We left Joseph in jail, the Cupbearer having totally forgotten about him.

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Years later, the Pharaoh has a dream of 7 sickly cows eating 7 healthy ones, and again about 7 poor ears of corn eating 7 healthy ones. No one can interpret this dream, and now the Cupbearer remembers Joseph, who is brought before the Pharaoh.

Pharaoh asks Joseph if he can interpret dreams and Joseph gives credit to God as the one who does that, and then he interprets the dreams Pharaoh had. The interpretation, as we all know, was that there would be 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine. Joseph states someone should be in charge of collecting a tax on the good crops and storing it away for the famine years.

Pharaoh, a smart guy, recognizes that Joseph is the right man for the job, and promotes him from prisoner to second in command of the entire country. Joseph then stores grain throughout the kingdom, and when the famine hits, Egypt is the only place anyone in the entire Middle East can find food.

As Joseph continues to be a blessing to the Pharaoh and the people, now married and with children, the famine has hit his family back in Canaan. Jacob tells his sons to go to Egypt and buy food, but he keeps Benjamin home because Ben is now his newest favorite, the only surviving son of his true love, Rachel.

The 10 brothers see Joseph in order to buy food, but they do not recognize him. That makes sense because, first of all, they figure he is probably dead by now, and Joseph would have been dressed and made-up like an Egyptian. However, Joseph knows them right away and immediately comes up with a plan to test them.

Notice that he doesn’t plan revenge, but to test them to see if they have learned to stop being jealous and vengeful.

He gives them a hard time, interrogating them until they tell of their father, what happened to Joseph, and that Benjamin is still at home. He holds Simeon hostage and tells them they can have food, but they must not return without their youngest brother to prove their story or Simeon will remain in jail.

They return to their homes and tell Jacob what happened, but he refuses to let them take Benjamin out of his sight. Not only that, but Joseph secretly put all their money back in their packs, and when they discover this they are now doubly afraid to return, assuming that Joseph will think they stole the food.

Eventually, they run out of food and Jacob says to go back to Egypt and get more, but they say they have to have Benjamin. Finally, only after Judah says he will guarantee Benjamin’s safety, Jacob allows Benjamin to go.

When they arrive, Joseph sees Benjamin and releases Simeon, having all the brothers eat lunch in his house. He has their money put back in their sacks, and also has his servants put a cup of his in the pack belonging to Benjamin. After the brothers leave, Joseph sends his men to catch up to them and accuse them of stealing. They say they wouldn’t do such a thing, and if anything of Joseph’s is found with one of the brothers, that brother will be put to death.

Well, imagine their surprise when it ends up being with Benjamin! They are all taken back, and after pleading with Joseph, Joseph says Benjamin will remain his slave forever, but the other brothers are free to go home.

That’s the end of this parashah.

The story of Joseph is, if you ask me, one of the greatest of all the biblical stories of God’s protection and salvation.

WHAT?? God’s protection? Joseph was almost killed by his brothers, sold into slavery, then made a prisoner…you call that ‘protection’?”

Yes, I do, because he was almost killed, but not killed.

He was sold into slavery, but with an honest and kind man who treated him as a son, putting him in charge of his entire household.

He was imprisoned instead of being put to death, which would have happened to any other slave accused of trying to rape the Master’s wife.

While in jail, he was made a trustee and placed in charge of two high-ranking prisoners, so he was in the best situation one could be in when in jail.

Yes- God protected and carried Joseph through all that because Joseph was continually faithful to God and did as God would have wanted him to do, which is what Shaul, many centuries later, told the Believers in his letter to the Colossians when he said (Colossians 3:23):

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”

God’s protection isn’t making sure that your life is a bed of roses and nothing ever goes wrong. God doesn’t see things as we do, and since he is eternal, his focus is usually on the eternal and not so much on the here-and-now, which is essentially what our entire lifetime comes down to.

When we do as God says we should do, we are walking with him and under his covering.

Think of it as walking in the rain under an umbrella: if it is a soft rain with no wind, you will remain completely dry. But, if the wind is acting up and the rain is coming down hard, your feet and even the lower parts of your legs will likely get wet.

You are still covered, you aren’t completely soaked, but you’re not completely dry, either.

Joseph certainly went through a rough rainstorm, and because he remained under the umbrella, even when his feet got wet, he not only survived but thrived at the end.

We all go through a number of situations during our lives when we have tsouris, and it doesn’t matter what happens as much as how we react to it. To some, a molehill is a mountain and to others, a mountain is just something to climb over.

I think most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes.

The take-away for today is to be as Joseph was- always doing what is right, moral, and godly. And staying totally and absolutely trusting in God, convinced unfailingly that so long as you do what is right in God’s eyes (Col. 3:23), which he instructs us to do in the Torah, then even if we get wet and dirty feet from the world, he will still be there to cover the rest of us from even worse things and get us through the fire.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe to my website and my YouTube channel, as well. Share these messages with everyone you know, and check out my books-if you like what you get here, you will like my books, too.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

From this point on in the Book of Genesis, Jacob and his sons take a back seat to the story of Joseph.

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Joseph has dreams indicating that he will be the leader over his brothers which he innocently- or maybe arrogantly- tells to his brothers, inciting hatred and jealously from them. Add to this his having given a bad report about them to his father and Joseph was not doing himself any good. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Jacob, now also known as Israel, gave Joseph a coat of many colors, which at that time represented more than favoritism- culturally in the Semitic tribal system, a coat of many colors was worn by the leader of the tribe. By giving Joseph that coat, Jacob was already showing that he was going to make Joseph leader over his brothers when Jacob dies.

One day while searching for his brothers, at his father’s request, Joseph is seen coming and the brothers decide to kill him. Reuben suggests they do not kill him but kidnap him and place him in a pit, which they do, then they shread his coat and spill blood all over it to make it seem that he was killed by a wild animal.

While Reuben is somewhere else thinking about how to save Joseph (which he wanted to do in order to gain favor back from his father who was really pissed at him for sleeping with one of his concubines), Judah makes the suggestion that they sell Joseph to a passing caravan, and the brothers agree. However, as they are eating their lunch a group of Ishmaelite passing by the pit hear Joseph; they pull him out and sell him to the caravan. When Reuben returns and finds Joseph missing, he is distraught and the brothers don’t know what happened to Joseph. They return to Jacob and tell him the bad news, after which Jacob is in constant mourning for Joseph.

Right here, in Chapter 38, we have a short story about Judah and his sons, both of whom were killed for being evil in God’s sight. After the first son, Er, is killed his wife, Tamar, is married to the second son, Onan, as was the custom in those days, It was the obligation of Onan to make Tamar pregnant so that she could have a son to inherit Er’s share of the estate. However, Onan would have sex with her but he performed coitus interruptus so that she would not get pregnant, securing the brother’s share for himself. For that evil act of selfishness, Adonai killed him. Judah’s third son, Shelah, was too young to be married so he sent Tamar back to her father’s house to wait for Shelah to be old enough, but when that happened, Judah failed to fulfill his obligation to Tamar. One day when Judah was in her neighborhood, she dressed herself up as a prostitute and after seducing him, received his staff as collateral for payment. Before Judah could send her the payment, she went back to her father’s house, now impregnated by her father-in-law. When Judah is told she is pregnant, assuming she was unfaithful, he wants her to be killed but she sends him the staff to prove who the father is. Recognizing his fault in the matter, he says she is more righteous than he was and never had sex with her again. She ends up giving birth to twins, Peretz and Zerah.

Meanwhile, back to Joseph, who is taken to Egypt and sold to Potiphar, a general in Pharoah’s army. Joseph is found trustworthy and given authority over the entire household. Mrs. Potiphar has the hots for Joe, and although he constantly avoids her, she traps him in the house one day and as he tries to escape, she manages to pull his clothes off. She then accuses Joseph of trying to rape her, and Potiphar throws Joseph in jail.

It is thought Potiphar wasn’t totally convinced Joseph was at fault because if he really thought Joseph, a slave, tried to rape his wife he would have had him killed, then and there. But since he only had him thrown in jail, biblical scholars believe there was doubt in Potiphar’s mind, but he had to do something.

While in jail, Joseph against shows his trustworthiness and is made a trustee, serving the needs of the Pharaoh’s baker and cupbearer, both of whom were in prison for somehow ticking off the Big Guy.

They each have a dream, and Joseph interprets the dreams correctly, with the cupbearer being returned to his station and the baker being hung. Joseph begs the cupbearer, as he is leaving the prison, to remember Joseph to the Pharaoh and tell the Pharaoh of Joseph’s innocence so he can be freed.

However, once back in his proper position, the cupbearer totally forgets about Joseph, and this is where the parashah ends.

What a story, right? Deception, conspiracy, violence, sibling rivalry, immoral sexual behavior, more deception, attempted sex, unjust imprisonment. I mean, this could be an HBO mini-series!

You know, it probably has been.

But, what will we talk about today? There is so much here, but I go by “feel” (always praying for that feeling to be Holy Spirit led), and what I feel is a message for us is relating how Joseph, in the midst of the worse tsouris anyone could have to deal with, maintained his faith and moral standards.

I am going to do something unusual for this ministry, and relate Joseph’s story to the current political and social environment in America. That environment is one of distrust in our government, distrust in our media, distrust in our medical system, and distrust within the community. We are a people totally polarized, where there is no common ground or compromise, living in a fearful and frustrated de facto civil war of ideologies and political positions.

One recent example is how the media has painted a man found not guilty of murder as a white supremacist who killed black people peacefully protesting. When I read the transcript of the trial, the man had a legally owned firearm and was trying to protect a family business from rioters who were anything but peaceful. After failing to protect the business, he was being chased by the rioters who were armed and while he was being chased, he heard gunshots. He turned and shot back, reasonably assuming that the ones chasing and threatening him were shooting at him. In doing so, he shot and killed a few of the people chasing him (they weren’t all black).

The court found him justified in doing what he did and released him, but this case of self-defense was turned into a racist murder by the media, which didn’t care about truth or justice but only about causing strife and disunity within the community.

Another example is the presidential election of 2020, which is still considered by many to have been more of a coup because millions of votes were falsely created by one side. Whether or not this happened, the fact that it represents such a severe and widespread distrust in one of the building blocks of our democracy- the secret ballot- is as bad as if it was proven true.

And what about the pandemic? It has been so poorly being handled, with so many contradictory reports of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, of the usefulness of masks, and lock-downs resulting in the financial ruin of millions of businesses and people, not to mention the general fear being fostered by the media, well…how can anyone not feel unjustly treated and mistrusting of our leadership?

Joseph must have felt this way, too. He was mistreated by his brothers, and even when doing the best he could showing his faithfulness to those who were in authority over him, he was unjustly accused and imprisoned.

But despite all that, he maintained his trust in God, and by continuing to behave as a God-fearing person should behave, always doing what is right in God’s eyes, he persevered. And, as we will find out later in this book, he not only persevered, he conquered.

There is distrust, strife, fear, concern, and a general sense of What-the-heck is going on! in the world today. We need to do as Joseph did, which is to trust that God will sort it all out, but in the meantime take charge of what we can, and live our life the best we can while we can.

Yes, it is difficult and there are so many things we want to do that we can’t, or we feel we mustn’t because it represents to us too much of a compromise of our freedoms. That is fine, because if we refuse to get a booster, or we decide to go ahead and get a booster, no one should tell us what is right or wrong because when we decide what we will do, it is our decision. We are taking charge of what we can, and dealing with that which we can’t control.

I don’t care what you think about the vaccine, or the President, or the medical “facts” or what I do…I am taking charge of my life as much as I can and living it with the trust and faith in God that whatever happens, he will work it out for the best. Eventually.

And that is what we spiritual types call “Faith”

I have little or no faith in our current government, not in the medical leadership of this country, and never in people, but I have tons of faith in God. Just because the world is one big mishigas right now doesn’t mean God isn’t in charge- it just means he is letting things happen. I know, absolutely, that he sees where things are going, and he has a plan to do the perfect thing we need to have done and will do at exactly the right moment.

So, nu? Are you feeling as frustrated as I am? Do you wish this all would just go away, and we could get back to our normal life- no masks, no mandatory vaccinations, no pandemic, no racist hatred (well, we’ve never been free of that), and life back to the way we had it before all this drek happened?

If so, then let me say this… GET REAL, PEOPLE!! That ain’t gonna happen, so get with the program. Do as Joseph did- act the way you know YOU are supposed to act and ignore the world going crazy. God will always see you and protect you when you do as he wants, and that is all we need to concentrate on. This will all pass, sooner or later (God willing, sooner!) so be like the maidens who had their oil ready, because when the Bridegroom comes, we don’t want to be caught up in the mess that everyone else is trapped in.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know to help this ministry grow. Check out my books on my website, and while there subscribe to my website and to my YouTube channel. On Facebook, “Like” my page and join my discussion group called “Just God’s Word.”

And remember that I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!