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Bible Reading Notes

February 2008 

Tues, February 26 th - Genesis 47: 8, 9

Pharaoh found Jacob’s great age to be a marvel. However, Jacob puts the matter of longevity into the proper perspective of eternity, saying more about the quality of his life than about its length. The believer has an inheritance of such glorious quality as to make the longest life lived in this world to seem brief and far from desirable. Jacob, in his own way, is saying what Paul said when the apostle declared that for the believer to die is gain (Phil. 1:21).

Wednesday, February 27 th - Genesis 47: 8, 9

The first thing Jacob says about his life is that it has been for him entirely a sojourn. By this, as the writer of the Hebrews epistle makes clear, Jacob is not referring to his alienation from Ur, the land that his grandfather left in order to come into Canaan. If Jacob regarded Ur as his home, he was free to return there at any time. However, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all looked with expectation to their heavenly inheritance, the city of God that is too vast, pure, perfect, and glorious for this world to contain (Heb. 11:8-10, 14-16). Those without faith regard this finite, fallen, and cursed world to be their true home, and long to cling to it for as many years as possible. The saints of God have an infinitely better inheritance that makes them to be strangers living in, but not being of, this fallen and cursed world.

Thursday, February 28 th - Genesis 47: 8, 9

Although Pharaoh marveled over Jacob’s great age, the patriarch makes clear that he regards his years to be few. At 130 years of age, Jacob’s life was comparatively shorter than the lives of Abraham (175 years) or Isaac (180 years). Yet, it was not the few decades that Jacob’s forefathers had lived beyond his current age that made his life seem short. It was more the fact that when one has an eternal perspective, the longest life seems but momentary (2 Cor. 4:17).

Friday, February 29 th - Genesis 47: 8, 9

Jacob not only represents his 130 years of life as being few, he further characterizes those years as having been full of evil and unpleasant things. This may seem a gloomy and ungrateful representation that Jacob gives of his life. Yet, it accords with what Paul says about the afflictions that characterize believers’ lives, (Phil 1:29,30) and about the persecutions that the godly continuously suffer (2 Tim. 3:12), as well as with what Jesus says about our having tribulation in the world (Jn. 16:33). On what was possibly the best day of our Lord’s earthly life, being the day He shone with glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, He was there discussing His death with Moses and Elijah. Until we stand blameless before the Lord with great and lasting joy on the final day, we shall find that all of our earthly joys are laced with sorrows (Ps. 16:11; Jude 24). It is a mercy that our years of affliction and tribulation are fewer rather than more numerous.

Saturday, March 1 st - Genesis 47: 9, 10

Far from Jacob’s life being inferior to that which the king of Egypt had lived, the truth is that Jacob possessed an infinitely greater inheritance than Pharaoh. The sufferings of Jacob—his flight from Esau, his having been cheated by Laban, his loss of his beloved Rachel, his loss of his beloved Joseph, his having endured the burden of anguish and embarrassment of his other sons being deceivers and murderers of the men of Shechem, as well as their being the ones who had sold Joseph into slavery—were not worthy to be compared with the glory for which he was bound (Rom. 8:18). It was in fact Jacob who was the one infinitely richer than Pharaoh, and out of that richness the patriarch blesses the king of Egypt. Jacob was blessed by Pharaoh’s land and food, yet the patriarch held out to the earthly king the promise of eternal life through the grace of the living God of glory.

Sunday, March 2 nd - Genesis 47: 10-12

Jacob blessed Pharaoh with spiritual offerings that may or may not have been accepted by the king of Egypt. Perhaps we shall find this Pharaoh to be a fellow-citizen with the redeemed in the glorious city of God. Pharaoh, in response to Jacob’s blessing, poured upon the patriarch and his family considerable earthly blessings. Joseph administered the king’s order to settle Jacob and his family in the best of the land of Egypt, which, we are told, was in the land of Rameses. This order for the covenant family to dwell in Rameses did not countermand the permission Pharaoh had already given for Jacob to settle in Goshen (v.6), for scholars reckon that Goshen was either near or a district contained within the area known as Rameses. The critical thing for us to note in Jacob’s settlement is that Goshen was near to where Joseph lived (Gen. 45:10), and the nearness of the covenant family to Joseph better served their highest good than could any earthly excellence of the land of Goshen. The nearness of our God to us is our good, and we therefore do well to cleave to Him as our refuge and reward (Ps. 73:28).

Monday, March 3 rd - Genesis 47: 11, 12

Joseph did not only provide land in which to settle Jacob and his entire family, but he also provided his father and brethren directly with food. The land itself, however good it may have been, could not have sustained the lives of the covenant people due to the conditions of the prevailing famine that prevented the land from producing food. Accordingly, the covenant people were clearly and entirely dependant upon Joseph, their kinsman who redeemed their lives from death, who was mediator between them and Pharaoh for their good, and who provided for them all as each had need. This earthly mediator who provided so wisely, lovingly, and abundantly for his family, clearly points us to our heavenly Mediator who perfectly provides for us according to the bounty of the glory of His grace (Phil. 4:19).

Tuesday, March 4 th - Genesis 47: 12, 13

In vv.13ff we are given a brief but meaningful account of how Joseph administered life to a dying people. We are reminded of the severity of the famine, and yet in vv.12,13 we are clearly shown how great a contrast there was between Israel’s maintenance and the world’s misery. While Joseph, the instrumental savior of his people, provided food for every member of his family—from his father down to the youngest child—many in Canaan and Egypt languished. Our Savior always supplies all of our needs (Phil. 4:19), even though at times the manna He provides may be hidden, not from but for those who have and exercise faith (Rev. 2:17).

Wednesday, March 5 th - Genesis 47: 13

It was not unusual for Canaan and other countries at that time to experience a short-fall in food production. Abraham left Canaan during a previous famine (Gen. 12:10ff), as did Isaac (Gen. 26:1ff), and as would Elimelech and Naomi in the days of the Judges (Ruth 1:1ff). Egypt, on the other hand, was consistently a land of bountiful food production, and thus supplied her own people as well as exported her surplus to other lands. Yet in this famine, even Egypt is made to feel the pangs of hunger. John Calvin writes that, it is not for those who cultivate fertile lands to trust in their abundance: rather let them acknowledge that a large supply of provision does not so much spring from the bowels of the earth, as it distils, or rather flows down from heaven, by the secret blessing of God (Genesis, p. 406).

Thursday, March 6 th - Genesis 47: 14-19

This passage briefly describes the increasingly costly nature of the famine for the people of Egypt. They would be driven first to spend all of their money, then to give up their possessions, and finally to exchange their lands and their personal freedom for enough food to keep them alive. We may wonder whether it was right for Joseph to exact such a high price for the food he sold to the people. Yet, Joseph did not cause the famine, but he was rather a savior from it. By his wise and faithful trusting in the warning Word of God, he had managed to gather a supply of food to be sold to those Egyptians whose money, possessions, property, and personal freedom could not have kept them alive had there been no supply of food for them to purchase. We should also note that Joseph neither set the prices for nor took the profits from the sale of food. The king of Egypt alone was enriched by the selling of this food. Dark divine providences can seem very unjust until we recall that all of us sinners, who have defied the God of all provision, richly deserve to be deprived of all we have and all we are.

Friday, March 7 th - Genesis 47: 14

The first thing the starving people gave for food was their money. There is nothing like desperate hunger to break the spell that unrighteous mammon can have upon people. Hungry men cannot eat their cash but will gladly trade it for nourishing food. So severe and prolonged was the famine that virtually all of the money of at least Egypt’s ordinary people was spent. It is a remarkable testimony to Joseph’s godly integrity that he is said to have brought all of the money into Pharaoh’s treasury. Surely in the crushing hubbub of the multitudes paying for their food, a man in Joseph’s exalted position could have pocketed much of the money for himself. Yet, he who had resisted the private advances of Potiphar’s wife, being fortified in his resistance by his fear of the Lord (Gen. 39:9), shows the same godly resistance to the temptation to siphon off for himself any of Pharaoh’s money. A man’s clear conscience before God is his most priceless possession.

Saturday, March 8 th - Genesis 47: 15, 16

Money is a means of exchange created by men for the purchase of goods and services. The famine in Egypt was so severe and prolonged that the money of the Egyptians was exhausted before the famine ended. When the starving Egyptians cried to Joseph for help, he agreed to accept their livestock in exchange for food. No man, no nation, and no alliance of nations can create enough wealth to sustain life when the God of creation withholds His hand of provision. Isaiah prophesies men throwing away their useless silver and gold in the day of God’s judgment (Is. 2:20-22), while John prophesies that in the final day men not only will hide in caves, but also will cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from the terror of the Lord (Rev. 6:15-17). If men will part with all of their money to ease a temporal judgment of God, they should surely be willing to give up the whole world, in order to save their souls from God’s eternal judgment. Yet, sinners cling to their trinkets while neglecting the treasure of God’s free salvation.

Sunday, March 9 th - Genesis 47: 16, 17

The wonder is that the Egyptians had any livestock to give in exchange for the food they purchased from Joseph. Surely their animals were themselves also near starvation due to the famine. Yet, Joseph accepts those animal mouths to feed in exchange for food for the men who had owned them. If we wonder why the Egyptians did not slaughter and eat their livestock, the answer would appear to be that most Egyptians at that time were vegetarians, but even more so that Joseph must have offered them much more grain to feed them than the shrunken meat on their livestock could have provided even if the people had chosen to eat their animals. So we see God’s special grace to Israel, whose people ate as each had need at no cost, in contrast to God’s common grace to the world, where men get more than they deserve but at great cost to themselves.

Monday, March 10 th - Genesis 47: 18, 19

As the famine continued, the food the Egyptians had obtained with their money and livestock ran out. They were accordingly reduced to offering all that they had remaining, namely, their properties and their persons in exchange for more food. We see from this how readily reduced people become when the common grace of God is for a time suspended in their lives. So desperate for the staff of life were the Egyptians that they would part with all they had and all they were for it, while the people of God received ample provision at no cost. If this great and vital difference seems to us to be unfair, we need but consider how the unbelieving Egyptians had for all of their lives taken the common grace of the one true God for granted while they devoted themselves to false gods. In contrast, the sons of Jacob, however imperfectly they did it, were seeking God’s kingdom and finding that the Lord graciously added to them even their daily bread (Mt. 6:33).

Tuesday, March 11 th - Genesis 47: 20

We may wonder if it was gracious or even right for Joseph to exact all the property, possessions, and even personal liberty that the Egyptians had as the price for the food they so desperately needed. Scripture indicates to us in this verse as well as in v.14 that Joseph was but administering the distribution of food and receiving payment for it for the sake and possibly under the orders of Pharaoh. Also, Joseph served even these Egyptians as a savior from the famine, a fact they themselves gratefully acknowledge in v.25. At times the providential arrangements of our Lord can seem harsh and unfair to us, yet we do well to remember that He is ever and always our Savior from all that would truly consume and destroy us.

Wednesday, March 12 th - Genesis 47: 20

This verse indicates to us that Joseph was truly a gracious savior of the Egyptians and a faithful administrator of his responsibilities for the benefit of Pharaoh. It also speaks to us of the attitude of the Egyptians that served to make them partakers of the temporal salvation Joseph offered to them. The Egyptians humbled themselves and willingly gave all they had and all they were to Joseph for Pharaoh’s benefit. They were acutely conscious of their great need and Joseph’s possession of the one thing they rightly deemed necessary. They were willing to sell all for this pearl of great price. Much more should we who rightly perceive our eternal need, and Jesus as the one thing necessary to save us eternally, devote ourselves to Him with trusting obedience at any cost.

Thursday, March 13 th - Genesis 47: 21

The Egyptians, by their having given all they had and all they were to Joseph for Pharaoh, recognized in most practical terms the absolute propriety that Joseph, as Pharaoh’s administrator, had over them. In this verse we begin to see how wisely and mercifully Joseph exercised this proprietary responsibility. He relocated the people from their lands into districts around the great cities that were located along the Nile River. In doing so, Joseph demonstrates that far from his being a profiteer who exploited the people’s need, he was a generous provider for the people. He sold them food and resettled them in better lands than were the lands they had given to him for the food. Things always go better for people who recognize the sovereignty of the King of kings and yield all they are and have to Him. Such people will find the King of glory ever to be a generous giver, who leads them to give up inferior things only to receive from Him things far superior.

Friday, March 14 th - Genesis 47: 22

Joseph did not purchase for Pharaoh the lands of the Egyptian priests. We are told in this verse why this was so. The priests were supported by an allotment from Pharaoh that obviously included food so that they were not driven by need to sell their land. Scripture appears carefully to make clear to us that these priests were supported by Pharaoh’s subsidy and not by Joseph’s special regard. The king of Egypt did well to make the welfare of priests a paramount concern in his kingdom, even during days of great material stress. In this we see how innately religious men are, leaving them without excuse for their dwelling in their sin (Rom. 1:18-25). Yet Pharaoh failed to maintain godliness in his kingdom, as his priests rendered services to false gods. Still, if the king of Egypt would bear cost in support of false priests, much more freely and generously should the people of God support the ministers of the Word of the one true and living God (1 Cor. 9:1-14).

Saturday, March 15 th - Genesis 47: 23

Joseph in these verses reminds the Egyptians of the fact that they had delivered their lands and their persons into Pharaoh’s hand. The result of their having so entirely given themselves to their king was that they received better lands, nearer the Nile and its supply of water. They also received seed for the planting of crops that promised to preserve their lives and those of their descendants. Joseph had apparently wisely reserved this seed until the people were resettled on more arable land where the seed could be fruitfully sown rather than wasted on the poorer lands from which the people had been brought. Here Joseph shows himself to be like his Lord, the Good Shepherd, who leads His people out of defective and impoverishing circumstances and brings them into green pastures and refreshing waters (Ps. 23).

Sunday, March 16 th - Genesis 47: 24

In return for the more fertile lands and replenishing seed Joseph had administered to the Egyptians from Pharaoh’s stores, a tax of one fifth of the produce harvested by the Egyptians was levied upon them to be paid to Pharaoh. The Egyptians gladly and gratefully paid this amount, regarding themselves as blessed in their having the four fifths upon which to subsist. More generous is the Lord who accepts but a tenth of the increase of His people, not as a tax, but as an offering for the support and advancement of His kingdom in this world. Our gladness and gratitude should far exceed that of these happily taxed Egyptians.

Monday, March 17 th - Genesis 47: 25

This verse records for us the Egyptians’ view of the administration of Joseph whereby they had given up all they had and were to Pharaoh in order to receive food, lands, and seed to sustain them. The Egyptians with apparent thankfulness and joy declare not that Joseph had exploited them but rather that he had saved their lives. What the people had given up—their money, livestock, property, and freedom—had been rendered by the famine uselessly and hopelessly ineffectual to save them. Joseph had served mercifully and wisely to interpose between the divine judgment of the famine and the people. The result was that they who had perceived that they had been doomed to die recognized even more clearly that they had been mercifully saved by the servant of the Lord. We who have been saved to the uttermost by the free grace of God in Christ have infinitely greater reason to rejoice in the wisdom, power, and love of our saving God.

Tuesday, March 18 th - Genesis 47: 26

So wise, fair, and vital were the arrangements Joseph made during his administration of affairs throughout the critical time of the famine that those arrangements became law in Egypt, abiding at least until the days of Moses, who was the writer of Genesis. More enduring, and for eternally valid reasons, is every word of Scripture that forever abides and remains in force (Mt. 5:18; Lk. 16:17).

Wednesday, March 19 th - Genesis: 47: 27, 28

From v.27 to the end of this chapter we are given a brief summary of Jacob’s living in Egypt. The dying of the patriarch will receive a much fuller treatment in chapters 48 and 49. We are told in v.27 where Jacob and his posterity sojourned. They were in Egypt, but more particularly, they dwelt in the region of Goshen that had been entirely devoted to them. Hence, we see the covenant family living in but not really being of Egypt, as we are to live in but not be of the world (Jn. 17:15-18). We also note that at this point the descendants of Jacob take on as a people the name of Israel that had been given to their father by God (Gen. 32:28; 35:10). As Jacob by faith had wrestled and prevailed with God, so his children in the land of Egypt were becoming ones who similarly were learning to live and prevail by faith in the Lord.

Thursday, March 20 th - Genesis 47: 27, 28

The lives of the people of Israel in Egypt were not ones of bare survival. They flourished in every way. While the Egyptians sold their property to Pharaoh, the sons of Israel acquired property. We also read that the Covenant people grew numerically in the land of their sojourning. From a company of 70 souls (Gen. 46:27), the Israelites grew to be a numerous and prosperous people. They did not attain these things by their own merit or working but rather received them by the blessing of their Lord, which blessing alone makes His people rich and joyful even in a foreign and godless land (Prov. 10:22).

Friday, March 21 st - Genesis 47: 27, 28

We are told in v.28 that Jacob lived for 17 years in Egypt. His life there extended to more years than he had expected. When he first saw Joseph, Jacob was ready to die (Gen. 46:30), and at his interview with Pharaoh, Jacob spoke as though his life was near its end (Gen. 47:9). Yet, the Lord preserved the patriarch for 17 years, a duration that equaled the years that Jacob had enjoyed his life with Joseph prior to Joseph’s brothers having sold him into slavery. Matthew Henry observes in his commentary that as Jacob had nourished Joseph for 17 years, so Joseph nourished his father in Egypt for the same number of years. There is a fitting and blessed order to the providence of the Lord. Our God measures our days not according to our expectation or natural stamina, but according to His wise, holy, and loving purposes for us and for those whom we love and serve in the Lord.

Saturday, March 22 nd - Genesis 47: 29-31

These verses tell us of Jacob’s preparation for his death. Although he had by faith wrestled with and prevailed over the angel of the Lord, Jacob’s faith could not save him from death. However, he could and did die in faith, as the writer of the Hebrews epistle informs us (Heb. 11:13,21). The last service that faith provides for the believer is to enable him to look beyond death to the glory of eternal life in company with just men made perfect. Once faith has performed that service, the saints of God are no longer believers but rather beholders of the face of their Redeemer in glory (Rev. 22:4).

Sunday, March 23 rd - Genesis 47: 29

Jacob saw his death approaching. Those who believe the things that God tells us in His Word will usually see those things approaching and be able to make due preparation for them. Regarding our own death, we are in Scripture told by Moses to ask the Lord to teach us to number our days and apply ourselves to that wisdom that is the fear of the Lord (Ps. 90:12). As Jacob saw his days drawing to their end, he also beheld the provision of the Lord in his son, Joseph, who had saved him and his family from famine, and who had caused them to prosper in Egypt. Jacob could have trusted no one more than Joseph to understand, respect, and faithfully carry out his instructions regarding his burial. We, too, must look to our eternal Savior to carry us safely through death to eternal life.

Monday, March 24 th - Genesis 47: 29, 30

In the same form of intimate token and pledge by which Abraham had obligated his servant to find a godly wife for his son Isaac (Gen. 24:2-4), the grandson of Abraham now obligates his most faithful son to bury him out of Egypt and in the Promised Land. By this request, Jacob renounces the plenty and prosperity he had enjoyed in Egypt. He even respectfully renounces the place where his favorite son had been virtually resurrected and where Jacob and Joseph had been reunited. He renounced Egypt because of its godlessness. He fixed his certain hope upon a greater resurrection and reunion with his own fathers in the glory of eternity and the nearer presence of God. The Promised Land where Jacob owned no land and where he had suffered so much in his long life was, with all of its afflictions, the provision of God that served as a token of the sure and living hope of eternal life in glory. To this hope Jacob by his death and burial would testify to the glory of God and for the instruction and edification of God’s people.

Tuesday, March 25 th - Genesis 47: 30, 31

Joseph, though he was an exalted ruler in Egypt, binds himself to serve his dying father by fulfilling all that Jacob asked of him. First, Joseph agreed to do as Jacob had asked him to do. He agreed readily and heartily, having a clear understanding of and deep respect for all that Jacob was asking of him. Next, he secured his promise with an oath. By an oath—which is a promise to men that is solemnized by their calling upon God to witness and sanction it—men more surely bind themselves to performance of holy duties to which they have committed themselves. We do well to swear more, not less than we now may do (Ps. 132:1,2).

Wednesday, March 26 th - Genesis 47: 31

After Joseph swore, Jacob bowed himself before the Lord in worship. As he surveyed his life past and his eternal life to come he saw nothing but cause to praise his God. Jacob had suffered his brother Esau’s murderous anger, his uncle Laban’s cheating, his sons’ murdering of the Shechemites and their tearing Joseph from him. He had dwelt his life as a sojourner, living in tents, and spent his last days in godless Egypt. Yet, he by faith saw cause to praise the Lord who had designed and ordained all the events of his life for his good, and had sworn to give him eternal life in glory with his fathers, children, and all who, like him, lived and died by faith in the true Savior. If we are sons of Jacob, we too have cause ever, only, and always to praise our Lord.

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MEETINGS

Sunday
Morning Worship 10:30 AM
Evening Worship
6:30 PM

Wednesday
Christian Education
7:00 PM

Saturday
Congregational Prayer Meeting
7:00 PM