CHAPTER 44

From the vantage point of Joseph, I observed a gathering of four men in a camp at the edge of a valley. I could see hundreds and hundreds of sheep, grouped by separate flocks on four surrounding hillsides  grazing on lush green grass – one flock to my left, another further away to my left, and a similar scene beyond the four men ahead of our approach on the path ahead to my right.

“THE SONS OF BILHAH AND ZILPAH,” said the LORD.

“Who,” I asked? (I did not remember these Hebrew names.)

YOU WILL KNOW THE NAMES OF THESE SONS:

DAN, NAPHTALI, GAD AND ASHER.

YOU NOW SEE THESE BROTHERS THROUGH THE EYES OF JOSEPH, SON OF RACHEL.

HE COMES TO THEM FROM THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, WHO IS YET CONSOLED BY RAISING BENJAMIN WITHOUT HELP OF THE MOTHER OF THESE TWO SONS.

Genesis 37:2b When Joseph was seventeen years old, he often tended his father’s flocks. He worked for his half brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.

The LORD gave me a brief glimpse into a courtyard in front of a hillside home several miles behind from where Joseph had just embarked hours before. A grandfatherly-looking old man with an active young lad at hand must have be a hundred years old!

I had never thought of that – that Israel had already been age ninety-one when his eleventh son, Joseph, was born — first son to his beloved Rachel.

Joseph, as he left the company of Israel and young Benjamin, was wearing a most-colorful coat of many colors, not at all plain as burlap (as I would describe the robes of his half-brothers). Joseph now approached these older simply-clothed brothers.

 To be continued…

A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,

© Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.