Joseph was brought down into Egypt, and Potiphar, an Egyptian man, Pharaoh's chamberlain, bought him of the Ishmaelites, which brought him down. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he became a happy man, and was in the house of his lord the Egyptian. And his lord saw that the LORD was with him: for all that he did the LORD prospered through him, so that he found favor in the sight of his lord, and became his servant; who set him over his house, and all that he had he put under his hands. And from the time that he set him over his house, and over all his goods, the LORD blessed the house of Egypt for Joseph's sake, and was the blessing of the LORD in all that he had, both at home, and in the field. Therefore he left it all under Joseph's
hands what he had; and receive nothing of it, but only the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was beautiful and comely in countenance. And it came to pass after this, that his lord's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, saying, Sleep with me. But he refused, and said unto her, Behold, my lord knoweth not what is in the house, and all that he hath he hath put under my hand, and hath nothing so great in the house, which he hath hid from me, without thee, because thou art his wife. How then should I do so great an evil, and sin against God? But she spoke such words against Joseph daily; but he did not obey her, that he should sleep near her, nor be about her. It
1) "near" is missing in the Erlanger.
And it came to pass one day, that Joseph went into the house to do his business, and there was none of the servants of the house with him. And she caught him by his garment, and said, Sleep with me. But he left the garment in her hand, and fled, and ran out of the house. And when she saw that he left his garment in her hand, and fled out, she called unto the servants of the house, and said unto them, Behold, he hath brought in the Hebrew man to put us to shame; and he came in unto me, and would have slept with me: but I cried with a loud voice; and when he heard that I made a noise, and cried, he left his garment with me, and fled, and ran out. And she laid his garment beside him until his master came home, and said unto him the same words, saying, The Hebrew servant, whom thou hast brought in unto us, came in unto me, and would have put me to shame. But when I made a noise and cried out, he left his garment with me, and fled out. And when his lord heard the words of his wife, which she spake unto him, saying, Thus hath thy Hebrew servant done unto me, he was very wroth. Then his lord took him, and put him in the prison, where the king's prisoners lay within; and he lay there in the prison. But the LORD was with him, and showed him favor, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison, that he should put all the prisoners in the prison under his hand, that all things which were done should be done by him. For the governor of the prison saw that the Lord was with him in all that was under his hand, and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper.
. In the seventh and thirtieth chapter, v. 4 ff., we heard how Joseph was envied and hated by his brothers, and was sold to the stranger and brought to Egypt. Here Moses returns to the story of how he fared in Egypt. There are one or three chapters attached to each other, which we will discuss according to the story before we show the interpretation in it. Thus it is told how he was innocently hated by his brothers and sold like cattle under the hands of strangers, abandoned by all friends and acquaintances. What misery he had suffered there,
not everything is described, but only a piece or two is shown, to teach us and comfort us, how God drives with his saints so miraculously.
We have heard how God promised the pious Jacob to multiply his seed like the sand on the seashore, but the longer he does so, the stranger he acts, as if he had never thought or spoken of it, taking his dearest son from his right mother, who was now also dead, and now Joseph, and then Benjamin, whom he considers to be the right heirs, and it is not possible that they should not be dear to him. Therefore he is ever a strange God, attacking it so beyond all way and reason that no one could believe it. If he had said beforehand how it should come about, it would still have been believable; now he does not let him believe or know otherwise, because he is strangled and torn, let alone that he should believe how he should become the supreme ruler in Egypt.
How then must he do to him? He must keep God's word, and thus think: Even if all my sons were dead, God remains true that my seed should become like the stars in the sky and the sand on the sea. So he had to go straight against the stream and dampen all reason, even though it did not go sweetly for him, but rather became heavy and bitter, as the text also reports.
4 Thus God lets His saints pass over nature, and yet nature remains in them, namely, the great love and inclination for the Son; but He attacks them, and tries whether He wants to follow the inclination (which He Himself gave and does not reject) more than His word. It is all a good thing and God's business, nor does he want to do it with us in such a way that he sees and we become aware whether we prefer him to his goods; and thus strengthens his own, so that they can hold on to the word alone, should they immediately let go of all his goods.
(5) For this reason I say again, that we should not make sticks of the saints, but let man and nature remain as they are; as it hurts our nature when one loses a good friend; item, when we hunger and thirst, or when we are to die. How-
That is why it is good for us when we are healthy, have rest and enough. What can we do against it, because it is planted in us and is all of God? But it is important not to abandon God's word for the sake of it, and to be more attached to creatures than to Himself.
(6) Now then, behold how he willed to make Joseph a good man, by whom the land and the people, and especially his people, father and brethren, should be helped, that he might become a paragon among all the brethren; but before he comes to this, none is so well tried as he, that is, all thirteen years, from the seventeenth year even unto the thirtieth. In this way God wants to teach us how he is the right father, and our suggestions and thoughts are of no value. For then he tears the father and son from each other with great heartache and pain. The father is deprived of the son, the son comes to a country where he does not know the language, not to mention that he should know a friend to whom he would feel good. Above this, when God nevertheless provides him with a gracious master, since he has hardly enough food, he comes into another misery and distress for the sake of his wife, and lies innocently imprisoned for more than two years, when he had served his master most faithfully and had brought him much piety and benefit.
(7) There you see both God's wisdom and guidance, and His noble and tender gifts shining in Joseph. God's wisdom and care in that he is such a stranger to the father and son, and yet provides for him in such a way that the father could not provide for him with all his wealth, and puts him back before the father in such glory that he could never have wished for it. Is it not strange that he is sold so shamefully in his seventeenth year, that he is put into captivity, and that for thirteen years he is supposed to become the neighbor of the greatest king in Egypt, when he is now forgotten by all his brothers and almost also by his father? If we had no more history, should we ever learn from it what kind of a regiment God leads in the world, so strange that where one thinks it is the devil and death, there he is the closest.
8. he thinks he is abandoned by god and by the world, so his god is waiting, and has a
Eye on him. [He lets him be sold and captured, as if there were no God with him, but when the time comes, he sets him in the highest honor; so that the wise man in the Book of Wisdom says of him [Cap. 10, 13. 14.The wisdom, that is, the word of God, did not leave the pious Joseph when he was sold, and rescued him from sin, and was with him in the pit and in the bands, until it brought him the royal scepter, and went with him into the hands of the enemy, even into the dungeon, until he came out, and his wisdom broke forth, and he became ruler over Egypt.
(9) So the fathers looked highly upon this history, and marveled at the wisdom of God, when David also said in the 105th Psalm, vv. 16-21: "He caused a flood to come into the land, and took away all the supply of bread. He sent a man before them, and Joseph was sold as a servant. They forced his feet into a stick, iron went through his soul, until the time that 1) his word came, and the speech of the LORD ran through him. Then the king sent, and let him go, and the 2) lord over nations let him go out. He set him lord over his house, ruler over all his goods." It was hidden what God wanted to do with him; but that he should have in mind to save so much land and people through his misery, no one thought. But God gave him wisdom in his heart, so that he became a mighty ruler who could be useful to many people. If he had stayed at home, he would have remained nothing more than a shepherd.
(10) If, then, he is miserable and alone in a foreign land, and the eleven brothers are at home and think they are well off, and he must remain a miserable, captive servant all his days, God will turn him around and make him such a lord, as he had dreamed, that not only his brothers will be subject to him and fall at his feet, but all the land and all the people, except the king. Behold, this is what he who trusts in God and endures Him does. It is not with father and mother that they have given us
1) Jenaer: da.
2) "the" is missing in the Erlanger.
3) Erlanger: es.
(although one should be obedient to them); but the true Father is God alone, who helps out of all hardships and miseries to the highest honor. So that this example is quite an example and great stimulus to faith. Wherever I go, into the Father's house or into misery and foreign lands, that I may know that God is also at home there, especially where I can have no comfort and confidence in people, and am completely abandoned.
(11) I would also like, if it were granted to me, to be and remain with such a father as Jacob was, so that I could say, "I am ever with a godly father who has God's word, where the Holy Spirit dwells with God's fullness and blessing; but God casts out the son and leads him away into the land where only the devil dwells and reigns, and there is nothing of God that he must risk life and limb. This must have hurt him mightily, especially because he came from his father so young. But he learned from him and grasped the word he preached, as God had promised him that Christ would come from him; nevertheless, he had to think of him: Nevertheless I will not lose the God who is here, he will also be with me elsewhere; although it has hurt him. For flesh and blood will also have stirred, that sometimes his eyes have gone over with misery.
(12) Surely we should learn this once, if unbelief did not have the heartache and all the misfortune. What did the good Joseph have when he was taken away? They stripped him of his garment and left him not a penny, selling him into such a far country, where he, with hard work and for a long time, earned no more than plenty and abundance, and pious to the Lord. So God let him go and suffer grief for a long time, but not die of hunger. But when the time is over, he gives the whole land into his hand, so that they all have to be fed by him, and he gets so much power that everything he does is done. He has obtained all this by persevering 1) in faith and patience with God. 2) So God did
1) "Stop" is missing in the Wittenberg and Jena.
2) The words: "that he... has endured" are missing in the Erlanger.
still with us, if we could so persevere in faith. There is no other God now than the one who reigned there, we have the same almighty Father, and the same word that he would not leave us. Now this is a piece of the challenge that he overcame.
(13) The second time, when he had come into favor, and was a little well, and was set over his lord's house (though he got not much more than the bread), a new temptation came on the right side. Then behold, what an excellent spirit he has, and a strange, high virtue of virginity, that the woman in the house, the king's chamberlain, wins him over and urges him to sleep with her. What could he not have achieved and acquired from her, that she would have secretly given him and made wonderful good days? The text says: She did not offer it to him once, but every day.
This is a great virtue, that he, who has so much space, time, place, person, and in addition stimulation, and could win good and grace, nevertheless abstains; in addition, he is a young journeyman, and fresh-blooded, that nature would not be able to stand against such daily stimuli and lust, because youth itself is hot.
015 But he answered her nothing else, but this: "My lord knoweth not what is in the house, and all that he hath he hath put under my hand, and hath nothing so great in the house that he hath hid from me without thee. This must have been a faithful servant, who takes care of all his master's goods, so faithfully that the master lets him do everything, and does not ask what he has in the house, even if he wants to disgrace his wife, so that he does not know anything about it; nor does he say, "You are a wife, I am a servant, and I owe allegiance to my master, which I will keep; and he continues: "How should I do such a great evil, and sin against God? Behold, what a great spirit, how high he sets God's commandment above all that is on earth, and leaves nothing so dear to him as to do against it, even though he is young and so incited.
3) Horny - persistently ask.
(16) Now where are our monks and nuns who boast of their chastity? See if they will not all be put to shame, because he has so much room and favor, the woman in the house, who lies and drives him daily, which is a heavy and annual challenge to a young man: he still remains chaste until his thirtieth year, that he touches no woman, has only God before his eyes, and the faithfulness of his Lord. [There is a pious, upright, honest spirit in him, which nevertheless has such great cause for fornication, and is driven without ceasing; which also would melt iron, as St. Jerome says, and would soon be provided that one would fall, even if he had no evil will, and had kept chastity for a long time. But he is nevertheless careful not to be around her, nor to lie next to her in the house, chamber, or closet. For this also belongs to the keeping of chastity, as St. Paul teaches when he says: "Flee fornication.
(17) It is not easy to overcome, so flee far from it; though you almost chasten yourself and hold fast, it is still dangerous when husband and wife are with each other; for flesh and blood remain flesh and blood. Therefore nothing is safer than to be far from each other, or to remain with each other forever, otherwise it will hardly come off pure. Therefore he would not be with her, nor deal with her, that he should neither see nor hear of her. But what happened? She was lying in wait and caught him once when no one was around. For it is a miserable plague, the more one wants to resist it, the more heated it becomes. This was too close to the boy and was a hard blow; but the spirit became brave and strong in him, so that he overcame it, and when he could not get away any other way, he left his coat behind. The Holy Spirit does not need so many words about it for nothing, knowing well that it is a strange, great example; for flesh and blood are furious and senseless in this challenge, especially when they are with each other.
(18) So when he jumped away and fled from her, and she sees that he does not want to do badly, she becomes furious and rages, and thinks to deprive him of life. So it goes, the whore's evil cannot be atoned for, unless another evil comes into it, as the poet says:
Cedit1 ) amor furiis [Fury takes the place of love. Because it sees that it is despised and cannot gain its courage, the mind turns around and becomes mad and foolish. These are the fruits of flesh and blood, if God does not control and prevent them. Earlier she wanted to devour him for love, now she wants to strangle him for anger; so think: He wants to despise you, so now you have attacked him, he will reproach you and put you to shame that you lust after him, 2) and will reward you like a whore. Therefore she attacks him on the other side, becomes hostile to him, and brings this complaint before the Lord: "This is how you love me, this is what you mean to me, you have brought in the Hebrew servant to disgrace me.
This is a rather devilish little piece. She does not believe that God is also with him, thinks she wants to adorn and protect him, and deprive him of honor, life and limb. God is silent, however, and lets the boy be led to prison without guilt, most abominably, as an adulterer; but she passes with honor, no one excuses or helps him. Should it not have hurt him that he was so shamefully wronged that his heart might have wept? But he kept silent and commanded God. But the lamentation often struck him that it was not enough that he had come from the Father, but had to go further into misery and perish innocently for the sake of the wicked whore. This is how low God lets His saints get when He wants to lift them up.
20 O! who could grasp the examples that he is so gracious and good, when he attacks us so horribly. Joseph does not feel it yet either, but hopes that God will not let him. But as one looks at it, it is an unkind game, but basically such a great grace that he comes to honor afterwards. Who also knows how the harlot fared; the Holy Spirit does not write it, for he does not delight in misfortune. But this is what he indicates, that God means it in the best possible way, when he destroys us in the most disgraceful way. The world cannot believe this, for it is contrary to all.
1) Erlanger: dlnsvit.
2) to lust after someone ---- in a lewd way. (This meaning is missing in Dietz.)
Sense. But he alone binds the faith, if he can hold on, after that he helps in the future so strongly that [it] would be impossible to think of a man.
(21) For if Joseph had been given to wish, he would have wished that he might come out of the prison in which he was innocently laid, and return home to his father. Oh! what a small, narrow and weak prayer this was in the sight of God, that he should have to serve two more years even for this; for he wanted to give him much greater things. But that he should become such a lord in Egypt, and in addition get his father and mother again, he could never have thought. This is what Paul says [Rom. 8:26]: "We know not what we ought to ask, as it is fitting, but the Spirit himself represents us mightily with groanings unspeakable." If God would give us what we ask, only His abundant goodness would prevent it, so that He would not have given Joseph more than he had asked, would have been much too little, that He could not have proved His miracle. Therefore, in misery, we are to give GOD space, time and place, and not [be]stmmen as we would like. For we are fools, and know not what to ask. But if we keep still, and give him home according to his pleasure, we shall know how abundantly he is able to reward. But nature can
If he does not love you, he will not do so; but if he does not love you, he will give to you, but it is not good for you.
(22) This he preacheth and writeth unto us, that we may know his way. As the fourth Psalm, v. 4, says: "Know ye that the Lord leadeth his saints in a strange way. As if to say, "It is true that when we cry out to him, he hears us as often as we cry out and ask; but he does it so strangely that no one can understand it; just as Joseph would like to be free from his misery, he cries out and begs for help, and is heard so soon. But how strange it is: he hopes to get out soon, but it takes about two years. Is that answered? Yes, it is called miraculously answered. But it is not to be suggested to him, but he wants to be a master, and so make it that one blesses himself with miracles, and says: "If I had never believed that it would happen like this, so that you would jump for joy and have to confess that you were not only heard, but miraculously heard. It would be necessary for us to grasp this once, because the time is present every day when we need not doubt that we have certainly been heard; but how it is to happen, and how he will bring it forth, is to be known to him alone, so that he can do it in such a way that we must say, Praise God that it has not gone according to our will.