Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #25 in Genesis 37, and we will again read Genesis 37:17:

And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.

We saw that Dothan is the same word as Dathan, if you remove the vowel points.  Last time we saw that Dathan and his brother Abiram rebelled against Moses, and we read that it was out of envy that they rebelled because they were losing their power and authority, and they were not the favored ones in the congregation any longer.

That helps us a little bit in our historical account because we saw in Genesis 37:11 that Joseph’s brothers envied him, just as Dathan and Abiram and the other princes of the congregations envied Moses.  That is why they rose up in rebellion against Moses and Aaron, but it was really against God.

In our account, it is in Dothan that the brethren, the other sons of Israel, are going to conspire to kill Joseph, but they settled for selling him to some slave traders that would take him into Egypt.  So we certainly saw that they conspired to kill him out of envy, so Dothan, the place, does relate to envy, just as the man Dathan lost his life when he openly rebelled due to envy.  And Dothan was the place of the children of Israel’s rebellion.  The sons of Israel are going to rebel against their father, as they were planning to tell him a lie about Joseph being devoured by an evil beast.  Can you imagine?  It is bad enough to hear that your child has died, but then to hear a report of such an awful death.  For them to go back to their father, bringing the coat of many colours that they had dipped in blood, and then to say that they did not know what happened to him, implying that some beast had killed and devoured him.  They could not find anything left of him.  Oh, that would just crush a father for a son to die like that!  You would just feel such shock and terror: “Oh, my precious son perished in such a horrible way.  He must have felt such pain and horror as he was being devoured.”  It was really the worst kind of a lie to tell a parent that his son has died in that manner.  They really afflicted their father, as well as Joseph.  They did great harm to their earthly father Jacob.

You know it would be many, many years later before Jacob would know Joseph was very much alive.  Joseph was only 17 at this point, and we know that he revealed himself to his brethren when they entered into Egypt, and I believe that Joseph was then 39, so it was 22 years later, or 23 inclusive years later.  And Jacob was under the impression that his son had been eaten by a wild animal all this time.  It is just so awful what they conspired to do, and this is what the sin of envy produces.  It is such an ugly sin, and that is why God tells us in Proverbs 23:17-18: “Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long. For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.”

We also read in Psalm 73 where a child of God is saying that he was envious at the “foolish,” or the wicked, when he saw they were at ease and not in trouble as other men, and then they go to the grave.  But they seem to have a carefree life, whereas the elect child of God is  often deeply concerned and troubled by sin, and of displeasing God, and so forth.  But then we read in Psalm 73 that he was envious until he went into the sanctuary of the Lord, and saw the end of the wicked.  And that is where we have come in time.  We have come to the time of the end of wicked, and that “end” began on May 21, 2011, the beginning of Judgment Day.  And that is why the Lord tells the elect in Psalm 37:34:

Wait on JEHOVAH, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.

And that is exactly what has happened.  The wicked are “cut off.”  The shutting of the door of heaven cut them off from the kingdom of God.  And here we are on the earth to witness it.  We are seeing the cutting off of the wicked, as the Lord prophesied that we would see.  And since that is the case, God tells us, “Let not thine heart envy sinners…for surely there is an end.”  Whoever the Lord used to write that Psalm is typifying the elect, and he was envious until he “saw their end,” because when you see the end of the sinner, there is nothing further to envy.  They lose everything in the end, and they are also being troubled over the course of this prolonged Judgment Day.  The troubling and tormenting of the unsaved inhabitants of the earth is happening right before our eyes, so we learn not to be envious.  Actually we never had anything to be envious of because we are the ones that have it all.  We have that which is to be envied, which is eternal life, and we have an abundance of spiritual blessings that have been given us by our God, as well as a glorious eternity future waiting for us in the new heaven and new earth.  These are things that should have resulted in us never being envious of the unsaved. 

Going back to Genesis 37, we see that Joseph’s brethren were envious, and we would say that is an indicator they were not saved.  In fact they were conspiring to kill their own brother, and they lied to their own father.  They committed sin, after sin, after sin, which certainly seems to indicate they were not saved.  That does not mean that one, two, or three of them may not have become saved at a later time.  We do not know which of the 12 sons of Israel were truly saved, with the exception of Joseph.  Yet there could be indications for others, and we will see in the next chapter, Genesis 38, that there is further evidence that Judah was not saved, and then there is a little evidence that he was saved, so it is very hard to say.  But they represent the people of Israel, or the people of the churches, that have a relationship with God outwardly, but not inwardly.  They are not born again, and this is why they did the things they did to Joseph.  They are picturing the leaders of Israel, especially, that would be envious of the Lord Jesus Christ and turn Him over to be crucified.  It was out of that envy.

But we want to get back to discussing Dothan, and look at a passage I have mentioned a couple of times in 2Kings 6.  So let us turn there.  This is the only other place in the Bible where we read of a city named Dothan.  I am going to read 2Kings 6:8-12:

Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down. And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice. Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew me which of us is for the king of Israel? And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.

The word “bedchamber” is just the word “bed,” so we can understand it as his bedroom.  And the bedroom is probably the most personal place in a person’s house.  When you have company over, you are in the living room, and you eat in the dining room.  You do not normally take guests to your bedroom, which is private.  It is personal.  And this man is explaining why this is happening to the king.  They keep making these great battle plans to attack Israel.  They have it laid out very well, and they think they are going to trap and smite them, and have victory over them, “not once nor twice.”  And that is an interesting way of saying it.  So at least three times (and maybe more), the man of God (Elisha) had warned the king of Israel concerning the King of Assyria’s battle plan, and the traps or snares he was trying to set.  Maybe the Assyrians had an “intelligence report” that a company of Israel would be traveling down a certain road, so they would set up camp and lie in wait.  It would have been an easy defeat.  They would have wiped them out.  And yet they waited and waited, and the soldiers of Israel did not come down that road.  Maybe the Israelites even came up behind them and trapped them.  So that was a problem.  It was a serious problem for the king because he was losing men, and he was starting to suspect that there was a spy among his confidants, perhaps one of his generals.  One of them must be “for Israel,” and that is why it says in 2Kings 6:11:

Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew me which of us is for the king of Israel?

He is saying, “Who here is the spy?  Who is the one revealing our plans by going to the king of Israel and telling him our intentions?”   Then one of his servants told him, “None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.”  Or we could say “in thy bed.”  You know, it is “upon the bed,” as God tells us, that men tend to work evil.  It says in Micah 2:1:

Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.

This is the Word of God and God’s assessment of mankind.   It is not surprising that man works evil upon his bed because man works evil at every other time of day, and in every other place.  As God tells us in Genesis 6:5: “…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  And it grieved Him that He had made man upon the earth, and He determined to destroy them.

And this king of Syria, we would have to say, is a type and figure of Satan because the Assyrians were an enemy nation of Israel, which represent the kingdom of God.  And the Assyrians were against Israel, so they were against the kingdom of God.  And who is the king of the nation that is against the kingdom of God?  It is Satan, just as other kings like the king of Babylon, or the king of Egypt.  They can all represent Satan, just as the king of Assyria who had well-made plans to come against the kingdom of God.  But they were continually spoiled, and he was often disappointed that it was not working out.  Why was it not working out for Satan in his desire to destroy those that belong to the kingdom of God?  It was because of Elisha, who would have to be a type of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Elisha knows what this king was saying in his own bedroom.  This would identify with God, as we are told in Hebrews 4:13: “…but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” 

God is all-knowing, and He searches the hearts and reins, and He knows the thoughts of every person in the world.  God knew exactly what this king was thinking, obviously, and God revealed it to Elisha.  Historically, the prophet Elisha was just a man, and he would have had no way of knowing anything like that.  But the Lord revealed it to Elisha the prophet, and Elisha revealed it to the king of Israel who then acted upon it.  And that was a good thing.  A lot of times, we read very negative things about some of the kings of Israel.  They often acted unfaithfully, but here the king of Israel was told by the prophet, “This is where the enemy is going to be.”  And it took a degree of trust to act upon it, and to change his battle plans, or not to go down a certain road, or to come upon them from behind, and so forth.  So that was a positive thing for this king of Israel.

And because this had continually been happening to the king of Assyria, it says in 2Kings 6:13:

And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.

This is the place we see in Genesis 37.  Elisha was in Dothan.  Then we read in 2Kings 6:14-17:

Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about. And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, JEHOVAH, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And JEHOVAH opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

Well, this is getting interesting.  This was all happening in Dothan.  The king of Assyria had sent a major army.  He sent horsemen and chariots, a great host, and they compassed the city of Dothan about, and within the city we read only of Elisha, the man of God, and the servant of the man of God.  And the servant saw the army around the city, and he asked, “Alas, my master! how shall we do?”  Elisha told him, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”  Then he asked the Lord to open the servant’s eyes, and the Lord did open his eyes.

Lord willing, we will return to this chapter in 2Kings 6, and we will try to see what is going on here, which in turn will help us to understand “Dothan” a little bit better as it is used in Genesis 37.