Brothers Keeping: Joseph and Job by Tristam Joseph
oracle choose someone stinking from the pit to reveal wisdom my wisest prophets can never discern. Did someone's sage select him from the lowest of the lowly, thinking he can be transformed from living in foolishness to reveal revelations concerning my dreams? Will cleaning him up give created credence to his words, capturing my attention by newly-fashioned clothes? I will give him full attention, hoping he can remove my dream's disturbing demons.
Joseph: Always chosen from the lowly, prepared to offer in humble ways, I will listen, but never being ordained to give you a dream's interpretation, being only a messenger for God, I will seek to hear from Him, trusting only God can interpret Pharaoh's dream.
Pharaoh: I dreamed that out of the Nile came seven cows sleek and fat, and they fed in the marsh grass, followed by seven more cows, thin and scrawny, coming up behind the first, also from the Nile, to stand beside the fat cows on the riverbank. Then the gaunt and thin cows ate the seven healthy, fat cows, but when they had eaten them no one would have known it, seeing them still gaunt, emaciated as at the beginning. Then I awoke, thinking little of this dream until I fell into slumber again, only to see further visions, revisited by a less understandable sight. This time I saw seven heads of grain, plump and beautiful, growing on a single stalk, followed by seven more sprouting after them, seven additional heads of grain appearing different from the first, shriveled, withered and blighted by the east wind. Mysteriously, these stunted heads swallowed up the seven plump, well-formed heads. On reporting this to everyone, enlisting all the wisdom and magic in my land, there was no one able to offer an explanation, some thinking my senses were developing the certainty of old age.
Joseph: I have learned human wisdom extends little beyond people's foolishness, seeing nothing worthwhile coming from your sages, and expecting little more from the world's. You can learn from me, hearing interpretations made for other's dreams, remembering their explanations never spring from human reasoning, including my own, never calling on common sense, the consensus of majority thought, while always relying on what God reveals, trusting only His truths, as I ask Him now to tell me what He has put on your mind.
Pharaoh: If God invades my peace with dreams, seizing my slumbering thoughts, afflicting me with anxiety, compelling me to toss and turn, He must reason them to have meaning, but He distributes them as riddles, disturbing my days as well as nights, concealing them, never enlightening me, leaving me unaware, sealing them in my thoughts, unable to forget, leaving no moments unfilled with their mystery, making my nights sleepless since.
Joseph: Both of Pharaoh's dreams are one, telling him in advance what God is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years of great prosperity, promised throughout Egypt, reiterated by the seven healthy heads of grain, completing the dreams as one, revealed by God, instructing Egyptians to consider these years as blessings, giving them more than they need, and prepare for lean years during times of plenty, warning them to anticipate and prepare for the unexpected, certain in coming as seven years of famine, great enough for all prosperity to be forgotten, as famine destroys the land, devastating all memory of the good years, leaving them lamenting for what they once had. God knows your dream must be retold, sending two different versions, to convince you of the famine's coming, deterring you from heeding your prophetic soothsayers who will try to convince you with their reason to live as if abundance will never cease. Now you must select someone discreet and wise, choosing one to oversee the entire land of Egypt, preparing one to protect its prosperity by conserving creation's abundance, to prevent your people from wasting their treasures on what they never need, insuring survival for all.
Pharaoh: How should an overseer begin, seeing we have a population wishing to never give up anything, wanting never to suffer from want, desiring freedom to live as their senses demand.
Joseph: Appoint supervisors to collect one-fifth of all Egypt's crops during the seven good years, assigning them to store the land's over-abundance in warehouses, collecting it under your authority, reserving it to protect against future starvation, storing it for use during the predicted seven years of famine, assuring a dearth of food will never starve your people and destroy their country.
Pharaoh: Your advise seems wise. Our people may thrive better than living from feast to famine, from thriving in gluttony to starving in years of want. I will consult my officials to please their inclusion, but while waiting for a response, I ask, Can we find such a man as this, so obviously filled with the Spirit of God? I will wait my wise one's suggestions.
Joseph: Waiting on your wise seers failed you once. Can they offer more wisdom than my God, the one who sent your dream and explained its meaning?
Pharaoh: Your perception of my wise ones, discerning their failures are faulted by reason, turns my attention to hear you, promising God reveals the meaning of my dreams by choosing you to be His messenger, blessing you to do what none of my wisest ones were able to do, convinces me to believe He sends you, Joseph, one awakening me to understand my dreams, to also oversee our people’s welfare. We still must honor our gods, remembering them all, many as there are, and worship them all for the speciality each one oversees. On second thought, realizing my wise advisors, seldom able to agree, arguing to prove their petty points, are likely to take days to reach any conclusion, so I must hereby appoint Joseph, having greater insights than any ones I trust, to be in charge of the entire land of Egypt, installing him with this signet ring, removed from my finger, authorizing him with authority second to no one but mine, and I will array him in fine linens and fashion a gold chain for testifying to his importance, attested by his riding in my second chariot, witnessed by people bowing down to his coming, obeying the ritual for honorees as criers announce his arrival, and I assign him charge of all Egypt's land. I do this because God has revealed all this to you, acknowledging no person is more discerning than you.
Joseph: I now have a mystical ring, bestowed on me undeservedly, bearing a potency given only by humans, a power never given by the Lord, a ring ordaining me to be worshipped, no, better said to be honored, convicting others to bow down in praise, a garment decking me out to radiate the king's wisdom, and trinkets of gold, reminding others of my exalted merit. Having God's blessings already what do they add? Does He think I need them for doing His work?
Bystander: You have faithfully waited on the Lord, having persevered through many trials, learning distress promotes endurance, endurance promotes character, character promotes hope, and hope does not disappoint.
Joseph: How could a king's wisdom clear me of my penalty to be imprisoned for adultery, forgetting something I never did, knowing many would still think I should never be pardoned, cleansed of a deed we are all thought to commit. What would Potiphar think about my station now? Would he care? Would he think he is more deserving because of his loyal service to the king? Am I deserving because I bore trials faithfully, without protest, trusting my Lord in silence?
Bystander: Look now to Job. Don't forget him.
Joseph: Job will always occupy my thoughts. I believe he needs help to be freed, releasing him from imprisonment in the pit of his doldrums, trusting he could change, restored by healing, needing little more than acknowledgement of an upright life, needing little more to be worthy, to be right with the Lord. Before I begin my new assignment I will revisit him in prison.
Job's Salvation
Job: I would never have thought you would humble yourself by returning to this abyss, surprising me with your visit, wondering what could bring you here, the last place anyone would expect you to be seen? Do you believe your coming to this place for the dead could comfort the forgotten, counseling them, promising better days to come, thinking something can be done for them?
Joseph: You could be helped by a consultant, and until God chooses to send one better, I volunteer, asking Him to send me, still believing brothers need keepers.
Job: You think your words can help, thinking they can heal my wounds, but what else can you offer, seeing t
he afflictions I suffer having imbedded hopelessness in my soul. The futility of my pleas and the unprofitable words of others have rusted my patience in waiting for some response.
Joseph: You have been praised as blameless, but have you been loved by all, and have you loved all others as yourself, loving them as you would love your Father in heaven?
Job: What you ask is impossible. Many people deserve no love and I can never be one to love them.
Joseph: Then you can be honored as blameless by many without loving all who God created, judging some to never be loved, ones blemished by their deeds or appearance.
Job: So be the way God created them. It's His fault not mine and now His guilt prevents Him from answering my pleas, never wanting to discuss the wisdom of my arguments, refusing to hear my thoughts. After creating me with goodness, installing me with reason, training me to use dialogue, why did He change, beginning now to ignore my requests, never acknowledging my pleas, leaving me to suffer, never showing me why? I long for the days
Joseph: Always chosen from the lowly, prepared to offer in humble ways, I will listen, but never being ordained to give you a dream's interpretation, being only a messenger for God, I will seek to hear from Him, trusting only God can interpret Pharaoh's dream.
Pharaoh: I dreamed that out of the Nile came seven cows sleek and fat, and they fed in the marsh grass, followed by seven more cows, thin and scrawny, coming up behind the first, also from the Nile, to stand beside the fat cows on the riverbank. Then the gaunt and thin cows ate the seven healthy, fat cows, but when they had eaten them no one would have known it, seeing them still gaunt, emaciated as at the beginning. Then I awoke, thinking little of this dream until I fell into slumber again, only to see further visions, revisited by a less understandable sight. This time I saw seven heads of grain, plump and beautiful, growing on a single stalk, followed by seven more sprouting after them, seven additional heads of grain appearing different from the first, shriveled, withered and blighted by the east wind. Mysteriously, these stunted heads swallowed up the seven plump, well-formed heads. On reporting this to everyone, enlisting all the wisdom and magic in my land, there was no one able to offer an explanation, some thinking my senses were developing the certainty of old age.
Joseph: I have learned human wisdom extends little beyond people's foolishness, seeing nothing worthwhile coming from your sages, and expecting little more from the world's. You can learn from me, hearing interpretations made for other's dreams, remembering their explanations never spring from human reasoning, including my own, never calling on common sense, the consensus of majority thought, while always relying on what God reveals, trusting only His truths, as I ask Him now to tell me what He has put on your mind.
Pharaoh: If God invades my peace with dreams, seizing my slumbering thoughts, afflicting me with anxiety, compelling me to toss and turn, He must reason them to have meaning, but He distributes them as riddles, disturbing my days as well as nights, concealing them, never enlightening me, leaving me unaware, sealing them in my thoughts, unable to forget, leaving no moments unfilled with their mystery, making my nights sleepless since.
Joseph: Both of Pharaoh's dreams are one, telling him in advance what God is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years of great prosperity, promised throughout Egypt, reiterated by the seven healthy heads of grain, completing the dreams as one, revealed by God, instructing Egyptians to consider these years as blessings, giving them more than they need, and prepare for lean years during times of plenty, warning them to anticipate and prepare for the unexpected, certain in coming as seven years of famine, great enough for all prosperity to be forgotten, as famine destroys the land, devastating all memory of the good years, leaving them lamenting for what they once had. God knows your dream must be retold, sending two different versions, to convince you of the famine's coming, deterring you from heeding your prophetic soothsayers who will try to convince you with their reason to live as if abundance will never cease. Now you must select someone discreet and wise, choosing one to oversee the entire land of Egypt, preparing one to protect its prosperity by conserving creation's abundance, to prevent your people from wasting their treasures on what they never need, insuring survival for all.
Pharaoh: How should an overseer begin, seeing we have a population wishing to never give up anything, wanting never to suffer from want, desiring freedom to live as their senses demand.
Joseph: Appoint supervisors to collect one-fifth of all Egypt's crops during the seven good years, assigning them to store the land's over-abundance in warehouses, collecting it under your authority, reserving it to protect against future starvation, storing it for use during the predicted seven years of famine, assuring a dearth of food will never starve your people and destroy their country.
Pharaoh: Your advise seems wise. Our people may thrive better than living from feast to famine, from thriving in gluttony to starving in years of want. I will consult my officials to please their inclusion, but while waiting for a response, I ask, Can we find such a man as this, so obviously filled with the Spirit of God? I will wait my wise one's suggestions.
Joseph: Waiting on your wise seers failed you once. Can they offer more wisdom than my God, the one who sent your dream and explained its meaning?
Pharaoh: Your perception of my wise ones, discerning their failures are faulted by reason, turns my attention to hear you, promising God reveals the meaning of my dreams by choosing you to be His messenger, blessing you to do what none of my wisest ones were able to do, convinces me to believe He sends you, Joseph, one awakening me to understand my dreams, to also oversee our people’s welfare. We still must honor our gods, remembering them all, many as there are, and worship them all for the speciality each one oversees. On second thought, realizing my wise advisors, seldom able to agree, arguing to prove their petty points, are likely to take days to reach any conclusion, so I must hereby appoint Joseph, having greater insights than any ones I trust, to be in charge of the entire land of Egypt, installing him with this signet ring, removed from my finger, authorizing him with authority second to no one but mine, and I will array him in fine linens and fashion a gold chain for testifying to his importance, attested by his riding in my second chariot, witnessed by people bowing down to his coming, obeying the ritual for honorees as criers announce his arrival, and I assign him charge of all Egypt's land. I do this because God has revealed all this to you, acknowledging no person is more discerning than you.
Joseph: I now have a mystical ring, bestowed on me undeservedly, bearing a potency given only by humans, a power never given by the Lord, a ring ordaining me to be worshipped, no, better said to be honored, convicting others to bow down in praise, a garment decking me out to radiate the king's wisdom, and trinkets of gold, reminding others of my exalted merit. Having God's blessings already what do they add? Does He think I need them for doing His work?
Bystander: You have faithfully waited on the Lord, having persevered through many trials, learning distress promotes endurance, endurance promotes character, character promotes hope, and hope does not disappoint.
Joseph: How could a king's wisdom clear me of my penalty to be imprisoned for adultery, forgetting something I never did, knowing many would still think I should never be pardoned, cleansed of a deed we are all thought to commit. What would Potiphar think about my station now? Would he care? Would he think he is more deserving because of his loyal service to the king? Am I deserving because I bore trials faithfully, without protest, trusting my Lord in silence?
Bystander: Look now to Job. Don't forget him.
Joseph: Job will always occupy my thoughts. I believe he needs help to be freed, releasing him from imprisonment in the pit of his doldrums, trusting he could change, restored by healing, needing little more than acknowledgement of an upright life, needing little more to be worthy, to be right with the Lord. Before I begin my new assignment I will revisit him in prison.
Job's Salvation
Job: I would never have thought you would humble yourself by returning to this abyss, surprising me with your visit, wondering what could bring you here, the last place anyone would expect you to be seen? Do you believe your coming to this place for the dead could comfort the forgotten, counseling them, promising better days to come, thinking something can be done for them?
Joseph: You could be helped by a consultant, and until God chooses to send one better, I volunteer, asking Him to send me, still believing brothers need keepers.
Job: You think your words can help, thinking they can heal my wounds, but what else can you offer, seeing t
Joseph: You have been praised as blameless, but have you been loved by all, and have you loved all others as yourself, loving them as you would love your Father in heaven?
Job: What you ask is impossible. Many people deserve no love and I can never be one to love them.
Joseph: Then you can be honored as blameless by many without loving all who God created, judging some to never be loved, ones blemished by their deeds or appearance.
Job: So be the way God created them. It's His fault not mine and now His guilt prevents Him from answering my pleas, never wanting to discuss the wisdom of my arguments, refusing to hear my thoughts. After creating me with goodness, installing me with reason, training me to use dialogue, why did He change, beginning now to ignore my requests, never acknowledging my pleas, leaving me to suffer, never showing me why? I long for the days