Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #44 in Genesis 37.   We are going to read Genesis 37:33-36:

And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.  And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.

In our last study, we were looking at the reference to an “evil beast,” as Jacob concluded when he saw the bloody coat of many colours: “…an evil beast hath devoured him.” 

Spiritually, we understood that “evil beasts” identify with false prophets, the natural-minded professors of Israel that thought physical circumcision was pleasing to God, and that the physical rites of sacrifice and ceremonial laws were satisfying to God.  They thought that God took pleasure in the death of sacrificial animals.  They were wrong.  Those “types and figures” were pointing to Christ’s atoning death and the need for “circumcision of the heart,” and God actually spelled that out in the book of Deuteronomy when He commanded to “circumcise the heart.”  That is an impossible command, but those in the churches like to say, “Well, God would not give you a command that is impossible to obey.”  We point out to them that they cannot satisfactorily obey the command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to become saved because man has a dead heart, but they say, “Oh, God would not do that.  He would not command us to do something we are incapable of doing.”  But read Deuteronomy 10:16:

Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

How can you fulfill that command?  You cannot.  So did God give a command that was impossible to obey?  Yes, absolutely, because He wants the reader to respond, “Oh, God, I cannot do that.  Will you circumcise my heart?”  And then later in Deuteronomy that is exactly what God says in Deuteronomy 30:6:

And JEHOVAH thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love JEHOVAH thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

Likewise, this is true of the command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  The proper response would have been, “Oh, Lord, I cannot believe Help thou my unbelief.”  And how God helps our unbelief is to give us the faith of Christ.  We are saved by His faith, and by His work that showed His faith. 

And that is how God has designed the Law.  The Law is to show us our failure, our inability, and our sins, so that we become “silent” before God in attempting to keep the Law to attain righteousness.  But then we are led to the “end of the law,” and that is Christ:  “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”  He was the reason for these commandments.

So false prophets are of a natural mind, and the Jews of old would take circumcision literally, and they thought, “This makes me a Jew and a son of Abraham.  This brings me the blessings of God and the promise of this land as an inheritance forever.”  But that is absolutely wrong.  “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit,” and this inward “circumcision” is performed by God Himself through salvation, and the same applies to baptism.  We are not saved by water baptism, but by the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit applies the shed blood of Christ to us in salvation, and our sins are washed away by the “fires of hell” that were laid upon Him at the foundation of the world.

Again, the “evil beast” points to these natural-minded professors of God’s Word, and because they are natural-minded they do not have a right understanding of the truth.  They do not have the faithful Gospel of the Bible, so their gospel devours.  It destroys.

Again, it says in Genesis 37:33, Joseph said, “Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.”  The Hebrew word translated as “rent in pieces” is Strong’s #2963, and it leads us to some very significant places in the Bible.  The first place we will go to is Job 16 where Job, a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, is under the wrath of God.  Job is a figure of Christ as Christ came under the wrath of God.  Job’s misery and sorrow as he lost everything – his children, his wealth, and even his health as his body was smitten head to toe with boils.  It was just a horrible thing that had overcome him, and He is saying it is the wrath of God against him.  And he is correct, although the wrath was not upon him, necessarily, but he was correct that it was the wrath of God that fell upon Christ, whom Job typified, and it says in Job 16:9:

He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me…

Is that true?  Did God the Father hate Christ?  We would have to go back to the foundation of the world when Christ was laden with the sins of His people.  He became sin for us, and God hates sin and the sinner, and Christ was a sinner in that He was bearing sin.  He was the essence of sin as He bore an untold number of sins for, perhaps, 200 million people.  Just think of all the sins you and I have committed, and then multiply that by scores of millions, and it is an incredible mountain of iniquity, and it was all laid out before an angry God who hates sin.   He pronounced judgment, and the Law smote Christ just as Moses smote the rock.  He died, and there was no love of God toward Him as He smote Him to death.  It was the furious anger and hatred of God.  The Bible says, “For Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  God loved Jacob only because Christ had paid for all of Jacob’s sin, thereby cleansing Jacob (and all the elect) of all iniquity, and then God could have love for Him, but all those, like Esau, whose sins remain upon them, He hates. 

It goes on to say in Job 16:9:

…he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me.

Ultimately, the enemy is God here, but Job was also engaged with a struggle with his friends, who typify national Israel, and his friends were trying to lay the blame for his suffering upon Job himself.  In doing so, they became “miserable counselors,” and miserable counselors are natural-minded counselors.  They are “evil beasts,” and they are basically attacking him just as the unsaved children of Israel attacked the Lord Jesus Christ and sent Him to the cross.

By the way, it was God that set the stage for Christ to go to the cross, lifting His hand of restraint to allow the tremendous hatred and attack of the enemies of Christ.  It was actually the attack of the enemies of God and His kingdom, but since God was allowing it, it was God Himself who had turned to be the enemy.  It was similar to when God turned over the churches to Satan for destruction.  Satan did the dirty work and the evil, but in allowing it God was judging the churches, and He was the one who brought the judgment.

As we continue to look at Job 16, we can see that the cross is in view, as we read in Job 16:10:

They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.

That language fits right in with the Messianic Psalm in Psalm 22:12-13:

Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.

The word “ravening” is the same Hebrew word, Strong’s #2963, that was translated as “teareth” in Job 16, and as “rent in pieces” in our verse in Genesis 37.  That is what a lion does.  They gaped upon Him as a tearing and roaring lion.  And yet it was the wicked people of Israel that were crying out against Christ, “Crucify him, crucify him!”   So we can see how this relates to Job, and also how it relates to Jacob’s statement concerning Joseph, who is also a great type of Christ.

It goes on to say in Psalm 22:16-18:

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.  I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

There is no question that these verses were fulfilled at the cross.

If we go back to Job 16 and look at the next verse, it says in Job 16:11:

God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.

Can you imagine that?  Job is being moved to say this.  Historically, there were bands of Chaldeans that came and stole his livestock, and so forth, but then he was “turned over,” as it were, to his friends for their judgment concerning his situation.  Their judgment was incorrect.  But notice that it says it was God who did it, and Job knew that.  Job knew that what happened to him was from God.  He could not figure it out, and that was his dilemma, distress, and anguish.  On one hand, he knew he had a right relationship with God and that God was favorable toward him, as he had much experience with that.  On the other hand, with all these terrible things that had taken place, including the death of all his children, he is wondering why God had done this, and he concludes, “God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.”

That is also a true statement concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, if we go to the New Testament.  It says in Acts 2:22-23:

Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:

It was God’s determinate counsel and foreknowledge, but the wicked hands of men were as “evil beasts,” and that is the spiritual picture in Genesis 37.  Although Jacob was historically incorrect about what had actually happened to his son Joseph, he was one hundred per cent correct spiritually regarding what happened to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God: “…an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.”

Then it goes on to say in Genesis 37:34-35:

And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.

This was after what we have related to the cross of Christ.  After the cross of Christ, was there a period of mourning for the Lord Jesus?  We will look at that when we get together in our next Bible study in the book of Genesis.