Genesis 37, 39, 41 - God Prospers Joseph

During our Jr. High Youth Gathering last weekend, one of the sectionals talked quite a bit about Joseph and this passage in particular. Our presenters made the case that even though Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, God had a plan for him (which was nearly derailed by Potipher's wife and this led to the real topic of the sectional on sexual purity), and that God has plans for you too. What's the well-known verse? God has plans to "to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11). Other than the fact that this verse is taken out of context 99% of the time (it's talking to the Israelites in exile and God reaffirming his promise to them to bring them back... not the average joe looking for direction on which house to buy), the idea of prospering has bugged me for the last number of years.

Now that I'm done passive-aggressively ranting in the opening paragraph... I did some digging, and it's been neat to kinda see these words and how they do not mean what they think they mean.

Let's look at our two sentences with the English word, 'prosper' in them:

"The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did" (Genesis 39:2-3).

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (Jeremiah 29:11).

First, let's think of what our English word 'prosper' means.
- FreeDictionary says: "to be fortunate or successful, especially in terms of one's finances; thrive."
- Merriam-Webster says: "to become very successful usually by making a lot of money."
- And the Google definition: "succeed in material terms; be financially successful."

Do you see a common theme? In English, 'to prosper' is to be well-off financially first, and then perhaps some other good things such as a family, kids, etc afterwards. This has totally wrenched the meaning away from our texts!

Looking at our Jeremiah text first, the Hebrew word (that our translators horribly mis-translate here in my opinion), is shâlôm, which means so much more. Shâlôm is the Hebrew word for completeness; to be completely at peace; to be in harmony with the world and with each other. It's so complete, no one can really describe it. So what God says to the Israelite people is not that they will prosper materially, but that they will know the full peace of God when he restores them back to their homeland.

Now with that common misperception out of the way, let's focus on how Joseph prospered. The Hebrew word that is used here for Joseph is tsâlach, which in and of itself could certainly be defined like that (Strong's says: "to advance, prosper, make progress, succeed, be profitable"). But the kicker here along with the word is not so much the definition itself, it's how it is used throughout the whole Old Testament. Doing a quick concordance search with Strong's reveals two really neat things:

The first nugget is that the Lord does all the prospering of us; we do nothing. A vast majority of time that this word tsâlach is used, God is involved in either prospering the individual or in the fact that because they did not seek the Lord's direction, their plans did not prosper.

The second nugget is that nowhere is there a conjunction or a joining of the word tsâlach the idea of material wealth or belongings. If you had to catalog the times where tsâlach was used, three seem to pop out: the Lord prospers a journey; the Lord prospers actions; and the Lord actively using human beings to accomplish his will ("The Spirit of the Lord came upon him" is a popular wording of this in Judges and 1 Samuel).

So, what does it mean to prosper? I think it does not mean to Joel Osteen and his ilk what they think it means. Prospering in God's grace does not mean that because of our faith in God will be rewarded in material wealth, belongings, social status or power. And honestly, one could easily paint this picture from the story of Joseph that we've read.

To prosper in God means to be so in-tune with him that we think his thoughts and not ours; to prosper in God is to be tested and to wrestle with him; to prosper in God is to realize that God's kingdom does not mean what we think it means (Matthew 5).

Other questions to think about (and that I didn't have time or space to write about):
- As I got to Joseph telling Pharaoh about the 7 years of feast and 7 years of famine... I thought about what in the world that would look like today! In our world, we can hardly plan 7 months ahead, much less 7 years. Can you imagine what would happen in year 4 of this 14-year plan in today's world? We would discount the fact that 7 more lean years were coming and use up all of our stores just because we could. An interesting parallel might be with global warming. We know it's here; we have a good idea what's coming; but because it's 20 years out (a milli-nano-micro-second in cosmic time), we don't want to plan for it. Or... the asteroid Apophis in 2036 and how to deflect it.