Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #31 in Genesis 37.   We will read Genesis 37:18-20:

And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.

I will stop reading there.  Joseph was in Dothan.  He found his brethren in Dothan, and they saw him afar off, as we read in verse 18.  Even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.  We know the spiritual setting.  Joseph is a type of Christ, and his brothers represent the nation of Israel, and they are indeed the children of Israel.  They are the sons of Jacob.  So it is a very fitting spiritual picture of Israel seeing Christ, the Messiah, or God in the flesh. 

They see Him afar off at first.  We are not surprised at that because the Bible tells us that God is far from the wicked, if we turn to Proverbs 15:29:

JEHOVAH is far from the wicked: but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.

We also read in Isaiah 5:26:

And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:

God is far off, and in the New Testament this is explained a little better in Ephesians 2:13:

But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

The Greek word translated here as “sometimes” would be better translated as “aforetime” because when we say “sometimes” in our modern English, it sounds like, “Sometimes we are far off, and sometimes we are not.”  Then it goes on to say in Ephesians 2:14-17:

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.

And that is the spiritual picture of Joseph coming to his brethren.  Remember this points to the first coming of Christ.  The Lord Jesus was born into the world, born of the Virgin Mary.  And where was he born?  He was born in the land of Israel to the people of Israel.  He came to His brethren, just as Joseph came to his brethren in this ancient account.  He was coming to Dothan to visit his brethren.

It says they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, and then it says in the second part of Genesis 37:18:

…they conspired against him to slay him.

The Hebrew word translated as “conspired” is only found four times in the Old Testament, and it is Strong’s #5230, “nâkal,” and it could be pronounced “naw-kal'.”   It is found here as “conspired,” and it is found a second time in Psalm 105:25:

He turned their heart to hate his people, to deal subtilly with his servants.

Here, it is the word translated as “subtilly.”

We also see this word in the last book of the Old Testament, in Malachi 1:12-14:

But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of JEHOVAH is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith JEHOVAH of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith JEHOVAH. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto JEHOVAH a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith JEHOVAH of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.

It is the word “deceiver” in verse 14.  So far, we see it translated as “conspired,” “subtilly,” and “deceiver.”  And the fourth time it is found is in Numbers 25:16-18:

And JEHOVAH spake unto Moses, saying, Vex the Midianites, and smite them: For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor's sake.

By the way, the word “matter” is the Hebrew word “dâbâr,” which is the word for “word,” so they beguiled them in the word of Peor, and in the word of Cozbi.  Spiritually, it points to those who are deceitful and beguiling in using the Word of God, which would be false teachings coming from false prophets.

The word “beguiled”  is #5230, “nâkal,”  and it is also translated as “conspired” in our verse in Genesis 37 when Joseph’s brethren saw him afar off, and they conspired against him to slay him.  Then we saw it translated as “subtilly” in referring to the Egyptians in Psalm 105:25, and as “deceiver” in Malachi 1:14: “But cursed be the deceiver,” that offers unto JEHOVAH a corrupt thing.  And that too points to presenting a false gospel, and not being truthful according to God’s commandments.

And here in Numbers 25:16, it said,  “ Vex the Midianites, and smite them: For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor.”  So it is something that we can clearly see is not a good thing – it is very negative.  We can also see it with the leaders of Israel when the Lord Jesus Christ did enter into the world and walked among them.  Lord willing, we will take a look at that in some Scriptures in the New Testament that would go along with this understanding and help us to relate it to what is going on when Joseph came to his brethren, but they conspired against him.  We definitely see the same thing, historically, concerning Christ’s life on earth and His period of ministry.

But first I just want to mention something else here in Numbers 25:16 which is important in how we understand the Old Testament Bible and the Hebrew language.  We can learn from this word “nâkal.”  It is a word in the Hebrew language which is a consonantal (consonant-based) language.  With the word “ “nâkal,”  it uses the  “N,” which is “Nun;” the “K” which is “Kaf,” and the “L” which is “Lamed.”  Those are the three Hebrew letters.

In Number 25:18, the word “wiles” is a related word in Strong’s Concordance.  I told you earlier that the word “nâkal,”  the word we are tracking that is translated as “conspired” is Strong’s #5230, and “wiles” is Strong’s #5231.  It is only given a different Strong’s number because it has different vowel points.  (You can hear the “A” sound with “nâkal,”  and the Hebrew word translated as “wiles” is the word “nêkel,” and you can hear the “E” sound.  Again, it is just the different vowel points that causes this word to have a different Strong’s number, and to be a different word as far as the concordance is concerned, but they actually have identical consonants.

You have probably heard this before as we have done Bible studies here, as well as when you may have listened to Mr. Camping, but when we look at the three consonants we can find similar words in the concordance (as we have done here), and we have said, “This is the same word.”  You may have thought, “But what about the vowel points?  Does that make it a different word?”  And the answer is, “No, it does not.” 

Let me try to explain.  In our English language the vowels are very important, and I will give you a few examples.  Just think of the word “lived.”  It has the “L,” the “V,” and the “D.”  Those are the consonants.  And it has an “I” and an “E” as its vowels.  Now let us look at another word with the same consonants, like “loved.”  It has the same consonants, but it has an “O” and an “E” as its vowels, and it makes it a totally different word.  We could say, “I lived there,” and “I loved here.”  They are completely different.  We know they are two distinct words.

If we look at the word “river,” the consonants are “R,” “V,” and “R.”  Consider another word that has the same consonants, the word “rover.”  But the vowels make a difference.  When we see the “I” and the “E,” we think of a body of water, and when we see the “O” and the “E,” we may think of the terrain vehicle that NASA sent to Mars to travel the surface there.  It is something that “roves.”

A third example would be “bike” and “bake.”  “I biked to work today,” and then “I baked a cake.”  They are unrelated.

But that is not the case in Hebrew.  Hebrew is a consonantal language.  Today in the land of modern Israel, they do not use vowels.  For someone learning the language, they will teach them the vowel points so they can speak it, but they recommend “getting off” the use of vowels as soon as possible because they feel that using the vowels is like a child.  They use it to instruct people in order to learn the language, and yet in Israel they have no problem reading a newspaper, or whatever they are reading, using all consonants.  So it is not necessary even in our modern day for a Jew familiar with the language to include the vowels.

Actually, what happened was that when God wrote the Bible as He moved the prophets to write the Old Testament, it was all consonants.  And this is widely understood among secular and religious authorities (Jewish and Christian), although some would say the vowels are “inspired.”  But, overwhelmingly, it is understood that there are no vowels in the original text God gave.  In the first century A. D., we know that Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and the Jews were spread all across the earth.  They were driven out of Israel, and the nation of Israel ceased to exist after that Roman destruction.  The Jews went into Asia, Europe, and all over the world during the New Testament era. 

There were a group of Jews called the Masorites around 500 A. D. (some say 600 A. D.), and they were excellent scribes who began to include vowel points in the Hebrew text.  They did this for a very particular reason, which was to make sure the language was not lost.  The Jews had no problem speaking the consonantal language without the vowels, but then they were spread out into all nations, and then it goes into the second, third, and fourth generations for hundreds of years, they would begin to be removed from the language because they were not speaking it every day.  So as a help to the Jews that were scattered into the nations, the Masorites wrote the vowel points into the texts, and then the synagogues in the various nations could have their Old Testament Bible, their Tanakh, and they could teach the Jews in various nations how to pronounce the words.  So that served to preserve the Hebrew language, but the vowel points were not in the original language.

It is also true that there could have been others earlier…and there are some references to some early church writings in 200 or 300 A. D. where someone refers to “vowel points,” so there could have been other instances of men sharing the scriptures with the vowel points because non-Jews or foreigners would not know how to pronounce the words.  So that has always been the case, but there is no proof that God gave the vowel points when He gave the Scriptures.  If He had, that would mean the vowel points are inspired.

If they were inspired, that would mean that when we have these two words, “nâkal”  and “nêkel,” which are #5230 and #5231, I would point out that they have the same consonants but different vowels.  In this particular case, they have the same meaning as well because the word “wiles” and “beguiled” are very similar, and the context shows they both have to do with deceitfulness, and all four verses we read had to do with that. 

But that is not the case when we have words like “bike” and “bake.”  They have different meanings because they have different vowels.  But in the case of the Hebrew, we can dismiss the vowels and we can see the same meaning.

I mentioned this because some people in our time are saying that the vowel points are inspired, and that is not the case.  Other examples can be shown, but I am not going to get into all that right now.  I just wanted to mention that.

Let us go back to Genesis 37:18:

And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.

We saw that they dealt very subtilly and deceitfully.  They were beguiling, and they hatched their plan.  We can see this in the case of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel account in Matthew 26:1-5:

And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him. But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.

You see, they planned to kill Him, just as Joseph’s brethren planned to kill Joseph.