Commentaries and Podcasts

On Genesis, Part 59: The End of the Beginning

The first and last books of the Bible are its most important books. The book of Genesis is the story of the origin of our race, and the Revelation is the story of its destiny after its reconciliation to Christ. The entire purpose in the interim, is succinctly described by Solomon, in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 where he wrote that “13 … I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” With this, Paul of Tarsus agreed, and upon it he expounded, in Romans chapter 8 where he wrote: “18 Therefore I consider that the happenstances of the present time are not of value, looking to the future honor to be revealed to us. 19 Indeed in earnest anticipation the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of Yahweh. 20 To transientness the creation was subjected not willingly, but on account of He who subjected it in expectation 21 that also the creation itself shall be liberated from the bondage of decay into the freedom of the honor of the children of Yahweh.” By “creation” in that passage, Paul meant the Adamic creation, since later in the chapter he compared that creation to other elements of the creation of God.

So while the Greek word γένεσις means origin or beginning, and the book of Genesis describes the origin and beginning of our race, the Revelation describes the beginning of the end. While Genesis contains the promises to our race, the Revelation reveals how Yahweh God shall keep those same promises. Here as the book of Genesis closes, it offers an uncertain future for the children of Israel since it has already warned that they would be afflicted in Egypt, in the promises which Yahweh had made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. But in the final chapters of the Revelation, that end is described as having a more promising future, where it offers yet another beginning and the promise of something much greater than what this world has offered, although we continue to remain uncertain as to how that shall materialize.

On Genesis, Part 58: Premonitions

As we have already discussed at length where Jacob had first blessed the sons of Joseph in Genesis chapter 48, thereby leaving his favorite son with the inheritance of The Double Portion, Jacob was ill and he knew that he was about to die, at the age of a hundred and forty-seven years, which was some time around 1648 BC. While Abraham had lived to be a hundred and seventy-five years old, and Isaac lived even longer, having attained a hundred and eighty years, the typical lifespans of men in general seem to have been gradually getting shorter over the many centuries which followed the Flood of Noah, and now at this point it has been fifteen hundred and thirty-eight years since that event had occurred. Following the death of his father, at which time he was about fifty-seven years old, Joseph would live to be only a hundred and ten, although Levi lived for a hundred and thirty-seven years and his son Kohath for a hundred and thirty-three (Exodus 6:16-18).

Perhaps Joseph’s shorter lifespan could be seen as an act of mercy by Yahweh God, rather than as a curse, as life gets more difficult for men as they advance in age. It certainly is evident that Jacob did not want to live as long as he did, and when he had first arrived in Egypt, at the age of a hundred and thirty, and he was reunited with Joseph, he is recorded in Genesis chapter 46 as having said to him: “30... Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.” But perhaps Yahweh kept Jacob alive for another seventeen years so that Ephraim and Manasseh could receive his blessing as young men, rather than as young boys. The fact that Joseph and his two sons were blessed first by Jacob, and apart from the others, is quite significant, since they were the recipients not only of the double-portion of the inheritance, but they had also explicitly received the greater promises which were made to Abraham, and passed on to Jacob.

On Genesis, Part 57: The Double Portion

Where we had left off with our commentary at the end of Genesis chapter 47, it had been determined that the sons of Israel would dwell in the land of Goshen, and it was also evident that the famine had, at least for the most part, run its course, so that Joseph was renting the land of Egypt back to the people so long as they paid pharaoh the fifth part of their annual yields. Seeing that, we remarked that a twenty-percent levy was far more equitable than the oppressive taxes which men in a supposedly “free” world are forced to pay to their respective governments today. But home ownership in this “free” world is a separate issue from today’s taxes, and people do not get it from the government. Instead, they acquire their homes from Jewish usurers, and the typical rental or mortgage rates are far higher than a fifth of the median income. Therefore by comparison, Joseph’s management of Egypt actually sounds quite appealing, and so does the medieval feudal system which it resembles.

At the end of that last presentation, we had a lengthy discussion about the wife of Joseph, Asenath, and we were obliged to discredit the assertions made by Howard Rand and others, that she, as well as Joseph’s pharaoh, were of the house of Shem. There is no proof of that assertion, and Rand did not provide any conclusive proofs in the articles where he had made it. Rather, we demonstrated that the evidence which he did offer as proof doesn’t actually support his assertions at all. The reference to a shepherd named Philitis which was made by Herodotus had described him as a common shepherd, and certainly not as a king. The Hyksos which were described differently as either “shepherd kings” or “captive shepherds” in the copies of the writings of Manetho which had been employed by Flavius Josephus were only one and the same group which was described in two different ways in two different copies of the manuscripts of those writings which Josephus had possessed. They were clearly not two different groups, as Rand had insisted, but one group which was associated with the late 15th Dynasty of Egypt, and according to our chronology, Joseph had received Asenath as a wife not long after he was thirty years old, which is at least forty years before that dynasty had taken control of Lower Egypt.

On Genesis, Part 56: Subjects of the State

In March of 2009, one of the first articles I had published on the Christogenea website, which at that time was only two months old, was titled Who is your god? The article was actually written a year or so before I created the website. In June of 2018, that same article became the basis for Part 39 of my presentation of the Protocols of Satan, which bore the same title. The premise of the article is that America had begun as a Christian nation, but was slowly secularized and descended into humanism. Then, when the trial of the so-called Great Depression had come, Americans looked to the government for their salvation rather than to Christ. So the government, beginning with the so-called New Deal of the Roosevelt administration, was happy to oblige them, instituting many new social programs which had promised to save Americans out of their poverty, and assure their futures. As Americans accepted this new paradigm of government, the government became more and more powerful and more pervasive in the daily lives of the people. However poverty never ended, and instead, in the growth of the federal government which followed, now all Americans are enslaved under increasingly burdensome regulations by the resulting tyranny.

In this same manner we find one more prophetic type in these very chapters of Genesis which we now discuss. We have already mentioned this in brief, but thought that perhaps we should repeat it again here, and elaborate upon it in different ways. So in our last discussion in this Commentary, in relation to Genesis chapter 46 and the account of Israel’s Descent into Egypt, we described the seven kingdoms represented by seven mountains upon which the children of Israel, herself having been represented as a woman, would sit throughout the course of her history, as it is prophesied in Revelation chapter 17. There we further explained how Egypt had been the very first of those kingdoms. Here the children of Israel certainly are sitting upon the mountain of Egypt in that manner, as they have come to Egypt in order to survive the famine, which may be likened to an ancient Great Depression, and they would find their sustenance at the good graces of an earthly kingdom represented by the pharaoh.

On Genesis, Part 55: The Descent into Egypt

As we may have already stated too frequently over these past several presentations in this Genesis commentary, we hope to have illustrated all of the ways in which Joseph was a prophetic type for Yahshua Christ, and the salvation of the children of Israel which is promised in Christ. However even more parallels may be made in this regard, and other avenues may be explored. Here, the children of Israel attained salvation from the famine because they had obeyed a worldly ruler, but even if they did not know it at the time, that ruler was Joseph their brother.

Then, while they were indeed preserved in Egypt, at the same time, and unbeknownst to Joseph himself, they were also being led into captivity in fulfillment of the words which Yahweh had spoken to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15 where we read: “13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.”

On Genesis, Part 54: Salvation and Mercy

Discussing Genesis chapters 42 and 43, where it is described that a grievous famine had persisted throughout the world of Jacob and his sons, we have commented at length on the Angst and Desperation that they must have suffered on account of it, as well as the Surrender and Submission that they were compelled to make before the governor of Egypt, so that they could obtain food and survive the famine. But upon their having done that, they were a special case, because Joseph had recognized them and treated them accordingly, but they did not recognize Joseph. The Scriptures were always written with a focus on the central characters with which it is concerned. So what we are not told in Scripture is that in the background, many other people from Canaan must have also journeyed to Egypt seeking to buy grain, and that must have also been how Jacob had initially even heard that there was grain in Egypt. But those who had bought it and traded it in Canaan would have sold it at a considerable markup, and for that reason it is very likely that Jacob had wanted his sons to go to Egypt and buy it for themselves.

Now here in Genesis chapter 44, before they would attain to any Salvation and Mercy, from their perspective the prospects of emerging from the famine unscathed must have been even more dismal, since at this point in Genesis, Benjamin had been charged with having stolen the governor’s silver goblet. However, as we had described the prophetic parallels with the history of the later children of Israel in relation to Christ which are found throughout these accounts, this situation also serves as a lesson for Christians today.

On Genesis, Part 53: Surrender and Submission

As we have progressed through these later chapters of Genesis and the life of Joseph in Egypt, we have attempted to illustrate the many ways in which events in the life of Joseph had been Figures of the Messiah, where it becomes evident that the account of the life of Joseph serves as a prophetic type for the ministry and purpose of Yahshua Christ. Now here we shall also venture to assert that the very circumstances under which Jacob and his sons had been compelled to submit to Joseph and go to Egypt for salvation from the famine also foreshadow the circumstances by which all of the seed of Israel, in these last times, shall ultimately find their salvation in Christ. So in that manner, Jacob and his sons are a prophetic type for their own future descendants.

First, Israel was found in Angst and Desperation as the seven years of famine pressed on, and even more so when his sons had returned from Egypt and he received word that the governor of the place had demanded to see Benjamin. The anxiety which he apparently must have suffered was on account of the famine, and then the prospect of losing his son, which is manifest where he said “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away”, in response to Reuben’s pleas. So Jacob steadfastly refused to comply with the Egyptian governor’s demands and vowed to Reuben that “my son shall not go down with you”, referring to Benjamin in the closing verse of Genesis chapter 42. In that same place, he also attested that “his brother is dead”, speaking in reference to Joseph. Where he said “Simeon is not”, it is evident that he would have even preferred to have written Simeon off as dead rather than risk losing the second son born of his beloved wife Rachel.

On Genesis, Part 52: Angst and Desperation

As we have illustrated in our discussions of each of the events in the life of Jacob, in only a few years from the time that he had entered Canaan his daughter Dinah had been raped, and Jacob had been angered by the rash manner in which Simeon and Levi had avenged their sister. Then his son Judah had run off and taken residence with a Canaanite woman, where he had stayed in Chezib, a place which is literally named falsehood, while having had his three sons with her. His eldest son Reuben had sinned against him by having slept with one of his wives. His son Joseph was esteemed to have been killed, and he never knew that his other sons had lied to him about what had actually happened. Then in addition to all of these things, his favorite wife, the only one whom he was said to have loved, had died at a relatively young age, shortly after she had given birth to his youngest son, whom he named Benjamin.

So even though Yahweh his God had promised to be with him after he departed from Haran, Jacob had continued to experience both Hope and Despair, as we had titled part 45 of this Genesis commentary, because in spite of the fact that he had inherited the wonderful promises which Yahweh God had made to Abraham, that his seed would inherit the world, and he himself was reassured those promises, as it is recorded in Genesis chapter 35, he nevertheless had to suffer the circumstances of the evil world into which he had been brought. Modern Christians should take note of this, and consider what Jacob had suffered when they themselves suffer, because having the promises of God obviously does not make anyone immune to suffering. None of us are better than Jacob, who continued to trust in God regardless of his suffering.

On Genesis, Part 51: Redemption and Deliverance

We have already discussed the Figures of the Messiah which are evident in the life of Joseph, the accounts of which certainly contain several prophetic types for Christ, and we shall see further examples of that as we proceed through Genesis. But in one significant aspect the life of Joseph is not only a prophetic type for Christ, but also a type, or perhaps a prototype, for the subsequent history of the children of Israel in Egypt. As Joseph went to Egypt against his own will, became a servant, ended up in prison, and was freed and this elevated to an exalted position, so would Israel enter Egypt under constraint and become a nation enslaved and in a sort of prison. But ultimately, like Joseph, the nation had been liberated by Yahweh, and eventually elevated to an exalted position. So in that respect, the life of Joseph in Egypt serves as a prophetic type for the history of Israel in Egypt. Then, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, it shall also further serve as a type for Christ in ways which are far beyond the parallels which we have already observed. So among other things, Joseph shall ultimately serve as a prophetic type for the absolute mercy and salvation which Christ has promised to all of Israel.

Now, as it is described in Genesis chapter 40, Joseph had dreamed dreams, much like the prophet Daniel, and Joseph could also interpret dreams, just like the prophet Daniel. So his discernment which he had exhibited in the interpretations of dreams while in prison would be his introduction to the pharaoh of Egypt, which is where we are presently in Genesis chapter 41. Having successfully interpreted the pharaoh’s dream, Joseph was elevated to a position in his government. Much later, Daniel had apparently earned a reputation for discernment as a young man in Babylon, which is represented in the story of Susanna, and having already been introduced to Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel chapter 1, he later found an audience with the king and interpreted his remarkable dream of the metallic image which represented four great kingdoms, as it is described in Daniel chapter 2. For that Daniel was also rewarded and elevated into the government of his captors. So within the life of Joseph are found patterns which are repeated throughout later Scriptures, and that is one of the wonders of this book which we call the Bible, because once all of these patterns are noticed all we can do is marvel in awe at the wisdom of Yahweh our God, who is the Author of all of these things.