JOSEPH – A TYPE OF CHRIST
AND A SHADOW OF ISRAEL
by E.W. Abraham

One of the great outstanding characters of history, was the Patriarch Joseph; many valuable lessons may be learned from a study of his life and times. Joseph typified Christ, perhaps more than any other Bible character, and led a more blameless life than most of the other great leaders. Some commentators have written of him as: “One of the most faultless heroes in Scripture”.

Besides being a type of Christ, Joseph was a fore-shadowing of the Israel nation, which sprang from his father Jacob’s loins; he was also the father of the renowned brothers, Ephraim and Manasseh, whom Jacob adopted as his own, and to whom he gave the birthright blessings, with the promise of future greatness as a “multitude of nations”, so wonderfully fulfilled in these latter days. By this adoption, so carefully recorded in Genesis 48, Jacob gave to his favourite son, the first-born of his beloved wife, Rachel, the double portion due to the holder of the birthright; besides raising to thirteen the number of the tribes of Israel, who are counted as descendant from him.

If Ephraim and Manasseh are actually, as British-Israelites believe, the British and American people, they have fulfilled in minutest detail Jacob’s blessing to them; when he crossed his hands, and gave to the youngest, Ephraim, the promise of multiplicity of seed and of nations; and to the elder, Manasseh, the promise that his seed should become a Great People. The British Empire stands before all the world today, as the greatest ever known Commonwealth, or Multitude, of Nations; so obviously descended from the one root, which we believe to be Ephraim, that it is a constant source of amazement, that those who do not see this great Truth, can continue in blindness, with so much evidence plainly before their eyes. Manasseh, the thirteenth tribe, has the number thirteen written all over his history, his flag, and his national emblems; and again, it is amazing that the skeptics can look at so many “coincidences”, which are coupled with so many other marks and evidences, and be unable to see that the United States is the Great People which stems from this illustrious ancestor.

In common with his great prototype, Joseph’s birth was miraculous; his mother, Rachel, having been barren until God answered her prayer, and Jacob’s, for a son. Even as a child, Joseph gave his parents much food for thought; and of Jesus, it is said that Mary “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”. (Lk. 2:19 and 51).

Jacob made a “coat of many colours” for his beloved Joseph; our Lord, also, had a famous coat “without seam”, made for him, no doubt, with loving care by His Mother, and for which the soldiers drew lots at His Crucifixion. Lloyd Douglas makes the most of the legends about Jesus’ coat in “The Robe”; and there is an interesting legend about Joseph’s coat, that it was made from the original “coat of skins” God made for Adam (Gen. 3:21) which had been handed down from father to son, until it came to Joseph.

Joseph’s coat was taken from him when his brethren cast him into the Pit, and sold him, at Judah’s instigation, for 20 pieces of silver. Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot for 30 pieces of silver, to the priests, who caused Him to be crucified, and He, likewise, went down into the Pit; or, as St. Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:9: “He descended first into the lower parts of the earth.”

Afterwards, both Type and Antitype ascended out of the Pit—the one to sit on Pharaoh’s right hand as the Second Ruler in Egypt; and the other, to sit “on the right hand of God: from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool”. (Heb. 10:12-13).

How often we have read the lovely story of Joseph’s treatment of his brothers. Was that not heaping coals of fire upon their heads? Dare we suggest that as Joseph forgave his brethren, and thus overcame their enmity, so Christ will overcome His enemies, by making them His friends.