• 2024-08-02 | Chris McCann
  • Audio: Length: 28:16
  • Passages covered: Genesis 40:1-4,23, Genesis 39:1-5, 1Peter 3:19-20, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:16-21, Genesis 41:1.

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Genesis 40 Series, Part 5, Verses 1-4

Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Today is study #5 of Genesis 40, and we are going to read Genesis 40:1-4:

And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker had offended their lord the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers. And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound. And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them: and they continued a season in ward.

We have been looking carefully at this historical set of circumstances with the faithful man of God, Joseph, who had been thrown into prison. While he was in prison, Pharaoh became wroth with two of his officers, the chief of the butlers and the chief of the bakers, and he put them into prison. The captain of the guard charged Joseph to serve them because these were very important prisoners. Even in our modern day we have prisons for “regular” people, and we have prisons for “special” prisoners, like famous or rich people. They are often kept imprisoned in a different way than regular people.

Here, the captain of the guard is not taking any chances, and that was a good thing because one of the prisoners, the chief of the butlers, would later be returned to his butlership as a man of authority. He knew that if he treated him well, maybe down the line he would receive some help from him, like a favor. So the captain of the guard put them under the care of Joseph, knowing that Joseph would do an excellent job. And that very well may have been because of what we read about the captain of the guard in Genesis 39:1-5:

And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither. And JEHOVAH was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that JEHOVAH was with him, and that JEHOVAH made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that JEHOVAH blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of JEHOVAH was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field.

It does not tell us that the captain of the guard was Potiphar, but he is called the captain of the guard. And in chapter 39 Potiphar had placed Joseph over his house. By the way, the word “overseer” in this passage is the same word in Genesis 4:40: “And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them…” That is, he gave Joseph oversight regarding these two men. He figured that everything this young man touched seemed to prosper, and this was an important matter, so he entrusted the butler and the baker to him. It makes sense, historically, that this would be the case.

What we learned in the previous chapter concerning the spiritual meaning of the captain of the guard is that he was a type and figure of God Himself. Potiphar’s wife was an adulterous wife who constantly tempted Joseph, and I explained how she was a figure of national Israel that tempted God throughout its relationship with God. The Bible tells us that God had entered into a marriage relationship with Israel, and He eventually divorced them and put them away, as pictured by the renting of the veil of the temple when Christ went to the cross. The marriage between God and this people ended, and that is why there was a Law in Deuteronomy 24 for a man to put away an unfaithful wife. Since God is under His own Law, He needed that Law in order to end the spiritual marriage relationship with the nation of Israel. Christ had pointed out that whatever God has joined together man was not to put asunder. Then they said that Moses in the Law allowed for a man to put away his wife. And then Jesus said, “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.” He was speaking to the leaders of Israel. The reason was because of the hardness of their hearts in their spiritual marriage because of their constant adultery. The Lord was indicating that it had been a temporary Law for a particular purpose of God, and He fulfilled it when He divorced Israel, and now that Law was no longer applicable. Man could no longer legally divorce. While that Law was on the books, an Israelite man could put away his wife, but once the Lord utilized the Law, thus fulfilling His purpose for that Law, then He rescinded it: “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Anyway, the marriage of Potiphar, captain of the guard, to his wife typified God’s marriage with Israel, so Potiphar was in the position of God in that relationship. Remember how the Pharisees and the scribes and chief priests would continually come to Jesus tempting Him like Potiphar’s wife did to Jospeh: “Lie with me.” We can see why God gave Joseph such an obedient spirit, and he would not even consider such a thing. How could he sin against God and his master who trusted him with his house? Joseph was extremely faithful. We cannot find any fault with Joseph because he was a picture of Christ who is without sin, and none of the temptations of Israel ever had any effect on Jesus – He never fell for any of it. 

And, of course, there were false allegations against Christ in the Gospel accounts, but none of their witness agreed. In the Bible, the Law is that two or three must agree for their witness to be accepted, and their witness never agreed together, although they brought forward all kinds of false witnesses that accused the Lord Jesus of things that He did not do. And that is exactly what Potiphar’s wife did. She falsely accused Joseph of things that he did not do. 

So the spiritual picture follows through, and here in Genesis 40 we have the captain of the guard charging Joseph with the oversight of these prisoners. Of course he was also the captain of the guard who had placed Joseph in the prison, and that brings up a question. You know, we always have to face these kinds of questions when we look for spiritual meanings because of an inconsistency in a type and figure, as is the case with the captain of the guard, or with who Pharaoh represents, or with who Joseph represents, or with the setting of the prison. An inconsistency would indicate that we may have a problem, and that we do not understand it as well as we thought we did.

So what is the inconsistency here? Joseph is a type of Christ, and yet Joseph is in the prison before the butler and the baker. The butler and the baker were cast into prison after Joseph had already been there, and Joseph resided in the prison. How can we understand that? What is the spiritual meaning of the prison? Remember that we looked at what it says of Christ in 1Peter 3:19-20:

By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing…

So the spirits are in prison, but they are not in “hell,” some fiery place. That is what theologians have wrongly indicated. The spirits in prison are unsaved people in their unsaved condition, and we know this because of a number of verses, but let us go to Isaiah 61:1:

The Spirit of the Lord JEHOVAH is upon me; because JEHOVAH hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

That is God’s salvation program. In Luke 4 when Jesus began His ministry, He taught in the synagogue, and it says in Luke 4:16-21:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

He came to preach the Gospel, and the Gospel would set the captives free. The Gospel does not set every captive free but it sets free those the Lord predestinated to be set free, the elect.

And here we have two prisoners, the butler and the baker. And it will come to pass that one is set free, and the other is hanged. We see that both were prisoners, but they had different ends, and that is how it is with all people. All mankind are in prison to sin and to Satan, but God had a plan to deliver His people from their sins, and these are certain individuals that are elect: “For many are called, but few are chosen.” The few are the elect.

So all mankind were in that prison. Again, these two men represent the saved and the unsaved. One will be delivered, and one will not be delivered. That is the spiritual picture. We do not know the actual spiritual condition of the butler, for instance. He was an Egyptian butler. Maybe God saved him, but very likely He did not save him because God did not save a great number of people in the Old Testament days. But spiritually, the butler represents the elect.

But let us get back to our question. We can understand that the prison represents all sinners in the world, but Joseph was already there. How can we understand that? There are a couple of ways of looking at this. First, the prison can point to the spiritual condition of hell, or the grave, which the world was in throughout history as mankind was in their sins. However, there was an official Day of Judgment when God would turn the nations into “hell,” or the condition of death, as He carries out His wrath in Judgment Day. But we also read that the wrath of God abides upon the unsaved sinner throughout their history in the world, and that would be the case for all sinners. 

Jesus was laden with the sins of His people and bore those sins before the foundation of the world, and before any human being had even been created. We know this from several Scriptures. You can read Revelation 13:8 where it says He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, or you can look at Hebrews 4:3 where it says that the works were finished from the foundation of the world. So the foundation of the world was a point in eternity past, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is eternal God, existed then. Jesus did not just come into existence when He was born of the Virgin. He has forever been, as He told the Jews in John 8:58: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” So in eternity past He was eternal God, and God developed a salvation program in which He would be the Lamb sacrificed for the sins of His chosen people. Yes, it was a great number of perhaps 200 million, but out of the whole of mankind throughout history it is not many, and that is why the elect are identified as the “few.” But it certainly was a great amount of sin that was paid for, and every sin of every elect was laid upon Christ. He was laden with our sins because He was taking our place before the wrath of God, and God would strike Him dead. He was the Lamb slain, and He died bearing our sins, and then He rose from the dead at the point of the foundation of the world to be declared the Son of God. He was the Son of God but not in any kind of birth as we understand it when a father has a son. According to Romans 1:4, He became the Son through the resurrection from the dead, and that is understandable when we realize that He was the first to ever rise from the dead. Again, it was at the foundation of the world, and therefore the Bible says Colossians and Revelation that He was “the firstborn from the dead.” He came out of the womb of “hell,” or death, as it were. Remember that in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word “sheh-ole'” is equally translated as “hell.” or as “grave.” Christ rose from the dead, and He came up out of “hell” or death,” as the firstborn from the dead. He overcame hell or death, and now He has this glorious name or title, the Son of God, the firstborn from the dead. 

The Bible also says He is the firstborn of many brethren. We follow after Him, and we will rise on the last day, the day of the resurrection and rapture, and all will come from the grave to be declared sons of God, and received by the Father. We will be children or sons with whom He is well pleased for evermore. But that is why Jesus was already there in the prison, as it were. It is because Christ had already paid that penalty of suffering and dying in “hell,” or the “grave,” and He has come forth.

There is another reason, and it has to do with the age of Joseph and the timeline we are given. We are given certain ages for Joseph. We know he was sold to the slave traders who sold him to Potiphar in Egypt, and he was age 17. We know he will soon be called out of prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, and we are told that he is 30 years old. So there are 13 years between the ages of 17 and 30. The number “17” identifies with the end of the world, and we will look later at how this fits with the time of the end.

But we are also given another date. According to what we can read here, Joseph was thrown into prison, and then not long after (days or weeks), the butler and the baker were also thrown into prison. So Joseph was there first, but the time order was not that different. We will read that Joseph asked the butler to remember him, but the butler forgot him. At the end of the chapter we read in Genesis 40:23:

Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.

Then we read at the beginning of the next chapter in Genesis 41:1:

And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

The first question we would ask is this: “Two full years from what point?” And the answer that fits well, so must be the correct answer, and that it is at the end of Joseph’s period of having been two full years in prison, and the butler was having been two full years outside the prison after being restored as Pharaoh’s cupbearer. (The word “butler” means to be a “cupbearer.”) Then when the butler heard the Pharaoh had these dreams, he will remember Joseph after two full years. Do you see how that fits? That is the significance. 

But how does that help us? So we know that Joseph was 28 when he was thrown into prison, and he came out after two full years at age 30. And we also know that from age 17 to age 28 he was overseeing Potiphar’s house, a period of 11 years. Then we have that now familiar breakdown. We have 11 years, plus two years, which is 13 years. I will have to explain that when we get together in our next Bible study because this is something we see in the Bible consistently. God is giving us the least expected thing. Who would think that God was basically laying out the history of the world in an account of Joseph being a slave and going into prison, but He is doing so. Again, we will pick this up when we get together in our next Bible study.