Today it ends.  We will look at every imperative issued by God in the last saga of Genesis, the Joseph story.  But how can you cover 14 chapters in one post?!  God doesn’t say much, but he does much.

Gen 36 – No imperatives here.  Esau has descendants.  People pasture donkeys and rename towns.

Gen 37:6 – I don’t cover every human imperative, but this one starts it all off.  Joseph tells his family, “Listen to my dream.”  He does use the imploring grunt, so he isn’t intending to sound like a jerk, but his dream is definitely taken that way.

Gen 37:22 – Reuben sticks up for Joseph with the cry, “Don’t shed blood!”  He is trying not to be Genesis 4.

Gen 38:8 – I only go over this one because it is confusing.  Judah commands Onan, “Go into your brother’s wife and perform your duty.”  The word for “perform your duty”, yabam, is this ancient idea of providing an heir for your widowed relative.  Sons and daughters were the social safety net.  Onan is being a jerk because he is essentially denying Tamar’s ability to have Social Security, Medicare, or a 401k (and the joys of motherhood).  Sometimes this is called the Levirate duty, which has nothing to do with Levites.  Levir means brother-in-law in Latin.

Gen 38:25 – So Judah knew what was right, but by delaying and delaying we end up with a mess.  Tamar is on her way to be burned for prostitution and says, “Identify please whose these are” and she points to the signet, cord and staff given to her by her John.  Interestingly, Tamar has not issued any imperatives in this whole story.  She has been tossed around by these men who are supposed to be taking care of her.  Judah couldn’t recognize his duty; he couldn’t recognize this woman as more than a prostitute; but he could recognize his stuff.  Judah responds, “She is more righteous than I.”  Duh!

Gen 39:7 – Potiphar’s wife commands, with no imploring grunt, “Lie with me.”  This is the wife of Joseph’s boss.  Joseph says no.  And just to point out because some translations rough up the translation to “Have sex with me,” Potipher’s wife is not using the same penetrative language of Genesis 38:8 and elsewhere, “Go into” or “Come into”.  Potiphar’s wife is not acting like a brute but is luring Joseph with all the tangles and half truths of a “loving” affair.

Gen 40:8 – Two prisoners tell Joseph they have troubling dreams.  Joseph responds, “Tell them to me, please.”  We often paint a stoic Joseph biding his time in prison.  His first vocation was interpretation.  He has had success in jail, but he has not used his gift.  He could have just commanded these prisoners (v22), but he says, “Please, let me use my gift.”

Gen 41:55 – Pharaoh tells the starving masses, “Go to Joseph.”  Not the command of God, but a god-king.

Gen 42:16-19 – “Send one of you… remain jailed/confined” is sworn by the power of Pharaoh.  A harsh command by Governor Joseph.  The focus is on imprisonment.  All the brothers have to stay but one.  How will they get enough grain back?  But three days later, “Do this and live… go and bring/carry grain…”  These commands are done under the fear of God, not Pharaoh-god.  Brother Joseph now focuses on the life-giving food.  Notice that the verb for “remain confined”, asar, is an imperative/command in v16 but is now a weaker form in v18.  Jailing stopped being Joseph’s focus.

Gen 45:19 – Pharaoh commands a command.  “You are commanded to say, ‘Do this: take wagons…” and haul everyone up to Egypt.  The Pharaohs, even when they are nice, are always telling Israel’s family what to do.

Gen 47:19 – “Buy us… give us seed.”  They loved life more than liberty.  This whole passage skirts over the fact that Joseph is enslaving all of Egypt, Goshen not excluded.  Joseph is a perverted messiah, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh” (v25).  This is what a political messiah looks like.

Gen 50:17 – “Please forgive… please forgive” is the desire of the brothers.  They are very polite now.  They enslaved one, Joseph has enslaved a nation.  “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?”  That is a loaded question.

The last command in Genesis is a cry for forgiveness.  This has been the trajectory of creation.  From Gen 1:22, the first command, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill” to Gen 50:17, “please forgive… please forgive.”  It appears that the first is being obeyed, but things certainly aren’t right.  Things are evil, but Joseph gives us hope.  He sees evil and can say, “God meant it for good” (50:20).  But even then there is a double meeting.  The good of slavery?  Even when men are trying to listen to God, evil is close at hand.  Humanity is meandering but can’t change it’s downward spiral.  They need God to do something decisive to bring them out of the reality of Lamech’s “seventy-sevenfold” revenge.  The only way they know how to live is to heap evil upon evil.  They need God to bring them out of the left-to-own-devices state.  Humanity needs an exodus.