Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Joseph and the Famine [1]
Bible Verse:Genesis 47:13-22 (ESV)
"Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.
And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.” And Joseph answered, “Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.” So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. He supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year.
famine Joseph
And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said to him, “We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent. The herds of livestock are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh. And give us seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.”
So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other. Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.
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Message:
This description of Joseph’s consolidation of wealth and power in the Pharaoh confounds the understanding of both Bible scholars and Egyptologists. Early Egyptian history was unbelievably complex, and our understanding of it is based on limited information, for it occurred at the dawn of the written word. By the time of Jacob, Egypt had already had somewhere between 15 and 18 different and identifiable dynasties.
Most likely, Joseph was instrumental in the rise of the 18th dynasty. This is the most famous of all the Egyptian dynasties today, for it was the dynasty of Tutankhamen and Nefertiti. It spanned the years 1550 B.C.to 1292 B.C., which would put it at least roughly during the time associated with Jacob and the formation of Israel as a cohesive tribe. Moreover, Ramses the Great ruled from about 1279 B.C to 1213 B.C. and, although he is not named in the Bible, most depictions of Moses and the Exodus assume he was the pharaoh of Moses’ time.
Thus, Joseph’s Machiavellian usurpation of land and livestock, and the centralization of ownership in the Egyptian monarchy, was instrumental in the greatness of ancient Egypt. For Joseph’s concentration of riches in the monarchy, uniting an unstable melange of squabbling and fighting tribes into a stable central figure, created a superior form of government. We think of absolute monarchies as archaic, but at the time, they were a huge advance in civilization.
Meditation
: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”
Prayer :
Heavenly Father, there are people praying with me, right now, whom I will never meet. I don’t know their names, or what country they live in, or what they may look like, but I will know their souls, for we are brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray that we might be united in the Holy Spirit, and that I will know and feel the kinship and love, in my spirit, of those who share these prayers with me.....Amen
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