Clothed with Power

There are lots of doubles in the Joseph narrative:

• Joseph has two dreams,
• Joseph interprets two dreams in prison, and then Pharaoh has two dreams.
• Joseph is confined twice in a pit – his brothers threw him in a cistern, and Potiphar threw him in the prison – but both are called “pits.”
• Both Potiphar and the prison keeper leave everything in Joseph's hands.
• Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph twice.

Next time we'll see that the brothers make two trips to Egypt, have two audiences with Joseph each time, twice find money in their grain bags, make two attempts to gain Jacob's permission to send Benjamin to Egypt. Joseph accuses his brothers of spying twice, places money in their sacks twice – among other doublings!

What is the point of all these doubles? Consider 41:32 - "And the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about."

God only needs to say something once, so when God says something twice it should make us sit up and take notice!

This may well be the sort of reason for the doubles in the opening chapters of Luke's gospel, where we hear the story of the birth of John the Baptist and the story of the birth of Jesus. Elizabeth and Mary, John and Jesus, Zechariah and Joseph, and for that matter, Simeon and Anna (the two elderly saints in the temple).

As we turn to Genesis, in chapter 37 it was dreams that wound up getting Joseph thrown in a pit. Now in chapter 40 it will be dreams that raise Joseph out of the pit.