Like Father, Like Son
But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? Genesis 50:19 NASB
In God’s place – Genesis is a book of emotional distance. It begins with expulsion, continues through isolation (Noah), betrayal (Sarah), discrimination (Esau and Jacob) and ends with alienation (Joseph). Through all of these lives, God seeks reconciliation—and fails. God remains faithful, but that’s only half the equation. He can’t make it happen without cooperation, and if Genesis teaches us anything, it teaches us that human beings are more than capable of frustrating God’s agenda.
You might object, especially about the hero Joseph. With our Sunday school background, we’re likely to think of Joseph only in glowing terms of Christ typology. Even in Messianic circles, we pride ourselves in knowing the two designations of the Millennial King, Mashiach ben David and Mashiach ben Yosef. But maybe we’re overlooking the very human emotions of Joseph. Maybe we’re reading about him with the rose-colored glasses of Christian eschatology (even if we think we’re being Jewish).
Avivah Zornberg offers a penetrating insight on Genesis 50:19.
“The syntax alone alerts the reader—‘Have no fear, for am I in the place of God?—suggesting that his modest disclaimer is, in fact, an aphorism. Theologically correct, his words deny the madness of omnipotence. But this impeccable sentiment is not his own. He is, in fact, quoting his father’s words to Rachel, in answer to her desperate plea: ‘Give me children, or I shall die!—‘Am I in place of God, who has withheld from you fruit of the womb?’ (Gen. 30:1-2). These are, in fact, the only recorded words that Jacob ever speaks to his beloved wife, Joseph’s mother. This fact is chilling, since his response to her passionate need is so chilling . . . By preaching humility—‘I am not God’—Jacob effectively removes himself from the heat and turbulence of the human narrative—assuming a godlike aloofness as he interprets God’s acts . . . Both father and son utter a truism about human limitation; but this has the paradoxical effect of isolating them in godlike detachment from the emotional needs of wife and brothers.”[1]
Do you understand? In that often-quoted verse which appears as Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers we find something else. Theological excuse. Of course Joseph isn’t God. But he takes on the transcendent character of God and removes himself for the human trauma of reunion, just as his father removed himself from the human trauma of a wife without children. On the surface it looks like Joseph is being like Yeshua, forgiving those who were certainly his enemies. We hear the faint echo of “Father, forgive them,” if we listen to our past Sunday school teachers. But the text says something else. In phrase-trickery, it reminds us that Joseph stays aloof. He never actually forgives, just as his brothers never actually ask for forgiveness. Joseph is the God-at-a-distance, precisely the opposite of the Messiah’s emotional connectedness.
Topical Index: Joseph, emotion, Jacob, God’s place, Genesis 50:19
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, p. 332.
