On the road to Emmaus, Yeshua met with two of His disciples and, beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:27). For our Torah studies this year, therefore, week by week we will seek to discover how all of Torah prepared the way for the coming Messiah.
20th December 2025 (30 Kislev)
Miketz (At the end of): Genesis 41:1-44:17
Despite all the modern-day aids to teaching which are available to human teachers, from computers to whiteboards, books and films, no-one can teach like our Creator God. Only the God of Abraham can create the universe where mankind dwells, give each person life and, through all the peaks and troughs of experience in that life, teach a person about themselves and about Himself. All God’s teaching is relational and is likened to a walk together.
He can also teach us through the lives of others. He shows us ourselves as if in a mirror, through what He has already done in the lives of other people. This is why the Bible, especially the first five books, is called Torah – teaching. Not only does God do this, but He prepares us for what is yet to come through the patterns and principles of what has been.
Our Bible studies must be part of our Hebraic way of life. Unfortunately, we could treat the Bible as a textbook of philosophy and miss the point. After all, the translation of the word philosophy is lover of wisdom. But a seeking after this kind of wisdom can be a lifeless pursuit, if one simply has a desire for academic knowledge, compared with what is intended – a personal walk with God. Joseph was a real person, not a character from fiction. We are also created beings, made in the image of God. Likewise, valuable though some books of theology might seem, they too can be lifeless for us, offering us theoretical knowledge of God rather than relational knowledge from our walk with Him.
It is a matter of wonder to us that the portions of Scripture we read week by week allow us to enter into the lives of those who went before us thousands of years ago, as if time has stood still.
In our portion this week, we continue to follow the way God fulfilled His purposes, despite what seemed like the impossible circumstances that beset Joseph, his father and brothers. God’s timing was perfect and His ways infallible. They were for Joseph and will be for us today and in the days to come. There is no precise formula from which we can predict how things will work out in our lives, or in the way God will complete His covenant purposes in the world, but Joseph’s life, nevertheless, has prophetic significance for the future.
A succession of dreams was the means by which God established the promise in Joseph’s life. Interpretation of dreams he himself had, and others which he interpreted for the butler and baker, made it possible for him to be called out of prison by Pharaoh. Thus, he became promoted to high office in the land of Egypt. God then used a famine to bring Jacob’s family to Egypt, and take a place of honour in Egypt. There, Israel would become a nation, fulfilling prophecy that was given to Abraham (Genesis 15:13). Dreams and physical signs are still used by God but there is no exact formula for any given situation, meaning that we must always be alert and wait patiently to see how He will act at each stage of history.
The important encouragement we get from our Bible study is the faithfulness of God and the certainty of His promises. God is gracious to record these things for us in the Bible. The lives of Jacob and his family were far from easy during the years when God seemed silent. Jacob was taken to his limit several times. He thought he had lost Joseph and feared that he would also lose Benjamin – the two sons of his beloved wife Rachel who had died in childbirth on the road to Bethlehem. Yet the need for food gave him no option but to do what Joseph required and go down to Egypt.
We have a wonderful insight into the outworking of God’s purposes through Joseph. What we are shown clearly was hidden from Jacob’s family. The brothers would find themselves doing exactly what God had prophesied through Joseph’s dreams, when they came and bowed down before him, while there was nothing selfish and proud in Joseph to bring it about. There was an overflow of God’s love when Joseph drew aside to weep when his brother Benjamin was brought to him (Genesis 43:30). These things help when we consider our own personal journey through life, especially when difficulties beset us. We can be sure that all God’s promises will be fulfilled and that He really does care.
The manner of Joseph’s brothers rejecting him, causing him to be put into prison, whilst he was chosen by God as their saviour in time of famine, reminds us of Yeshua.
The Gospel accounts describe clearly how Yeshua was chosen by God to be the Saviour of His people – His very Name means salvation. He entered a troubled world dominated by the Roman Empire. God’s purpose in Yeshua did not fit logically into the expectation of many Jews of the day, especially many leaders whose interpretation of biblical prophecy did not identify Yeshua as Messiah. Eyes were blind to God’s purposes in Yeshua, just as they were to Joseph’s brothers for God’s purpose in Joseph. This was even to the extent of their being willing to take our Saviour’s life by the cruel death on a Roman cross.
Even now, God has not finished and fulfilled everything He has promised. His final purposes are as sure to be fulfilled in God’s own way as they were in the life of Jacob’s family through Joseph, and through Yeshua’s great sacrifice. Furthermore, His timing will be perfect.
There will come a day when all that has been promised through Yeshua for His brothers, the Jewish people and all the Tribes of Israel, and for those grafted into the Israel of God, will be completed. The Bible, in both the Tanach and the New Testament, tells of the troubled times that will precede the final stages of God’s covenant purposes, as unchangeable as was the prophecy given to Joseph that the brothers and the father would bow before him. Yeshua spoke much of this. His return will be in the context of what the Bible calls Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7, Daniel 12:1-3, Revelation 6-12).
Just as surely as prophecies concerning Joseph were fulfilled when his brothers bowed down to him, the prophesies and purposes of God will come to pass for Israel’s present-day descendants exactly as God intends and through whom He Himself has determined. Yeshua was clear about His own purpose in coming the first time as Saviour and second time as Judge. He spoke even more clearly about these things than Jeremiah or Daniel whose prophecies pointed to Yeshua and in harmony with Yeshua’s own prophetic words. This is recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, leaving us no doubt about Yeshua’s own certainty of His prophetic call:
Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. (Luke 21:32-33)
Yeshua did not say these things lightly or without showing the compassion of the Father. Just as Joseph demonstrated his love for his brothers when he wept after they returned with Benjamin, so Yeshua wept for His people:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44)
He also made it clear that He would not return until the appointed time and this would be signified by a time of preparation and expectation growing among His people. Drawing to Himself the Messianic welcome from Psalm 118, He said of the time of His return, speaking specifically to the Jews of His day, whilst also speaking to those living in our day:
…I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ (Luke 13:35)
We are living in days of greater and greater fulfilment of the prophecies of the last days, which cannot be separated from God’s purpose in Yeshua. There will be difficult times, just as in the days of famine in Joseph’s day, when all that God has purposed through His Son, Yeshua, will come to fulfilment. Learning from our Bible studies, and discerning these times, we can be more prepared than Joseph’s brothers. We have had 2000 years since Yeshua ministered on this earth and told us what to expect.
