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Tag: brothers

  • A Temporary Throne – 46

    A Temporary Throne – 46

    CHAPTER 46

    WOULD YOU SAVE JOSEPH FROM THE PIT?

    WOULD YOU SAVE HIM FROM HIS STEP-BROTHERS?

    Once more I sat on the Temporary Throne in the Throne-room of Heaven in conversation with the Living God, Judge of all men.

    The LORD had shown me the ongoing competition of Leah and Rachel. The LORD had shown me the step-mothers of Joseph: Bilhah and Zilpah. The LORD had shown me a hundred-year-old Israel with the young boy Benjamin as Joseph had now traveled to encounter his brothers, watching over thousands of sheep on hillside pastures.

    Joseph was wearing a colorful royal-looking robe as he approached these older men in their working clothes.

    Of course, they were jealous. (They had reason enough.) And I knew of the dream Joseph was about to reveal to his step-brothers.

    Yes – all ten were step-brothers!

    Now I understood even more that Joseph’s only brother, son of his deceased mother Rachel, remained behind under the watchful eyes of grandfatherly-looking Israel, father to them all – yet still mourning the great loss of Joseph’s mother, Jacob’s most beloved wife of so many years.

    Yes… in thinking about the LORD’s question. Of course I would save poor young Joseph from any more suffering.

    Joseph had gone through enough already. This young man had suffered enough (even as my own young daughter had suffered when her mother had died when she was a child). Joseph’s mother had died. (He deserved some consolation.)

    His father was of age he was certainly near death… and then Joseph (and Benjamin, for whom he would be responsible) would be at the mercy of Reuben and the other step-brothers (who were unlikely to show any mercy).  Why… they would do anything to further their own blessings; like the supplanting of Esau by Jacob his father, I thought – but there were ten of them – 10 brothers.

    Yes! I would do something to save Joseph from all that.

    But what?

    To be continued…

    A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,

    © Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.

  • A Temporary Throne – 44

    A Temporary Throne – 44

    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.

  • A Temporary Throne – 43

    A Temporary Throne – 43

    CHAPTER 43

    The LORD had shown me Cain and Abel. The LORD had also shown me in the family of Noah; the blessing of Shem over Japheth and Ham. Now the LORD had shown me Jacob and Esau. The LORD was showing me his will for brothers.

    I was reminded once more of what the LORD had advised Cain, before his sin:

    Genesis 4:7 If you do well, will you not be accepted?

    And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.

    All Noah’s sons and their wives and offspring had to do was to ‘do well’ by obeying God.

    I had often forgotten that Canaan was the son of Ham, only remembering Canaan as a place and not a man, grandson of Noah, cursed and not blessed by the LORD.

    I had forgotten that the places so contested by descendants of brothers were part of the blessings and curses of the LORD on ancestors of these contested lands so long ago.

    Though the people sometimes were forced to fear the LORD; Jacob, Abraham and Noah had willingly worshiped the LORD our God.

    Would the LORD not bless who he will bless and curse who he will curse?

    This is what the LORD had shown me. This is what the LORD had reminded me from scripture.

    He IS our Creator! He IS the LORD!

    His blessings continue through the generations, his double-portions to the sons and brothers of His choosing.

    Then the LORD would show me another brother, a very young man (barely beyond the years of a boy).

    I had thought and observed the natural competition of Cain and Abel. I read of Ishmael and Isaac. I observed Esau and Jacob. Now the LORD showed me a young man among ten older men – ALL brothers.

    His name was Joseph.

    To be continued…

    A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,

    © Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.