Joseph, Thermuthis, and Moses

If you have never watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, you must. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musically tell the story of how the Israelites ended up in Egypt instead of Canaan, the land provided for Abraham and his descendants. It is brilliantly and humorously done and guaranteed to help one remember the story.

We know the story pretty well. Jacob (renamed Israel – see Distracted) had twelve sons. Joesph, the eleventh son, was by far his favorite. Joseph seemed aware of his place in his father’s eye and tended to push his older brothers’ buttons (if you have a younger brother, you might know of what I speak). He had dreams of them one day bowing down to him. It’s one thing to have such dreams. It’s quite another to tell one’s older brothers about them. Oh, and apparently, he had an ornate coat that his brothers envied.

One day, Joseph was tasked by his dad to check on his nomadic sheep-herding brothers, which he did while wearing his special, ornate coat. Envy and jealousy reared their ugly heads, and murder by brothers was imminent. The prudence of the oldest brother, Ruben, prevailed and Joseph’s life was spared. However, the other ten brothers sold him to slave traders headed to Egypt. How do you explain a missing favorite son? Smear his ornate coat with a slaughtered goat’s blood to convince Jacob that some ferocious animal must have devoured Joseph.

If you are thinking that things are not “on earth as in heaven,” you would be right.

Fast forward a lot of years. We find Joseph, aided by his God-given ability to interpret dreams, high in Pharaoh’s administration as the Secretary of Agriculture, overseeing preparation for and wheat distribution during a seven-year famine. The drought reached as far east as Canaan, forcing the brothers to grovel before Joseph, unbeknownst, for sustenance. With identities revealed and forgiveness granted, the entire clan of Jacob relocated to Egypt, settling on land provided by Pharaoh.¹ (If you prefer more detail, read all this in Genesis 37-47.)

It might have now seemed like “on earth as in heaven,” but nope…

A couple hundred years after their relocation to Egypt, the tide shifted. A new king (a Pharaoh) “to whom Joseph meant nothing” came to power, recognized a potential threat the foreigners could pose, and acted swiftly and shrewdly. He enslaved them. Oppressive slave masters worked them ruthlessly, I assume seven days a week. They worked in the fields, in brick manufacturing, and as laborers for Pharaoh’s building projects.

Interestingly, the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied. Pharaoh feared the expanding population of slaves might rebel and join Egypt’s enemies should war break out. So he acted with murderous shrewdness. He demanded that midwives kill baby boys at birth. The midwives feared God (and presumably not Pharaoh) and refused. When asked why the refusal, the midwives explained that the vigorous Hebrew women popped the babies out before they could arrive to assist.

Pharaoh ratcheted up his determination to control the population of the foreigners. He demanded that all baby boys immediately be cast into the Nile (there is no indication in scripture as to how this was accomplished).

Enter Moses into God’s redemption project

As you might recall, the baby Moses was hidden from the authorities for three months. When he became too active to conceal, his parents crafted a plan to spare his life as long as possible. This is how Jewish historian Flavius Josephus described the plan…

They made an ark of bulrushes, after the manner of a cradle, and of a bigness sufficient for an infant to be laid in without being too straitened: they then daubed it over with slime, which would naturally keep out the water from entering between the bulrushes, and put the infant into it, and setting it afloat upon the river, they left its preservation to God; so the river received the child, and carried him along.²

Scripture indicates that Moses’ sister followed her little brother as the ark floated along the Nile to see what might happen to him. Pharaoh’s daughter (Thermuthis, according to Josephus) found the baby boy while bathing in the Nile. She recognized the crying baby as a Hebrew child in need of a meal. The infant’s watching sister offered to get a Hebrew wet nurse to feed the child. The wet nurse was, of course, his very own mother. Scripture indicates that he became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter…

When the child grew older, she [Moses’ mother] took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water” (Moses sounds like the Hebrew for draw out). Exodus 2:10, NIV.

Josephus, the ever-embellisher, tells the story this way…

Hereupon it was that Thermuthis imposed this name Mouses upon him, from what had happened when he was put into the river; for the Egyptians call water by the name of Mo, and such as are saved out of it, by the name of Uses: so by putting these two words together, they imposed this name upon him. And he was, by the confession of all, according to God’s prediction, as well for his greatness of mind as for his contempt of difficulties, the best of all the Hebrews, for Abraham was his ancestor of the seventh generation.²

Through scripture and the historian Josephus, we see God’s hand in the continuation of his redemption / new creation project, though not without a fair amount of messiness. I suppose that should be expected, given his desire to continue to use flawed image-bearers to carry out his purposes. The descendants of Abraham, God’s kingdom people, were still called to be his ambassadors to the nations.

So the story continues…

¹It should be noted that Jacob’s clan (Israel) and the Egyptians had a shared ancestry in Noah (see the reference to Ham in Psalm 105:23). Shared origins remind us that Israel was chosen from among their related clans. They were no better or righteous. God simply chose them for a particular task.

²Josephus, Flavius. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (p. 491-2). http://www.DelmarvaPublications.com. Kindle Edition.