WITH JOY

 

I was reading the prophecies of Joseph in the Joseph Smith Translation yesterday and was overcome with emotion. I understood for the first time exactly why Joseph was blessed with the double portion of Jacob’s inheritance. This man was exceptional.

Chapter 50 of the JST begins with Joseph approaching death and saying to his brethren "... I go down to my grave with joy" (JST Genesis 50:24). Ever the optimist, he saw his life in balance. In “The Testament of the Patriarchs” he says this in his own words:  "My brethren hated me...they wanted to kill me.....into a cistern they lowered me....they sold me into slavery.....I was taken into captivity....I was overtaken by hunger....I was alone....I was in weakness...I was in prison.....I was in bonds....assaulted by bitter words of the Egyptians...a slave" (The Old Testament Pseudepigraha, p 819).

But then this: "....the Lord loved me....the God of my fathers preserved me...the Most High raised me up....the Lord of all set me free....the strength of His hand came to my aid....the Lord himself fed me generously....God came to help me.....the Lord showed His concern for me...the Saviour acted graciously in my behalf......He rescued me and He exalted me." (The OT Pseudepigraha, p 819)

I cried at the end of chapter 50 when I read he requested that his bones be carried out of Egypt: “So Joseph died when he was an hundred and ten years old and they embalmed him and they put him in a coffin in Egypt; and he was kept from burial by the children of Israel, that he might be carried up and laid in the sepulchre with his father….” (JST 50:37,38)

Joseph’s greatest joy before he died centered on the promises he received from the Lord regarding his posterity through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh….namely, a deliverance from bondage and ‘a righteous branch that shall be carried off into a far country’ (JST 50:24,25):

“I suppose Jacob saw this land as well as Moses, and he designated it a….. very distant land. He said this land was over and above, what his progenitors gave to him and he would give it to Joseph…..The precious things of heaven were to be given to Joseph on this land. Blessed of the Lord be his land for the precious things of heaven, more precious than the fullness of earth…..more precious than the gold and silver of the earth. The precious things of heaven revealed to the people of Joseph on the great land given to them unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills.” (Orson Pratt, in “Journal of Discourses”, 18:167-68; see also Genesis 49:26)

And so Lehi of the tribe of Manasseh (Alma 10:3) and Ishmael of the tribe of Ephraim (see Erastus Snow, in “Journal of Discourses”, 23:184-85), arrived in the most precious land ‘unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills’ in 600 B.C. to fulfil the promise made to Joseph about his posterity.

You who stand on the hallowed ground of America and claim it as your home….know what a privilege it is to be born and bred there. Your land belongs to Joseph, your patriarch and the prototype of Him who ultimately owns everything…..our God of Israel, who so freely gives, who guards the land of everlasting hills and all His promises faithfully fulfills…..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Focus on Joy by Michael Malm)