), exempting only the priests, "for the priests had a portion from Pharaoh" (Gen 47:22). The standing tax — a fifth to Pharaoh — is fixed "as a statute concerning the land of Egypt to this day" (Gen 47:26). The people themselves frame the transaction as deliverance: "You have saved our lives" (Gen 47:25).

Reconciliation with His Brothers

Joseph's brothers come to Egypt to buy grain (Gen 42-44). When the disclosure finally breaks, it is private and overwhelming: "Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all those who stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brothers" (Gen 45:1). His self-revelation rests on a providential reading of his own captivity: "for God sent me before you⁺ to preserve life... So now it wasn't you⁺ who sent me here, but God: and he has made me 'Father of Pharaoh,' and 'Lord of All His House,' and 'Ruler Over All The Land of Egypt'" (Gen 45:5, 8). He embraces Benjamin, weeps with each brother, and arranges Jacob's removal to Goshen.

In Goshen Joseph gives them "a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded" and nourishes the entire household through the remaining famine years (Gen 47:11-12).

After Jacob's Death

When Jacob dies, Joseph leads a great Egyptian funeral procession back to the cave of Machpelah (Gen 50:1-14). The brothers, fearing reprisal now that their father is gone, send a message: "Forgive, I pray you now, the transgression of your brothers" (Gen 50:17). Joseph weeps, then articulates the providential frame again: "Don't be afraid: for am I in the place of God? And as for you⁺, you⁺ meant evil against me; but [the Speech of] God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive" (Gen 50:19-20).

He lives to see Ephraim's grandchildren and Machir's sons "born on Joseph's knees" (Gen 50:23). Before dying he extracts an oath: "God will surely visit you⁺, and you⁺ will carry up my bones from here" (Gen 50:25). "So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt" (Gen 50:26). The oath is honored centuries later — "And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him" (Ex 13:19) — and the bones are finally buried in Shechem, "in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor... and they became the inheritance of the sons of Joseph" (Jos 24:32). Hebrews remembers him for this very act of forward faith: "By faith Joseph, when his end was near, made mention of the departure of the sons of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones" (Heb 11:22).

Joseph's Sons and the Tribal Inheritance

The Chronicler explains the tribal arithmetic: Reuben loses the firstborn portion through the defilement of his father's couch, "his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph the son of Israel," though Judah retains the leadership line (1Ch 5:1-2). Moses' blessing extends Joseph's name corporately to that double inheritance: "And of Joseph he said, Blessed of Yahweh be his land, For the precious things of heaven, for the dew, And for the deep that crouches beneath" — concluding "And they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, And they are the thousands of Manasseh" (De 33:13, 17).

Joseph in the Sapiential and Apocryphal Memory

Ben Sira places Joseph in his roll of honored ancestors with a question and a single odd line: "Like Joseph was there ever a man born? His body was also visited" (Sir 49:15). The clause about his body refers, by way of Gen 50:25 and Ex 13:19, to the carrying up of his bones — a continuing testimony to Israel's presence with him in death. 1 Maccabees compresses the prison-to-vizierate arc into a single moral exemplum: "Joseph in the time of his distress kept the commandment, And he was made lord of Egypt" (1Ma 2:53).

Joseph the Husband of Mary

UPDV's coverage of this Joseph is sharply limited. Matthew is renumbered and only Matthew 1:1-17 is retained, so the narrative material — the angelic dream, the flight to Egypt, the return to Nazareth — is not in UPDV. The genealogy preserves him in two places: "and Jacob begot Joseph; and Joseph begot Jesus, who is called Christ, from Mary" (Mt 1:16), and Luke's parallel: "And Jesus was about thirty years of age. He was known as: the son of Joseph, the [son] of Eli" (Lu 3:23). Luke 1-2 is also missing in UPDV, so the betrothal, journey to Bethlehem, and presentation of Jesus in the temple cannot be cited from this translation. UPDV preserves only the Nazareth crowd's startled identification of the adult Jesus as "Joseph's son" (Lu 4:22).

Joseph of Arimathaea

The fourth Joseph in UPDV's range is the councilor who buries Jesus. With Acts and John 19:36-21:25 also out of UPDV scope, Mark carries the central account: "there came Joseph of Arimathaea, a councilor of honorable estate, who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly went in to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus" (Mk 15:43). Pilate verifies the death, "granted the corpse to Joseph" (Mk 15:45), and Joseph wraps the body in linen and lays it in a rock-hewn tomb (Mk 15:46). Luke's parallel, where UPDV does carry it, is harmonized to Mark's wording but identifies the same man and the same act (Lu 23:50-53).