Pharaoh

AI summary: This Pharaoh matters because he belongs to one of the Bible's most consequential stories of providence within a foreign court. The cross references present him as the ruler troubled by dreams, dependent on Joseph's God-given interpretation, and willing to entrust Egypt's management to a Hebrew prisoner who proves wise and faithful. Through him the narrative shows how divine providence can operate inside imperial structures without those structures controlling the outcome. Taken together, the material presents this Pharaoh as important less for his personal character than for the historical setting in which Joseph's rise preserves Egypt and Jacob's family during famine.¹

The Pharaoh of Joseph’s days (Gen. 41) was probably Apopi, or Apopis, the last of the Hyksos kings. To the old native Egyptians, who were an African race, shepherds were “an abomination;” but to the Hyksos kings these Asiatic shepherds who now appeared with Jacob at their head were congenial, and being akin to their own race, had a warm welcome (Gen. 47:5, 6). Some argue that Joseph came to Egypt in the reign of Thothmes III., long after the expulsion of the Hyksos, and that his influence is to be seen in the rise and progress of the religious revolution in the direction of monotheism which characterized the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The wife of Amenophis III., of that dynasty, was a Semite. Is this singular fact to be explained from the presence of some of Joseph’s kindred at the Egyptian court? Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee: the land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell” (Gen. 47:5, 6). ³