• | Chris McCann
  • Audio: Length: 23:54
  • Passages covered: Genesis 37:2-4, Numbers 13:32-33, Numbers 14:1-4.

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Genesis 37 Series, Study 3, Verses 2-4

The number “17”

Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #3 in Genesis 37, and we will read Genesis 37:2-4:

These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

I will stop reading there.  Once again, we read that Joseph was 17 years old, and we know this is the year 1899 B. C. because Joseph was born in 1916 B. C.  And we know that Jacob was 108 years old at this time, so we also know that Jacob was 91 when Joseph was born.  And the number “91” is “7 x 13,” and both of those numbers are very significant in their spiritual meaning in the Bible.  Of course the number “13” points to the time of the end, and much of the history of Joseph will relate to the time of the end of the world and the Great Tribulation.

We also know that since Jacob was 108, and we know his death age was 147, so we know there are 39 years remaining in Jacob’s life, from age 108 to 147.  And the number “39” is “3 x 13,” so there is a very heavy emphasis on the number “13” in the lives of Jacob and Joseph, especially after Joseph was taken into Egypt, and when Joseph revealed himself to his brethren at the point of two years of famine when he was 39.  Then he orchestrated circumstances to bring his family, Jacob (Israel) into Egypt.  At that time Jacob appeared before Pharoah, and Jacob told him he was 130, which is “10 x 13.”  And at that time, Jacob was 39, which is “3 x 13.”  So the number “13” is being emphasized in this account, which points to the time of Great Tribulation which began in 1988, the 13,000th year of earth’s history, and the time when the church age came to an end.  And the Great Tribulation was a period of 23 exact years.

We are also told that Joseph was 17, and the number “17” is a number that can identify with heaven.  We wonder, “What is the significance of Joseph being 17 at this point in time?”  I am not completely sure, although at age 17 he was sold as a slave into Egypt, and it would be 13 year later when he came out of prison at the age of 30.  So that is one thing that fits in with that timeline.  There are probably other reasons that have to do with the time references God wanted to give. 

But the number “17” is a number that appears in a couple of time paths where we would not normally expect a number that points to “heaven,” and one of those is that the duration of the church age was 1,955 years.  And the number “1,955” breaks down to “5 x 17 x 23.”   The number “5” can point to the atonement, which would identify with grace and judgment; the number “23” has to do with judgment; and the number “17” has to do with heaven.  But it is pointing to the end of the church age, so how are we to understand that?  And the answer is that God would apply Christ’s atonement (the number “5”) to all the elect that would become the firstfruits during the church age, which would guarantee their salvation and future home in the eternal kingdom of heaven, and then would come judgment.

The number “17” is also the number found twice in the number of days from the Lord Jesus hanging on the cross to May 21, 2011.  From April 1, 33 A. D. to May 21, 2011, there are 722,500 days, and that number breaks down to “5 x 5 x 10 x 10 x 17 x 17.”  And that span of time took us to the end of God’s salvation program, or the completeness (the number “10”) of all those that were to become saved.  And the number “17” has to do with heaven, and once someone has become saved in their soul, heaven is guaranteed, even if they remain on the earth during the Day of Judgment to experience that judgment.  The numbers are all doubled because everything is absolutely certain to happen.  And Joseph was  a great type of Christ, and fully identified with heaven because Christ is identified with heaven.

So this is the first thing we learn of Joseph, and he is 17.  Although we are told of his birth back in Genesis 30, now God is going to tell us much more about this one son of Jacob, who happens to be the favorite son of Israel, as it says in Genesis 37:3:  “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.”  We will discuss the fact that Joseph is the son of his old age, and we will investigate this “coat of many coulours.”

But I want to look further at the statement made at the end of the verse, in Genesis 37:2:

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah,

I mentioned last time that the sons of Bilhah were Dan and Naphtali, and the sons of Zilpah were Gad and Asher.  They were born to concubines.  Yes, they were recognized as wives in the eyes of God, but they were still handmaids who were under the authority of their mistresses, Rachel and Leah.  Actually, Rachel and Leah counted their handmaids’ children as their own.  So the whole situation is really set up for failure, we could say, as far as family life is concerned.

Man thinks he is very wise, and we would have to say that is still the case today.  Mankind really things he is wise, much wiser than God.  He thinks he has it all figured out, and that he knows better how to live his life than how God commands him to live.  Man thinks that by following his own desires and ideas, he will be happier, and he will obtain the things he wants, so this is the way he should go.  And, of course, man is always wrong.  He is not just sometimes wrong, or mostly wrong, but he is always wrong when he thinks that way.  As a matter of fact, it has never once been true that man has a better design, or plan, or way of living, than that which God has laid out for man.  And God laid out the way for man to live through His commandments.  This is our direction.  We are to follow the Word.  We are to follow the commandments of God, and to the degree a man is able to do so, it will result in a higher level of happiness and enjoyment of life, even for unsaved individuals.

But man thinks he always knows better, and he has all these reasons for doing the things that he does, and there is always his own justification.   So too it was true of Jacob.  Yes, there was deceit on the part of Laban in giving Jacob the older daughter Leah to marry rather than Rachel, the woman he loved and wanted to marry.  I do not know if Jacob bears any blame in that, or not, as that is a hard question.  But then Jacob married Rachel.  We can never say that there is any justification in going against the Law of God, and God’s Law says that a man should have one wife.  Historically, Jacob then had two wives, and he was already doing something contrary to the Law of God, no matter what the circumstances. 

You know, sometimes people go to a city where there is gambling, and they get drunk.  Then they wake up the next day, and they are married because it is so easy to get married in these places.  Then they try to justify it: “You know, I was drunk.  I did not know what I was doing, so I am not really married.”  But, no, that is not true.  Unfortunately, regardless of the circumstances, one is legally married, and if one is legally married, one is  married in the sight of God.  We have to take responsibility for our circumstances, and I can only say that Jacob should, perhaps, have taken better preparation for the marriage with Rachel, and to have been more careful about it.  But then the problem was multiplied when Rachel gave Jacob her handmaid to wife.  He should have said, “Absolutely not!”  Then Zilpah gave her handmaid to him to wife.  “After all, you took Rachel’s handmaid to wife.”  Again, he should have said, “Absolutely not!”  But he did not, and then he had four wives that all bore children, and they were all his children, but they had different mothers, and this caused friction, especially for the sons of the handmaids.  They did not seem to have the status of the sons of Leah, or the sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin.  In addition to that, they noticed that their father loved Joseph more than the rest of them.  That is what it says in Genesis 37:4:

And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

You see, sin begets sin.  It just becomes an awful mess.  We could look at the life of David, a man that God says was after His own heart.  And yet when he fell into sin with Bathsheba, and God chastened him, he also had problems that were a result of having multiplied wives, and of having many sons and daughters by those wives, and there was friction in his own household.  And one of the brothers rose up and slew one of his brothers that had a different mother.  Absalom slew Amnon, who had a different mother. 

God knows best.  God is wiser.  Have one wife, and have children with that one mother.  Of course if the wife dies, then it is permissible to have a second marriage and other children, but not to have multiple wives at the same time.  It is bound to cause trouble, and it is happening here with Joseph.  He has not done anything.  He is just a young man, and all his brothers hated him because of the circumstances their parents created with all of the friction among the sons.

This brought about these sons of Bilhah and Zilpah speaking evil, and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.  They could have been speaking evil of Jacob, or maybe they were speaking evil of Joseph.  And Joseph could tell they hated him, and maybe they told him to his face, and maybe he went to his father and said, “They really despise you (or me),” or whatever he said, but it was nothing good.  That is for sure, as this word “evil report,” Strong’s #1681, is found in Numbers 13:32-33:

And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Then in the next chapter, it says in Numbers 14:1-4:

And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath JEHOVAH brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.

The evil report of the spies had very serious consequences.  It caused an uproar in the camp to the point that they were ready to slay Moses and Aaron, and to make themselves a captain, and to go back to Egypt.  Someone may say, “Well, they searched out the land, and there were giants in the land, and the cities were greatly fortified with walls, and the Israelites did not have coats of armour and all the weaponry to fight against them, so the spies were just giving a fair analysis of the situation.”  No.  They were not giving a fair analysis.  What they were doing was magnifying the enemy, while diminishing the One on their side, who was God.  They had witnessed the mighty power of God in Egypt.  Were the Egyptians stronger, mightier, and greater than these city states of the land of Canaan?  Definitely, with no doubt!  Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world at that time, and God brought them to their knees.  God wiped out their entire army and their Pharaoh, and the Egyptians were killed in their chariots in the Red Sea.  But the spies diminished all that, and they forgot about that.  They did not say, “Yes, these enemies have some strength, but the One with us is greater.”  There is a Scripture that says, “…greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.”   But instead they were cowering in fear of the ones in the world, these enemy forces, the kingdom of Satan: “Oh, we are nothing compared to them.”  They were looking to themselves, and not to God, and that is why it was an “evil report.”  But Caleb and Joshua had the right idea: “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”  They too had seen the giants.  They also saw the cities with great walls, and yet they said, “No problem because God is with us.”

Lord willing, when we come back for our next study we will look more at this word translated as “evil report” in the Old Testament, and we will also go to the New Testament.  And we will find that this is a very common word that we are familiar with in the New Testament, but it is translated a different way.