Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #12 in Genesis 37, and we are continuing to read Genesis 37:5-8:

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.

I will stop reading there.  We have been discussing how Joseph’s brethren hated him, and we saw that this is typical of the ungodly, the unsaved, toward the Lord Jesus.  And it is also typical for the unsaved to hate the body of Christ, all those the Lord has taken out of the world and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son.  Because we are not of the world, the world hates us.  That is what the Bible tells us. 

They also hate the Word.  The brethren of Joseph hated Joseph because they could tell that their father had special favoritism toward him, and that is true of our Father above who has special favoritism for those He has saved, His elect.  They also hated him for his “dream,” which is akin to prophesying, and for his words, which would also relate to the prophecy of the Bible, the Word of God.  It is especially true that those who remain in their sins despise the Bible; they hate the Word of God.  They do not want anything to do with it, and they want to remove themselves from it. 

In the case of Joseph, they sent him away, did they not?  They separated from him.  They removed him from their company.  Remember how God describes some aspects of the world’s hatred in Luke 6:22:

Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.

Whenever we read of a reference to “for Christ’s sake,” or “for the Son of man’s sake,” or for the “Word’s sake,” they are all synonyms.  It is all for Christ’s sake, or for the sake of the Word of God, the Bible.  The Lord told Samuel: “…for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.”

That is always the case if we are a true and faithful messenger and servant of the Gospel.  Of course there are instances where an individual child of God’s personality is the problem, and it can lead people to reject him based on that personality, but the typical situation is that it is not the person himself that they hate.  That person may have been embraced and accepted prior to his salvation, but afterwards they have that identification with the Word of God, and that person is no longer accepted.  They are rejected.

Let us go back and look at Joseph’s dream a little closer, in Genesis 37:6-7:

And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.

Joseph likened himself to a sheaf, and his brethren were also likened to sheaves.  They were binding sheaves in the field, and we can understand the “field” to represent the world.

What about the word “binding?”  This is a very unusual word to be used in this setting because this is the Hebrew word “aw-lam',” and it is found nine times in the Old Testament, but it is translated only this once as “binding,” and it is translated once as “put to silence,” in Psalm 31:18:

Let the lying lips be put to silence; which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.

It is also translated seven times as “dumb.”  And to be “dumb” has to do with not speaking, or with being silent, and it is especially significant as we find this word used in Isaiah 53, a Messianic chapter, in Isaiah 53:6-7:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and JHEOVAH hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

The word “dumb” is the word translated as “binding” in Genesis 37, and we can see very clearly that it has to do with not opening the mouth, or not speaking.  It is to be quiet.  And we know this refers to Christ because in the New Testament, when the Ethiopian eunuch was reading this very passage in the book of Isaiah, and Phillip came to him and asked him if he understood what he was reading, then it says in Acts 8:31-35:

And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.

Jesus was the One who was like a sheep before the shearers.  He was “dumb,” and opened not his mouth.  That verse is referring to the Messiah, so we wonder how the way this word is used here fits with what we are reading in Genesis 37:7:

For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field…

Again, it is translated only once as “binding;” and once as “put to silence,” and seven times as “dumb.”  So let us substitute that word here: “For, behold we were dumb sheaves in the field…”  You see, it sounds very awkward.  We can see why the translators translated it as “binding.”  Keep in mind that expression that I think is still around today when people say to someone who is being quiet: “What is the matter?  Is your tongue tied?  Is that why you are dumb?”  And that is more than likely the idea the translators were going with, as when someone’s tongue is held back or hindered, and it is as though it has been “tied up.”  So since they were in the field working with sheaves, then it must be that they tied the sheaves, or bound the sheaves.  I think it is reasonable to draw that kind of conclusion, and that is probably what the translators were thinking. 

Nonetheless, the word “binding” does lead us to the Lord Jesus Christ being “dumb” or “bound” in Isaiah 53.  If we read the Gospel accounts, Jesus was literally “bound” and taken to the high priest of Israel, and there were instances when He did not speak, to the point where Pilot said, “Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?”  But the Lord did respond, did He not?  He said, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.”  So it was not complete “dumbness,” or complete “silence,” but it does lead us to Christ and the atonement: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and JHEOVAH hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  And He was, “as a sheep before her shearers is dumb.”

I do not think it was so much that Christ was quiet before His accusers, but He was quiet before God.  Christ making an appearance or demonstration before Pilate and the high priest and then going to the cross was a demonstration of what He had done before the foundation of the world when He appeared before God to bear the sins of His people, and He did not try to justify His sinful condition of having been made sin for us.  He was silent.  And that is the nature of a righteous recognition of a sinner before God.  If you remember, in Psalm 51, after David was convicted by Nathan the prophet of his sin with Bathsheba and his sin against her husband Uriah the Hittite, God moved David to say in Psalm 51:1-4:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

You see, it was an admission, or confession, and he was turning it over to a righteous Judge.  There was no defense made, in other words.  There was no attempt to justify the sin:  “I am guilty of sin.”   When we acknowledge and confess that we are guilty of sin, and we turn it over to God for judgment, it is as though we are being silent before Him.  We are not attempting (as do so many wicked people) to prove our righteousness, or to justify out sinfulness:  “I only sinned because…”  There is no justification or reasons given.  When Jesus Christ bore our sins and become sin for us, He made no attempt to justify the sins He bore, but He was silent before the Father who was going to pronounce the judgment of death upon Him.  When we get down to the spiritual meaning of what it is to say that the Messiah was “dumb” before His shearers, it points in that direction. 

So going back to Genesis 37, it says in Genesis 37:7: “For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field.”  And the word “binding” is Strong’s #481, and it is translated as “dumb.”  And the word “sheaves” is a closely related word.  The Hebrew word “binding,” is the word “aw-lam',” and the word translated as “sheaves” is “aw-loom',” and this word is Strong’s #485, and it is only found five times in the Old Testament.  Four out of the five times, it appears in verse 7: “we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.”  In each instance, the word “sheaf” or “sheaves” is this same word. 

So where is the fifth place this word appears?  We would be very interested in seeing how it is used because maybe it will help us to understand the word and what is going on here in Genesis 37.  The fifth usage of this word is found in Psalm 126:5-6:

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

The word “sheaves” here is Strong’s #485, the word “aw-loom'.”

There is another word that is translated as “sheaf” or “sheaves,” but it is a different Hebrew word, and we find this word in Leviticus 23 concerning the first of the firstfruits.  It says in Leviticus 23:9-16:

And JEHOVAH spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: And he shall wave the sheaf before JEHOVAH, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto JEHOVAH. And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto JEHOVAH for a sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto JEHOVAH.

So this went from the time right after the Passover, or the morrow after the Sabbath, all the way to the day of Pentecost, as “pente” means “fifty,” so fifty days passed, and then it was Pentecost.  So this sheaf, or wave offering, would identify with the first of the firstfruits, and Pentecost was the feast of firstfruits, and we know that the feast of Pentecost relates to all those saved over the course of the church age.  The “sheaf” that became the wave offering is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.  After that wave offering, it was fifty days to Pentecost, so the Lord is connecting the death of Christ in 33 A. D. to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that took place on the Day of Pentecost, in Acts 2.  The death of Christ would identify with the first of the firstfruits.  The wave offering had bene received, and then we count seven weeks, followed by that fiftieth day when Pentecost was fully come.  And that is what is in view here.

We will talk a bit more about “sheaves” when we get together in our next Bible study, and the Scripture in Psalm 126.  We will also try to understand a little better what is going on with the first dream of Joseph concerning his sheaf rising, and his brethren’s sheaves doing obeisance to it, and bowing down to it.