Genesis 37 - 39

Now comes one of my favorite Biblical characters and his story! I love the story of Joseph, partly because I also had eleven siblings, of which I was third to the youngest, so I often felt persecuted by my older brothers and sisters as they teased and threw rocks at me to keep me from following them. When I was six, my dad came home with a paint pony just for me, which caused a lot of jealousy from my siblings, some of which I didn't even learn of until many years. Can't help but draw a parallel there with Joesph's coat of many colors.
We meet Joseph as a seventeen-year-old lad out tending his father's sheep alongside his eleven brothers. He was rather a tattler, it seems, and would give his father bad reports on his brothers, he being his father's favorite. So when Jacob presented Joseph with a colorful cloak, such as none of them had, they began to have hard feelings toward him.
This boy was a dreamer who should have kept his nocturnal mind pictures to himself. He dreamt about being exalted above his brothers, as well as his father and mother. They really hated him when he told them of the dreams, and even Jacob rebuked him. But Jacob also played him off against his brothers, sending him to check up on them when they were herding the sheep a goodly distance from Hebron, Jacob's headquarters. Joseph was to bring a report back to their father, but the brothers plotted to kill him when they saw him coming.
His oldest brother, Reuben, however, persuaded them not to kill Joseph, but to toss him into a cistern from which he planned to rescue him later. So the brothers jerked the robe Jacob had made for Joseph off his body and threw him into the pit, planning to leave him there to die, but as they sat down nearby to eat their lunch, a caravan of Ishmaelites came by on their way to Egypt. Joseph's brother, Judah, cooked up a scheme to get some money for Joseph by selling him to the travelers as a slave. He was sold for 20 shekels of silver, the exact price that was later paid for Jesus, the price of a slave. So Joseph went to Egypt as a slave and was sold to a high government official there.
Chapter 38 tells a very sordid tale, which bothers some people that God would have included it in His letter to us. But God doesn't sugarcoat the history of His people. He shows us their flaws and foibles so that we can learn and perhaps not repeat their mistakes. In addition, this chapter gives us a glimpse into the characters of the direct ancestors of our Lord, Jesus, Judah and Tamar, and it draws a sharp contrast between Joseph and Judah.
Judah marries and has three sons, then finds a wife named Tamar for his oldest son, but Tamar became a widow before producing any offspring with Er, Judah's eldest son. In that culture there was a tradition that if a brother died, the next oldest brother would take the wife as his own to produce heirs to his brother's estate. Therefore, Tamar wed Onan, Judah's second son, but the text says the Lord took him also. Judah was in a quandary at this point. He only had one young son left, and he was beginning to think that Tamar was bad news. Therefore, he withheld Shelah from her in fear.
Tamar suspected her father-in-law had betrayed her, so she dressed up as a harlot, wearing a veil and sitting by the side of a road she knew Judah was about to travel. When Judah propositioned her, she was wise enough to ask for collateral to hold as evidence. Tamar became pregnant by her father-in-law.
When Judah heard his daughter-in-law was pregnant out of wedlock, he wanted to kill her. Then she revealed by whom she was pregnant by displaying the Judah's staff and seal, which she collected from him as she sat by the road. To his credit, Judah repented of his sin and didn't insist on having her killed. Instead, he supported her and didn't have any further sexual relations with her. Tamar was pregnant with twin boys. She named one Perez and one Zerah. Perez is an earthly ancestor of Jesus.
Meanwhile back in Egypt, Joseph is thrown into jail for not succumbing to sexual temptation. The wife of the official, into whose home he has been thrust, tries to seduce Joseph, who has been made steward of Potiphar's household. Nevertheless, Joseph resists, telling her it would be not only a sin against her husband, but also a sin against God. Mrs. Potiphar didn't like being rebuffed by a slave, so she grabbed him one day, intending to force him into having sex with her, but he ran away, leaving an article of clothing in her hand as she gripped it. Angry and embarrassed, she cried rape to get back at Joseph. Joseph wound up in an Egyptian prison.
But the Bible tells us that God was with Joseph, even in the jail. This was all part of God's plan to mold Joseph into the strong leader God needed him to be.
When God is with someone, it shows. After a short time, the warden put Joseph in charge of the prison. So what lesson can we learn from this? The same lesson we will be given repeatedly by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament: In all things, give thanks to God.