There were many lives in the Old Testament which were prophetic types of the Lord Jesus, but no two of them were duplicates or shadowed forth our Saviour in exactly the same office and relationship. The infinity of God breaks forth in the exhaustless variety which He gives to His creatures, and no two types of Jesus are just alike. Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Aaron, Samuel, David, and many others, were all pre-figurements of the Lord Jesus, yet each one furnishing a likeness differing from the rest, because Christ is of such magnitude in glory that there is no end to the different forms in which He may be set forth. Moses is the greatest type of Jesus in His prophetic office, Adam the greatest type in being the head of a new race, Joshua the greatest type of Christ as a warrior, David the greatest type as founder of a kingdom, Solomon the principal type of tranquil reign after conquest, Isaac the greatest type of Christ as an obedient son offered up to death, but Joseph is the greatest type of Jesus in his relation to the Jews. It is this marvelous prophetic life of Joseph, as setting forth our Lord in His relation to both Jews and Gentiles, that I wish to trace out in this chapter, and may our hearts be kindled with a stronger love for Jesus and a deeper interest in the welfare of Israel than ever before.

1. Joseph was pre-eminently the son of his father’s love. In the account in Genesis we learn that Rachel, the mother of Joseph, was the woman that Jacob loved, and from all we learn in Scripture the only woman he ever loved as a wife. Hence Joseph, being her firstborn, was in an especial way, over and above all his other children, the son of his love. So we read, “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children.”  Genesis 37:3. In a very special way this sets forth the blessed Son of God as the only begotten Son of the Father, and He is called by the apostle “the Son of God’s love,” and when Jesus was anointed with the Holy Ghost the Father spoke from Heaven, “This is my Son, the beloved one, in whom I am well pleased.” We have not space here to dilate upon the eternal generation of the Word, the personality of the Lord Jesus, from the bosom of the Father, except to say that there was a divine necessity in the eternal blissful nature of God for the expression of God’s knowledge of Himself, and that necessary, blissful utterance constitutes a divine person of outspoken love, co-equal and coeternal with the Father; and from the mutual love of these two infinite persons there proceeds an eternal outstreaming bliss of their united loves which is the person of the Holy Ghost, who is the joy, the jubilee, the ecstasy of the Father and the Son, and of equal nature, majesty, and eternity. Thus the divine personality of Jesus is the only begotten of His Father’s love, and then His temporal generation in flesh and blood was produced by the Holy Ghost in the Virgin Mary, by which He stands, in both His divine and human natures, the Son of infinite love, infinitely above all angels and saints, and of which Joseph, being especially Jacob’s first love child, is a faint shadow.

2. Joseph’s father sent him on a mission to his brethren, a mission of benevolence and brotherly relief. While Joseph’s brethren fed their flocks some distance from home, Jacob said to him, “Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks, and bring me word again.” When not finding them at the appointed place he still kept hunting for them, and being accosted by a stranger the young lad said, “I seek my brethren; tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks.” Here is a pure, beautiful youth, with a heart as guileless as the light, seeking his brethren who were bearing the heat and burden of the day, with gifts and love messages from home for them. How perfectly this sets forth that pure and spotless Lamb of God who came from Heaven, seeking the lost sheep of the house of Israel, with a love for them unspeakable in its purity, tenderness, and unselfishness, bringing gifts and the best of news from their heavenly Father.

Though Jesus came with love to redeem all men, yet the divine order was “to the Jew first and then to the Gentile.” Christ observed this order, and in an especial sense “he came unto his own,” the twelve tribes of Jacob, and His own blood kin of Israel received Him not; hence He told the woman of Canaan that His special ministry was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

3. The brethren of Joseph hated him and plotted to kill him, and would have done so, but Reuben, his oldest brother, who loved Joseph, planned to screen the lad and to deliver him back to his father. (Genesis 37:22.) In this respect Reuben typifies those Jews who believed on Jesus, and would gladly have delivered Him from the rulers, and who will form a part of the church of the first-born. The Jewish brethren hated Him and crucified Him from the same motives that Joseph’s brethren acted that of jealousy and hatred for they hated him because he was the beloved one, and because of his righteousness in reporting to Jacob their wicked conduct, and because of his piety and prophetic dreams from the Lord. So the scribes and Pharisees hated Jesus because His life of spotless purity and His words of impartial righteousness were such burning rebukes to them, and because He had such a large following among the common people, and because He declared Himself the Son of God.

There is no race of men that can hate more savagely, and more continuously than the seed of Abraham; and while they have the capacity, under divine grace, of boundless love, as proved in the cases of David, Paul, and others, yet their envy and cruel hatred has had strange and unnatural manifestations in their treatment of Moses in Egypt, and of Joseph, and Jesus, their greatest benefactors. Joseph’s brethren sold him for twenty pieces of silver, amounting to ten dollars, and the Jewish brothers of Jesus sold Him for thirty pieces, or fifteen dollars.

There are many who think that “envy” is no great sin, but it is the very essence of murder, and has caused the bloodiest crimes ever committed. Envy is an ill will to others because of their superiority in gifts, or goodness, or success, and the least spark of this feeling in the heart is the seed of hell, for it sold Joseph, rejected Moses, cursed David, killed the prophets, crucified the lowly, loving Jesus, and kindles the flames of endless torment. If you have the least feeling of envy, flee to the cleansing blood of Jesus.

4. The pit and the grave marked the dividing line between Joseph and his brethren, and between Jesus and Israel. While they did not actually kill Joseph, yet they virtually did it, utterly repudiated him as a brother, cast him into a pit, and then sat down to feast themselves, very probably on the delicacies that Joseph had brought them, while the innocent lad was crying in distress and begging for mercy. That pit was, in a striking sense, a grave to Joseph who had been stripped of his beautiful garment and subjected to a mortification, which was a species of crucifixion to him. Thus the meek Lamb of God was stripped of His seamless robe, which hands of tenderest love had woven for Him, without a seam, like the seamless robe of holy love which the Father put on His soul and, having killed Him, they buried Him in the earth.

5. From the pit and the grave, Joseph and Jesus are both taken up and sent forth into a far country to obtain a kingdom. Hence in both cases the pit and the grave are alike a great chasm, separating Joseph and Jesus from their brethren according to the flesh. It is true that thousands of Jews have believed on their brother Jesus, but in doing so they have been lifted from the earthly Israel into the church of Christ, and the church is a heavenly body of regenerated souls of both Jews and Gentiles, and very different from the rank and calling of earthly Israel, or the twelve tribes in their national office.

The grave of Jesus was the passage-way by which Christ got closer to His church, but it was the chasm which separated Him from national Israel as an earthly people. God called Joseph by His providence to be “separated from his brethren,” for which he received extra blessing (Deuteronomy 33:16), and to go into a foreign country to be the agent of salvation, and to obtain a kingdom, as we read, God sent Joseph before his brethren to be sold for a servant, until the king sent and loosed him and “made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance, to bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach his senators wisdom.” Psalm 105. In like manner Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God to be a Prince and a Saviour, whom the heavens must receive until the fullness of the Gentiles is accomplished, and then God will send Him back again. (Acts 3:15–21.) To this typology of Joseph agrees the parable of Jesus in which He is the nobleman leaving the earth and going into a far country to obtain a kingdom, and to return. (Luke 19.) Scripture affirms that “Moses was king in Jeshurun” (Deuteronomy 33:5), and Joseph was king in Egypt. So the tribes of Joseph and Levi furnished kings outside of Canaan on Gentile territory; and the tribes of Benjamin and Judah furnished kings in the land of Canaan, the land of Israel proper, which things are not without prophetic significance.

6. The brethren of Joseph supposed, when they saw him leave for Egypt, that they had made an everlasting finish with his meddlesome piety and his tantalizing dreams. They dipped his beautiful coat in goat’s blood and told their father Jacob a lie, supposing that would put a quietus on the history of their lovely brother. In like manner, when the Jews saw their brother Jesus dead and buried, and the grave sealed and guarded with Roman soldiers, they thought that was the end of His career, and would terminate His tormenting doctrines. But when the sons of Jacob saw their father rending his clothes and weeping, and their sisters weeping, their consciences were lashed with many an invisible whip, and the pangs of secret remorse never left their bosom until they were reconciled to that banished brother. In like manner, when the Jewish rulers condemned their innocent, lovely brother Jesus to death, saying, “his blood be upon us and our children,” little did they know of the unspeakable woes they would bring on themselves, both in soul and body and in national distress. And there are secret pangs in the breasts of poor Israel, wherever they may wander in the earth, that will never be healed until they are restored to their absent brother.

7. In both instances, while the brethren of Joseph and Jesus supposed they were utterly dead, and knew nothing as to their whereabouts, both of those brethren were working mightily among the Gentiles and making friends with myriads out of other nations, and by their wisdom and grace were building up great kingdoms of strength and glory. The children of Jacob could not have the least imagination of the sublime providences that were transpiring in Egypt, and the poor, despised brother, whom they supposed filled the grave of an Egyptian slave, was at the head of the greatest empire at that time on earth, and exercising a wisdom, and love, and sovereignty, and winning his way over ancient prejudices, and capturing the hearts of many heathen in such a manner as to render him the wonder of the ages.

This clearly sets forth the condition of things as between the earthly Israel of today and the absent brother, the Prince of the house of David. The natural Jew has no conception that his brother Jesus is really alive and at the head of a vast kingdom. The more serious and thoughtful Israelites may be puzzled at the vast growth and durability of the religion of Jesus among the Gentiles, and they know that Christ has millions of followers from among the Gentiles, and that the civil condition of Gentile nations has been lifted from barbarism to marvelous improvement by the teachings of Christ, but they have no conception that Jesus is absolutely alive, and as an omnipotent person is at the head of the church, and pouring out from Himself the wisdom and grace and strength that accomplishes all these marvels of salvation and reformation among men. Thus in both instances, under Joseph and under Jesus, a wonderful work is wrought among Gentiles, while their brethren supposed them to be mouldering in the grave.

 8. The first meeting of the sons of Jacob with their brother was fraught with trouble and distress. The whole account as given in Genesis is one of the most pathetic portions of Scripture, and can hardly be read without tears.

Some have wondered why such a long, detailed account is given to it when other biographies are so brief; and others have wondered why Joseph acted just the way he did. Remember that these things were written and divinely ordered in every particular by the Holy Spirit, not for their sakes but, as Paul says, for the sake of those upon whom is to come the end of the age.

Just as Joseph appeared to his brethren, first as a stranger and then as their own brother, so the second coming of Jesus back to this earth has two stages to it, the first stage to catch away His saints, at which time the earthly Israel will not recognize Him as the Messiah Brother, and they will have great trouble and distress immediately following that event. It is very likely that Israel will largely be gathered into their own land by the coming of the Lord; and during the great tribulation, it would seem from many Scriptures, all the Jews in the world will gather into their own land. It was famine that drove Jacob’s sons into Egypt to find bread, never dreaming of finding their lost brother. In like manner it will be a sort of national, or political, or social necessity, for the Jews to go back to Palestine and, like Joseph’s brethren, in a state of ignorance about their brother, the Christ.

Now, if we read carefully of the first meeting between Joseph and his brethren—how he seemed to be rough and severe, speaking to them through an interpreter on purpose to hide himself, and yet inquiring so particularly about their family and estate, then charging them as spies, then demanding they bring the youngest brother, then binding Simeon before their eyes, and yet mingled with this severity giving them back their money in their sacks—do we not see in all this an inspired history of what Paul describes in Romans 11 about God’s dealing with Israel as he exclaims, “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God,” and says this in connection with a prophecy of the restoration of Israel, after the age of the Gentiles is completed, and of God’s purpose to graft the broken off branches of the twelve tribes into the sweet olive tree, which is Christ. (Romans 11:15–26.) Then when Joseph’s brethren returned to their father, there was fresh trouble, notwithstanding they had a supply of food, for when they recited all the incidents to their father he was in great distress. “And Jacob their father said unto them, Me ye have bereaved. Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, having been bound in Egypt, and now ye will take away Benjamin; all these things are against me.” It was indeed a troublesome time for the dear old patriarch. The trouble did not end there, but starvation drove them back to Egypt, and they must needs take Benjamin, and leave old Jacob to weep alone; and then in Egypt, though they received much kindness from the unknown king, yet when the cup was found in young Benjamin’s sack, they were on the verge of despair. It is indeed a touching history of grief and anguish, and they confessed that their sins of other years were now finding them out.

There are abundant prophecies that a similar history is at no distant day to be accomplished upon the twelve tribes of Israel, the fleshly brothers of Jesus. At His appearing to gather out His elect from the four corners of the earth, earthly Israel will see in Jesus only a divine being of alarm and distress, who speaks to them in a strange judgment speech, and then will come “the days of tribulation upon all the earth,” in which will occur the blowing of the trumpets of woe, the pouring out of the vials of wrath, spoken of in Revelation, and in those troublesome times the tribes of Israel will go through their last great sufferings just before the millennium. It is spoken of as a time of trembling and of fear, and of men going half bent with agony, like women in travail, and as being the time of Jacob’s trouble, when all nations will fight against them, and the anti-Christ will try to exterminate them. (Jeremiah 30:4–7; Revelation 11:1–3.)

9. At the second meeting of Joseph and his brethren, though they were brought to the keenest agony, yet at the climax of their anguish Joseph revealed himself to them as their brother. Then Joseph could not refrain himself, and he caused all to leave his presence while he made himself known, and wept aloud and said, “I am Joseph.” And his brethren could not answer him, for they were troubled at his presence. And then in tender love Joseph said, “Come near to me, I pray you.” And they came near, and he said, “I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.” (Genesis 45.) Those words, “your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt,” were sufficient proof to them, for they had never let out the secret, and the revelation of that great sin by this stranger proved that is was Joseph. So at the second stage of the coming of Jesus, after He has caught away the church of the first-born, and gone through the wedding feast with His elect saints in the heavens, and the world and Israel have passed through the judgment tribulation, Jesus, the Prince of Glory, as the theocratic son of David, will return with His glorified saints, the retinue of His court, to this earth and to Jerusalem, and at that time Israel, the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, will meet again their long-lost brother and, right in the climax of their sufferings, when the antichrist seems on the verge of exterminating them, Jesus, like Joseph, will no longer be able to refrain Himself, but will drive His enemies out of His presence and reveal Himself to all the house of Israel, and show them by infallible signs that He is their brother whom they sold and crucified.

Jeremiah says, “At the very time of Jacob’s sore trouble he shall be saved out of it.” Jeremiah 30:7. And Hosea tells us that after the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king or a sacrifice, in the last days they will return and seek the Lord, and David, their king, proving that Jesus, as David, is to return to this earth, and reign over the Jews and all nations in the millennium. (Hosea 3:4, 5.)

Just as Joseph proved himself by referring to the act of his brethren, so Jesus will prove Himself to Israel by showing His wounds and telling them, “These are the wounds I received in the house of my friends, that is, from my kindred.” Zechariah 13:6. We may well imagine how Joseph’s brethren felt—cut to the heart with mingled feelings of sorrow, repentance, remorse and fear—when they knew that is was Joseph speaking to them, and they were liable to sink with grief, and Joseph saw it necessary to comfort them and said, “Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me, for God did send me before you to preserve life.” In like manner Jesus will reveal God’s great redeeming purpose to Israel at their restoration, and show them that while the Jewish rulers, and all the Jews who have sanctioned their conduct, were guilty of Christ’s blood, yet it was by that very crucifixion a way of salvation was provided for both Jew and Gentile. As Joseph’s brethren repented with deep sorrow, so the prophet Zechariah has told us of a day coming when the Jews, as a people, will repent at the return and revelation of Jesus as their brother and Messiah. “In that day I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, and the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei (or Simeon) apart, and their wives apart; and all the families that remain apart, and their wives apart.” Zechariah 12:10–14.

Could anything be more explicit? Here is a prophecy that has never yet been fulfilled, for it is not the repentance of individual Jews, but a national repentance, by tribes and by families. And it takes place not in London, or in New York, but in Jerusalem, and in the land God gave to Israel. And it is a repentance produced not by preaching the Gospel, as in this age, or by the teaching of the church, but produced by the open, visible manifestation of the blessed Jesus to the eyes of the Jewish people living at that time, for they look on Him whom they have pierced just as really as Joseph’s brethren looked into the living face of him they sold. And the scene of weeping, mourning, supplication, and heart-rending cries depicted by Zechariah is a scene of repentance on such a large, national scale, and of such soul-bursting agony, as has never yet taken place at any one time, since the fall of Adam.

The Jews, failing to see in their Scriptures that Christ must first come in humiliation, and suffering, and then come again in glory and royal majesty, have always looked for their Messiah the way we Christians are looking for Him to come again, and the day will come when they will see Him on the throne of David in glory and power just as really as Jacob’s sons saw their rejected brother on the throne of Egypt.

 10. Then Joseph sent for his father and all the family to come to him. So Joseph had a command from Pharaoh to send wagons out of the land of Egypt to bring all of Jacob’s family, their wives and their little ones, into the land of Egypt; also he supplied them with changes of raiment, and silver, and abundance of provision. Do not forget that when Joseph gathered all his kindred to himself he brought them from the north down into a south land, and this is exactly what the prophet Jeremiah foretells of the last ingathering of Israel into their own land. “Behold, the days come, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely. And they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but they shall say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries whither I had driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land.” Jeremiah 23:5–8.

This prophecy has never yet been fulfilled. When the Jews first entered Canaan, they entered from the south, and then in the partial restoration from the Babylonian captivity they entered from the east, but the Holy Spirit positively affirms that in the last days they are to be gathered from the north and other countries.

Now look at it, one-half of the Jews are now in Russia, which lies north of Palestine, and the other half of them are scattered among all nations; and as Joseph gathered his blood kindred from the north, so the Jehovah Jesus, the son of David, will gather Israel, His kindred in the flesh, from the north of Palestine and from all other countries. And this prophecy refers expressly to Christ’s personal reign on the earth, for it says that this king, the Branch of David, shall reign, and prosper, and execute judgment and justice in the earth. And this prophecy embraces both the tribe of Judah and all the other tribes of Israel, for they are both to be saved and dwell safely, which agrees with the words of Paul, that Israel shall be saved and the natural branches are to be grafted in, after the fullness of the Gentiles has come. (Romans 11.) And this gathering of the kindred of Christ, according to the flesh, is not to be in Europe, or America, or in the Christian church, but emphatically “in their own land,” for nearly a hundred times God’s Word declares they are to be gathered “in their own land,” and “never wander any more,” and the last great gathering is to be mostly from the north. Notice also that Joseph’s kindred were gathered to him in wagons furnished by the Gentiles, for king Pharaoh gave commandment to send his horses and wagons to bring all of Jacob’s family to live with their brother. To this agrees the prophecy of Isaiah.

“For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land, and the strangers shall be joined with them and bring them to their own place.” Isaiah 14:1, 2. And again, “Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, unto the name of the Lord, because the Holy One of Israel hath glorified thee; and the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings minister unto thee,” just as Pharaoh ministered to the family of Jacob. (Isaiah 60:9, 10.) These and many other Scriptures indicate a time when Gentile nations by government authority will transport the Jews in ocean steamships and railroad trains, and other modes of rapid transit, from all countries on earth to their own land free of charge.

11. After Joseph met his dear old father and all the loved ones, and they had wept with joy, and all the darkness of other years had been explained, he then gave them the best of all the land of Egypt, the land of Goshen, to dwell in. In like manner the land of Palestine is to again become the richest and most productive land on the earth. In many places prophecy affirms that the land of Israel shall again be productive, like it was at the beginning, and the barrenness will be removed, and the land shall bring forth abundantly, and it shall be like the garden of the Lord. (Ezekiel 36:30–35.)

12. Joseph, having settled his kindred in a rich land, reigned over them, forgave them for all their sins, poured his love upon them in every way, and saved them from famine. Under his sovereignty they multiplied rapidly and soon became mightier than the Egyptians. So the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Zechariah, and other prophets abundantly testify that when all Israel is gathered again in their own land, and Jesus reigns on the restored throne of David, His kindred, according to the flesh, are to be saved and exalted to prosperity and leadership of all the nations on the earth, far transcending the prophetic reigns of David and Solomon. Just as willow trees along the water courses grow stronger and taller than the waving sedge grass, so Israel, in her national capacity, when restored under the reign of Christ, will rise among the nations “as willows among the grass.” (Isaiah 44:1–5.) Through the Christian church God deals with individual hearts, calling them as individuals, whether Jews or Gentiles, to repentance and faith in Christ, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to form a heavenly body which is to outrank the earthly Israel just as far as they outrank the Gentile nations. But be it known that God never has converted the whole, or the majority of any nation, or any city, or any province, or any town through the church, and never will, for it is not promised in Scripture, but only individual souls from among the nations.

But in the coming age God will institute, according to Scripture, a new order of converting nations as such, and cities as such, and in doing so He will begin by restoring and saving the twelve tribes of Israel in their national capacity and giving them the Holy Ghost, and all the glory which their prophets have foretold. Then through regenerated Israel He will work upon the other nations in their national capacity, and nations will be born to God, and while the glorified church of the first-born will share the sovereignty of Jesus, and with Him reign on the earth for a thousand years, yet in all national administrations Israel will come first. “In that day he will cause the seed of Jacob to take root, Israel shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.” Isaiah 27:6. These words have never yet been fulfilled. “At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord to Jerusalem, and he will cause the house of Israel to be gathered from the north land, unto the inheritance of their fathers, and give them the land of their desire, and give them the heritage of glory, and of beauty, among the hosts of the nations.”  Jeremiah 3:19. (Marginal readings.)

How explicit this prophecy which does not refer to the Christian church, but emphatically to restore Israel, with the throne of world-wide government, in the city of Jerusalem, and all nations, by their representatives, will be gathered there, and the tribes of Israel will be the most glorious and at the head of the hosts of nations. The church is God’s heavenly elect, especially the church of the firstborn, but Israel is God’s earthly elect from among the nations. The church deals with individuals, but Israel deals with nations. Thus all the way through, God honored the patriarch Joseph by making him a type of the blessed Lord Jesus, in his relation to his kindred according to the flesh, and there is yet to come a glorious day of reconciliation of the seed of the sons of Jacob to their meek and lowly brother, the heavenly Joseph.