Genesis 39:1

The last verse of chapter 37 and the first verse of chapter 39 belong together. The story of Judah comes in between, a complete twenty years on its own. "At that time" only marks the general period, and the whole story is given in one piece. Scripture does this very often. Joseph is a remarkable picture of Christ; Judah is the ancestor Christ came from as a man.

What a change for him! He had been first and dearest in his father's love. Then his own brothers attacked him and wanted him dead, and now he is a slave in Egypt! Had the messages God gave him in his dreams made him independent of everything that came from man, whether love or hatred, and dependent only on God? If they had, he needed that now. And that, without doubt, was the value of the discipline he was going through.

Strange that he had dreamed of future greatness, and here he was, brought low, sold twice over for a few pieces of silver, and held as a slave in a foreign land.

The man who bought him was Potiphar, the captain of the guard. So this put Joseph in a place of real danger on the one hand, but close to Pharaoh on the other. Things began to work together for his final good, though that was in no way clear at the time.

Notice how far the trial of Joseph went. God's ordering kept it within limits, so that nothing in it could hinder His purpose. The trial was meant to frustrate that purpose, and it seemed to be completely against it. Yet that trial, and his righteous suffering in Egypt, brought about the very thing they seemed to stop. The Egypt his brothers sold him into, and the prison Potiphar put him in, led him to the butler and the baker — and that set him as governor over all the land of Egypt. We cannot put God out of His way. It is better to trust Him.

Every trial he passes through is only one more stage in the path that leads to glory. So is the way his brothers treated him, the slavery in the Egyptian's house, the false accusations of Potiphar's wife, Pharaoh's prison, and the neglect of Pharaoh's butler. His work as a shepherd, his errand to his brothers, and his service in Potiphar's house and in Pharaoh's prison are preparing him to use power in the day of his glory. The service in the trials prepares him for the right use of glory.

While Reuben was away, Judah took the lead in pulling him out and selling him to the Ishmaelites, who then sold him to an Egyptian master. What a foreshadowing of Christ, who suffered first from a faithless Judah, and then from the nations outside Israel as well! God's own history tells the future as truly in the pictures given in the law as in the heartfelt cries of the Psalms, or in the prophets who speak more directly.