Genesis 41-50, Exodus 1-4

The grand sweep of Genesis concludes in Egypt as Joseph talks his way out of trouble, interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams and attaining a position just below him in importance.  Joseph's brothers come to him and he hides his true identity from them, repeating another pattern in the Bible to this point.  He pushes it just far enough to have his kid brother Benjamin placed in the position God had Abraham place Isaac.  Different circumstances, same general need to play the ultimate test.

The points I really want to stress, however, are how Joseph and his brothers echo Cain/Abel and Jacob/Esau and even the later Moses/Aaron, and just perhaps Jesus, whose single existence comprised the dual nature of God and man.  Which of the two sides wins in the struggle?  The point is never really the victory, because victory is sometimes not even possible, but rather to strike a contrast between them, and illustrate God's relationship to man and therefore man's relationship to God.  More narrowly, Joseph may simply be called a predecessor to Jesus, how he relates to the Pharaoh, how he represents both himself and his people.  His people, by the way, who continue to live, by choice, in exile, but always preferring in personal matters their own.  By the end of Genesis, Jacob has died and then Joseph dies, but not before, as Jacob has done before him, prophesying about the future, or in other words the fulfillment of the covenant God has been making with Abraham and his descendants for all prosperity and a land to call their own.

Then begins the second book of the Bible, Exodus, and with it a swift contrast in the fortunes of Hebrews in Egypt.  The old pharaoh who came to rely so favorably on Joseph has passed away and the new one greatly fears the shear number of Hebrews living within his kingdom, so he subjugates them rather than allow his fear of a revolt or uprising to come to pass.  Like Jesus later, all the male offspring become subject to genocide, but the Hebrews prove crafty and avoid the inevitable fate of their kind, saving their little boys, and of course famously in the case of Moses.

He's sent in a basket down the river and ends up in the Pharaoh's palace, and grows up a regular Joseph, until he remarks on the oppression of his own people, and then goes into exile, finds his birth family, and then incidentally runs into a bush lit by an angel and then inhabited by God, who charges him with the salvation of the oppressed Hebrews, who are suddenly keen to begin looking for that promised land.  He doesn't feel up to the task of doing the speaking for himself, so he asks if it's okay that his brother Aaron do it for him.  God says it's okay.

The way God presents himself is a key difference, by the way, between Exodus and Genesis.  God even gives himself a name, which is later translated for simplicity's sake to Yahweh, although the basic statement is that he is God because he's the only being in creation who's always "is."

What's really notable here is how definitive the transition from Genesis to Exodus really is.  Although the circumstances around Joseph serve as a bridge, Exodus makes no attempt at the same kind of genealogical comprehensiveness as Genesis.  Moses is left pretty much to appear at random.  He is descended from Levi, marking the first point this particular son of  Jacob is considered significant, much less in a positive light.  

It's just as if Exodus originally stood apart from Genesis, or that it was composed first and Genesis second, like a prequel, to explain where the Hebrews came from in the first place and how their faith developed, or a justification for the new emphasis on finding a homeland, which makes Genesis to become the first work of prophecy in more ways than one in the Bible, assuming there's an equal chance it developed first.  It seems as if Moses came about independently, certainly within the awareness of the Abrahamic tradition but separate from it, which is why in the early parts of Genesis some knowledge is implied whereas in the later parts it's inferred.  Moses is the start of the Jewish traditions still practiced today.  That's why the first books of the Bible are dedicated to him so completely, even Genesis, where he doesn't even appear.  The way Christians view the Old Testament is how Jews view Genesis in regard to Moses.  He's the whole reason anyone should care about it.  Pretty shocking, when you consider how significant most of that material is, at least culturally.