Joseph and Judah as Instruments of Deliverance

Then Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I myself will be surety for him; from my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. For if we had not lingered, surely by now we would have returned this second time.”

And their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, then do this: Take some of the best fruits of the land in your vessels and carry down a present for the man—a little balm and a little honey, spices and myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds. Take double money in your hand, and take back in your hand the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks; perhaps it was an oversight. Take your brother also, and arise, go back to the man. And may God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may release your other brother and Benjamin. If I am bereaved, I am bereaved!” (Genesis 43:8-14)

Alice C. Linsley

Old Jacob struggled during an extended famine in Canaan to sustain his family. He sent his older sons to Egypt to buy provisions and there they encountered a powerful Egyptian who was their own brother Joseph. Joseph became an instrument of deliverance for his family.

Joseph married Asenath, daughter of the "priest of On" (Gen. 41:45).  Asenath's father was Putiphar or Potiphera. This is a title composed of the words pu and tifra. Putifra in ancient Egyptian means "this order" and likely relates to the order of Horite priests. The stela of Putiphar speaks of Putiphar as the "son of Horus, may He live forever."

On, called "Heliopolis" by the Greeks, was one of the most prestigious shrine cities of the archaic world. It was an Anu city. The pyramids of Giza, Saqqara and Abusir were aligned to the obelisk of Heliopolis. The Pharaoh held the title of "Ruler of Heliopolis" and his symbol was the scepter-hq. The scepter and the flail became the symbols of the Pharaoh's absolute authority.

There were Anu/Ainu among Abraham's ancestors. Asenath was related to Joseph, probably a patrilineal cousin. According to Genesis 41:50, she gave birth to two sons before the time of famine. Her first born son was named Manesseh and he would have been dedicated to (belonged to) the Heliopolis shrine, whereas Ephraim, the younger son, belonged to the House of Jacob. This explains why Jacob gave him the blessing that pertained to the first born (Gen. 48:14).

Manesseh and other Habiru/Hebrew clans related to the Horites of Egypt and Edom settled in the region of Galilee. The Horites of Nazareth constituted the sixteenth division of priests, the order of Hapi-tsets. The word is of Egyptian origin. Hapi is an ancient reference to the Nile. T-sets refers to the One who rules the wind, waves and currents (cf. Jesus' calming of the wind and waves on the Sea of Galilee.)

Judah's role

When Joseph's brothers discussed killing him (Gen. 37), it was Judah who came up with a suggestion that preserved Joseph's life, and it was Judah who offers to "be surety" for Benjamin's safe return to Jacob (Gen. 43).  Is it any wonder that Jacob grants a special blessing to this son? In the tribal lists, Judah is sometimes replaced by Ephraim and Manesseh, but Jacob's deathbed blessing of his sons favors Judah and Joseph above the others. Here is part of the blessing given to Judah: The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet [nor a lawgiver from his loins], until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. (Gen. 49:10)

This relates to Christ who is the long-expected Righteous Ruler and the Lawgiver because every law that comes from God is given through Him. He is a descendant of both Joseph and Judah. Judah had two wives, as was the custom for the Horite rulers. One was Shua, one of Jacob's daughters. She was Judah's first wife and his half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham). By his two wives Judah had two firstborn sons: Er and Onan. Their names represent two Horite territories. Er (Ur) is the eastern territory of the Mesopotamian Horites in Ur, and Onan (Onn) is the western Horite territory centered at Heliopolis (biblical On) on the Nile. All of these Horites were ethnically Kushite.

"The scepter will not depart from Judah..." is generally taken to mean that the Messiah would come from Judah, but it is possible that it refers to a historical reality; namely, that some of Jesus' ancestors were never captives in Babylon. Jacob's holdings extended to Beersheba and the Babylonians were not interested in engaging warriors in the Negev.

One of the oldest shrines in the Negev has been found at Timnah where copper was mined from very ancient times. Some of the mines are at least 6000 years old. This was a Horite shrine as evidenced by the presence of a statue of Hathor, the mother of Horus and the patroness of metal workers. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.

The Chalcolithic metal works at Timnah were found at the Wadi Nehushtan in the foothills along the western fringe of the southern Arabah Valley. The smelting works, slag and flints at this site were found to be identical to those discovered near Beersheba where Abraham spent his old age. This is why Rothenberg concluded that the peoples living in the area were "partners not only in the work but in the worship of Hathor." (Timna, p. 183)

It is appears that Tamar was from this region. She bore Judah twin sons after Judah refused to provide her another husband from among his sons. Judah praised her as "more righteous” than himself (Gen. 38:26) because she fulfilled the levirate marriage law. The younger of Tamar's two sons was Perez, an ancestor of Jesse of Bethlehem, David, and Jesus Christ.

Mary's Ancestry

Mary’s parents were Joachim and Anna. Joachim was a shepherd-priest of Bethlehem Ephrath. Throughout the Bible, Ephrath is a reference to Judah. His wife was Anna, a daughter of a priest. Hippolytus of Thebes records that Mary’s mother was one of three daughters of a priest named Matthan (Matthias/Mattai). The eldest sister, Mary, was the mother of Salome; the second sister, Sobe, was the mother of Elizabeth whose son was John the Baptist. The third sister was Anna, Mary’s mother. Elizabeth and Mary were cousins, and both were daughters of priests.

Herod the Great deposed the High Priest Matthias after the priest removed the Golden Eagle from the Temple. Matthias was the second to the last High Priest before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.  Matthias' father was the High Priest Theophilus, the brother-in-law of Joseph Caiaphas, the High Priest before whom Jesus appeared after his arrest. Theophilus' family was a ruler-priest family from Edom. They were descendants of Abraham and Seir the Horite (Gen. 36). The Horite ruler-priest lineage was very ancient and was recognized by Herod the Great who also was from Edom/Idumea.

The ancestral family of Jacob ben Mattat, once a favorite of Herod the Great, came to have limited influence with the House of Zadok, as this lineage of King David’s descendants appears to have been increasingly ostracized after Herod's death in 4 BC. In light of historical events, it appears that the ancestral scepter would have departed from Judah had the Christ not appeared when He did. With Christ's appearance the scepter passed to him, the eternal King. In 70 AD, the temple was destroyed as Jesus had predicted and the solemn ceremonies, as well as the blasphemies, ceased. Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him. And He said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down." (Matt. 24:1-2)

Related reading: The Enigma of Joseph; The Significance of Galilee in Matthew's Gospel; The Nazareth-Egypt Connection; The Moral Code of Ani