After the death of Yisra’el, fka Ya’akob (Jacob), 10 of his dozen sons approached Yosef (Joseph) with a message from their father: Don’t seek revenge for selling him as a slave. Yosef lived out the “second greatest commandment” in his response, showing he trusted God’s plan that had violently separated him from his family and landed him in prison for a few years.
Ya’akob (Jacob) blessed pharaoh of Mitsraim (Egypt) upon arrival there. Ya’akob blessed the sons of Yosef (Joseph), Ephraim and Manasseh, as if they were his own elder sons. As we have noticed in past studies of the account of Yosef in Genesis, there are parallels between the roles of pharaoh, Yosef and Yisra’el (Israel), f.k.a. Ya’akob, and those of the Father, the Son and a people called Yisra’el.
The list of the names of the offspring of Yisrael, f.k.a. Ya’akob (Jacob), can be read as a message about the work of the Messiah if the meanings of the names are strung together.
The life of Yosef (Joseph) is a shadow of the life of the Messiah in a number of ways. In the latter half of Genesis 42, we see another shadow: Yosef was hidden from his brothers yet wanted to weep when he heard their penitence over the death they thought they had set in motion for him by selling him into slavery.
That’s the repentance God seeks from Israel for the treatment of God’s Messiah. The prophets and apostles foretell that day will come.
This account of Yosef’s dreams and being sold by his brothers into slavery in Mitsraim (Egypt) is the foundation for the teaching through the rest of Genesis and even the Torah. The life of Yeshua the Messiah on Earth paralleled that of Yosef (Joseph).
We boast in our pride, we constantly demand our rights, we put our trust in our government to protect these rights, but we don’t ask God to protect us. Ya’akov (Jacob) needed to return to Beit ’El (Bethel) to fulfill the vow he had made to the LORD when he was fleeing from Esau.
God protected Ya’akov and his entourage from being pursued by those who would have wanted to take revenge on Ya’akov’s family for what happened in Shechem (Genesis 34). He put a great terror on those who wanted to pursue them and convinced them to leave them alone.
Humility and loyalty are underlying teachings of Genesis 33-34. The phrase “women and children first” is held up as selfless chivalry, but it it seems Ya’akov (Jacob) wasn’t so chivalric in his sending his wives and children ahead of him toward what he thought would be his heavily armed and bloodthirsty brother, Esau.
Then there’s the disaster that followed the defilement of Ya’akov’s daughter, Dinah, whose forceable conquering at the hands of a city’s “first son” led to the deaths of all the men and the enslavement of the women and children of that city by the hands of two of Ya’akov’s sons.