This is the Cummins Onan Generator that came up when I googled an image of Onan. Make of it what you will.
We pause from Genesis' rather quick run through early history to linger on the story of Joseph -- a shepherd, who like David, becomes a king.
Several things caught my eye in today's reading. In the NIV, it says Jacob made for and gave to Joseph "a richly ornamented robe" [Genesis 37:3] rather than, as it says in the KJV, "a coat of many colors." I wonder if this princely robe -- as I imagine it to be -- foreshadows Joseph's future position in Egypt?
Ishmael reenters the story. Joseph will be sold by his brothers into slavery to "a caravan of Ishmaelites." [Genesis 37:25] Ironically, Ishmael's descendants will begin the enslavement of Isaac's children -- a nation through which the world is promised true freedom. When God's people suffer, it doesn't mean they have lost. The story isn't over. And we already know how it ends.
This begins Israel's path of slavery and freedom. What Joseph's brothers intended for evil (Joseph will point out later) God turns to good. And what Pharaoh intends for good to Joseph's people -- giving them the choice land of Goshen -- will eventually become evil, enslaving the people to the Egyptians. In both Joseph and the Israelites cases, it is God who brings freedom and He will ultimately bring freedom through His Son, a child, too, of Israel, -- Jesus.
And then there's another couple of stories that -- as my friend David Skidmore says -- you won't see on a Sunday school flannel board. Onan. Judah sleeping with his daughter-in-law Tamar who takes to be a prostitute. Some really sorted stuff here and again you say, "These are God's people?" Yes, and not only that, as F. LaGard points out in his commentary, these are the ancestors of Christ. The father of the tribe of Judah, himself, wallowing in the muck.
I don't know about you, but my wife hate's it when the media digs up dirt to sully the image of a hero. And I love her for here desire that this world was better, kinder, nobler. But, in a way, that's what the Word of God does here. We get the dirt on Christ. Why? So there is no question that the Lord was born of a very "human" family, no special line, except that God made it special? Or just to illustrate that God takes the lowly things of this world and makes them great?
The short answer is I don't know but He does. But it's an uncomfortable story to be interrupting the more heroic seeming story of Joseph.
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