Snake Charmer
“Is not this the one from which my lord drinks and which he indeed uses for divination? You have done wrong in doing this.” Genesis 44:5 NASB
Divination – The Hebrew word translated as “divination” in this verse is naḥaš. In the context of Joseph’s trickery, this word is quite important. Furthermore, it has some unsettling contemporary implications.
“Both in Gen 44:5 and 15 the doubly intensive form (infinitive absolute plus finite verb) occurs. There we learn that Joseph claimed for his brothers’ benefit that he could ‘divine’ with a special cup and so knew secret things such as that his brothers, still unaware of who he was, had his cup in their possession. According to I Kgs 20:33, the servants of Benhadad ‘took as an omen’ Ahab’s use of the word ‘brother’ in reference to their king. But divination is outlawed in Lev 19:26 . . .”[1]
Christian apologists offer solutions to the apparent conflict between the prohibition and Joseph’s claim. You can read the solution here. The suggestions seem convincing, but I’m more interested in modern implications than ancient ones. Consider Heschel’s comment on divination:
“The biblical attitude to Semitic divination [‘an effort to obtain information about future happenings or things otherwise removed from ordinary perception’[2]] was one of uncompromising antagonism. Its practice was unequivocally forbidden. . . . However, no prohibition could prevail against the desire to attain knowledge of what the future held in store, and so the practice of divination was not easily eliminated.”[3]
Divination today is what we might call “fortune telling.” Generally, religious believers avoid such practices, including horoscopes, etc. But notice the definition of divination Heschel provides: “an effort to obtain information about future happenings or things otherwise removed from ordinary perception.” Doesn’t that remind you of the religious penchant for “End Times” prognostication? Wouldn’t this include things like “the Bible code,” or “Blood Moons” or any other “signs” that are used to predict the obscure future? And what of all the commotion about COVID-19 as a “sign” from God? It seems to me that Maimonides perspective about future prediction is the only sensible, biblical approach: After it’s over you’ll know what it was.
We are quick to justify Joseph’s ownership of an Egyptian divination cup. That strikes us as out of place for a man of God. But we act just like ancient Egyptians in our treatment of John’s apocalyptic revelation. As Heschel notes, the desire is so strong that the practice, even if modernized, is very hard to eliminate.
I find it interesting that the same spelling of the Hebrew word nāḥaš is also the word for serpent. Do you suppose that the children of Israel, greatly influenced by the practice of divination in Egypt, might have connected the two words? Maybe that serpent on Pharaoh’s crown was a bit more than a symbol of power and fear. And maybe the serpent in the Garden is a bit more than a convincing liar. Did you ever think that “End Times” nonsense just might be connected to the other nāḥaš?
Topical Index: divination, prediction, Joseph, end times, Genesis 44:5
[1] Alden, R. (1999). 1348 נָחַשׁ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 572). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 234.
[3] Ibid., p. 237.
