What appeared to be a mere gathering of shepherds now convened in a certain tent in Goshen, Mizraim. Nothing in the rustic trappings betrayed the significance, or even alluded to the truth that here at this time the fate of Gentile nations would be decided, that mighty empire after empire would be struck down and thrown into Hades to everlasting contempt and punishment, while the nation born of Jacob would flourish and triumph after many a sore trial, though many times it seemed its very existence would be snuffed out by more powerful neighbors. As would be expected at such a convocation, the greatest among men were in attendance. The questions that would form the business of the meeting were of such cosmic repercussion that the Almighty Himself, the Majesty on high, decided who would be invited. Julius Caesar, if he had lived then, would not have been called. Neither would Alexander the Great? No such men were worthy or great enough. Sooner that doorkeepers would walk in and take the seats of honor than the likes of Julius Caesar or Alexander appear in this seat of power!
Two majestic figures, one visible to human eyes, the other not, were present when the great Blessings were bestowed by the Patriarch Jacob upon his sons, good and bad. Unable to forget their transgressions, he, with the notable exceptions of Joseph and Judah, cursed rather than blessed, and so a second Patriarch, even greater than himself, was necessary to be present to amend and turn the curses into blessings that would give the sons and their descendants hope and a future.
Why should a father curse his own sons? What could they have done to provoke him so?
They sinned against him and his son Joseph so grievously in years past Jacob could not die without punishing them. Though forgiven by Joseph and treated royally by the brother they had sold into slavery, Jacob certainly never forgot what had been done to him and his favorite by them. Only Benjamin was innocent of their foul play, and Jacob referred to them as “archers” who had shot at Joseph, in his blessing of Joseph. Though he possessed no means to punish them, other than lay something like verbal whips upon the backs of the worst offenders, Jacob’s God could render due retribution and correction.
To the end of Joseph’s lifespan of 110 years the brothers went unpunished, though they, when their father died, were afraid he would turn on them now that their father was gone. But a Pharaoh could punish them! A Pharaoh came to power after Joseph’s death “who knew not Joseph.” This pharaoh was native, not foreign-blooded as the pharaohs in Joseph’s time had been, and he paid respects to foreigners, among whom Joseph surely was numbered.
He turned hostile and suspicious eyes upon the Israelite tribes living in his kingdom. With him began a program of reducing the free, well-to-do Israelites to slaves. Three hundred years later, in Moses’s time, the God of Israel would decide that enough was enough.
He would liberate them with such glorious exploits of divine power that the world would never forget what He had done to deliver His people Israel-—thus the brothers’ sin against Joseph, the subsequent move of Jacob to Egypt, the long sojourn in that land, the oppression of the Israelites by the Pharaoh, and the great liberation by the hand of Almighty God—were all in God’s plan, woven into a gigantic tapestry that covered the earth from Ur of Shinar, to Aram in the north, to Ken’an the Promised Land, to Mizraim of the Pharaohs, and thence back to the Promised Land.
If Jacob was the only Patriarch visibly present on the scene of the Blessings, who was the other figure, the greater Blesser of Israel?
Only the Lord God could bring them together, being the only One who can see beginning, middle, and end in one whole. He foreknew the Blesser who would come over four hundred years after Jacob’s death, himself a descendant of Jacob. The Lord not only foreknew, he could bring forth the very spirit of the yet unborn man—and so it was done.
Moses appeared, not visibly, but in spirit within the tent of Jacob when the old, dying Patriarch gathered his sons to give his last testament.
The sons, now mature men with gray in their hair, all dignified in appearance and no longer looking like evil-doing brothers bent on fratricide, were, nevertheless, not anxious to attend. They feared Jacob’s vengeance for their misdeeds.
Expecting no mercy, they came grudgingly, but they obeyed and assembled—Gad, Levi, Reuben the firstborn, Naphtali, Asher, Zebulun, Issachar, Judah, Simeon, Dan, with Joseph and Benjamin already present.
Propped on the many pillows and wool-stuffed bolsters of his bed, Jacob was visibly very weak, ill and dying. How little did he look like a man reputed to have wrestled with an angel at the Brook Jabbok, when Esau his brother was about to meet him on the morrow with six hundred armed men on horses! Everyone present knew the old story, how Jacob had won a blessing by not letting the Angel go until he received it, though the Angel had struck lameness into Jacob's thighbone.
A chief sign of approaching death, days before he had lost all appetite and could not be forced to eat anything except to sip some water now and then. How long would he live? A few more hours, a day possibly? The whole camp waited expectantly, not fearing his death but knowing it was a certainty. Jacob was full of years, and had many sons, and would die with honor, even though in a foreign land. God had prospered him greatly. Only Joseph was richer in goods, being second in authority and power beneath the land’s ruler, the mighty Pharaoh.
Jacob, being the father of such a great man next to the Pharaoh in power and weath, might have demanded a splendid court for himself, but he despised any show of rank, and so he kept to his simple tent all his last years, preferring the humble way of his people above the pomp and glory of the Mizraimites among whom he and his people abode.
Being without fear of their beloved father’s wrath, Joseph and Benjamin knelt, weeping before their father. Judah, too, lay down before his father, his hands outstretched, while all the other brothers hung back, their eyes telling that the whole story with them.
Jacob had to be given some water mixed with an herb to drink before he could find strength to speak. A servant girl held his hand and another supported his head on the pillow.
Fortunately, he named Napthali, who was not one of the worst of the lot, by any means. He had followed his evil older brothers in the sin of Shechem, but he was a follower and that was his fault, not the wickedness of heart and the cruelty that Simeon and Levi had fully displayed.
Father Jacob:
“Naphtali is a hind let loose; he giveth godly words.” That was all Jacob could say for some time, for even this little exhausted him.
The invisible Moses speaking only to God and the recording angels’ ears then said:
“ O Naphtali, satisfied with favor, and full with the blessing of the Lord; possess thou the West and the South.”
Even without hearing Moses, this was a good beginning, much better than expected, and the brothers took heart. Perhaps it would go well with them after all, they thought. Exchanging glances, they relaxed, maybe a bit too much.
Jacob continued when he had regathered strength and Asher, called, came and knelt before him just as Napthali had done:
“Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.”
Now the brothers were sure they wouldn’t be sorely chastened. The evil, dark cloud hovering over their heads seemed to have been blown completely away!
Moses:
“Let Asher be blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his heel in oil; their shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.”
Jacob signed for Judah to come forward, and when Judah came and lay at his father’s feet, Jacob said:
“ Thou are he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up; he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes; his eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.”
Moses:
“Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people; let his hands be sufficient for him, and be thou an help to him from his enemies.”
It was Gad’s turn. He came and knelt, but did not throw himself prostrate as Judah had done.
Jacob:
“A troop shall overcome him; but he shall overcome at the last.”
Well, as long as things ended reasonably well, he could live with that, Gad decided. He shrugged, and went back to his place to hear the other “blessings.”
Moses:
“ Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad; he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the head. And he provideth the first part for himself, because there, in a portion of the lawgiver, when he seated; and he came with the heads of the people, he executeth the justice of the Lord, and his judgments with Israel.”
Despite the ambivalent blessing laid upon his brother, Dan stepped forth for his desserts. Strong and resolute, flourishing in his prime of life, he smiled down on the patriarch, ready for anything the old one could dish out.
Jacob:
“Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, that biteth the horse’s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.”
Not bad for a blessing! Dan must have thought, for he swaggered away, making way for the next brother. “Will my brothers fare better?” he thought, smiling.
Moses (almost the echo of a chime):
“Dan is a lion’s whelp; he shall leap from Bashan.“
Having watched Dan closely, Simeon and Levi now rushed boldly forward for their blessing. All fears were gone, they expected similar blessings, if not better. What a relief that the sword of Jacob had turned into a father’s loving caress instead! It was, they thought, a miracle of old, sick age that had changed him so greatly! He was no longer his old, grudge-keeping self!
Jacob:
"Simeon and Levi are brethren, instruments of cruelty are their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self will thy digged down a well. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.”
Then all Israel put on sackcloth, threw ashes on their heads, and mourned. Joseph gave commands and Jacob was embalmed, the priests of Mizraim taking forty days to complete the embalming.
When the forty days of mourning and embalming were completed, with many Mizraimites also joining in the mourning for the great father of Joseph, Joseph went to the Pharaoh and said, “If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you. My father made me swear, saying, ‘Lo, I die. In my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Ken’an, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again to you, O Pharaoh.”
So Joseph went to bury his father, and took the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of the people of Israel, and even elders of the Pharaoh’s people. Only the little ones and the flocks did Joseph leave behind in Mizraim in the land of Goshen.
Chariots and horsemen went with Joseph’s company, so that it was a great caravan, the greatest in the East in size and power. Carrying the coffin of Jacob, the caravan journeyed to the threshing floor of Atad, and there they camped, and mourned for seven days, since this place lay within the borders of the land God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And the inhabitants, the Ken’nanites were so impressed that they renamed the place Abel-mizraim, which meant the “Mourning of Mizraim.”
Thus, Joseph reaffirmed the Promises of God to his fathers and to the people of Israel, prophesying that such events would come to pass as the “visitation” by God, the bringing them out from Mizraim by God, and the entering into the Promised Land.
Did he know of the bondage that was coming for his people? Surely, he did. He knew what God had said to father Abraham: “Know of a surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be slaves there, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation which they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Jacob, too, knew what God said to his grandfather Abraham, so he was most reluctant to go down to Mizraim, even when called by his beloved son Joseph.
Only God’s reassurance of him gave him strength and resolve to go.
Thousands of years would pass.
The land promised to the spiritual Seed of Abraham was split by the sons of Ishmael and the descendants of Jacob, with the land about Shechem passing to Ishmaelite descendants.
Always a bone of contention, and especially so in the Time of Jacob’s Trouble, the Jewish Tomb of Joseph outside the site of ancient Shechem became a prime point of parley and discussion in the final round of talks leading to the peace treaty forged by the peace emissary representing the EU.
The tomb was to be shared by both parties—Israeli (Jew) and “Palestinian” (Arab)—promising a just and equal share to each party. But the peace of man could never be enforced, even with a sword. So Joseph’s bitterly contested tomb and the field lying about it remained in hands other than Israeli until the Coming of Yeshua, who inaugurated the peace of God and a reign of divine equity.
