13. The Story of Zaphnath-Paaneah

A Handsome Young Slave

A clever, young, good-looking Hebrew lad ended up in Egypt against his wishes.  One of the leading men of Egypt bought him as a slave.  This Zaphnath-Paaneah excelled in whatever his slave master told him to do.  Soon his master made him head of everything he owned. The problem was that Zaphnath-Paaneah was so good looking and intelligent that the slave owner's wife tried to seduce him many times. 

Each time the lad refused her advances, because, as a Hebrew who had been trained to high morals, he believed that yielding to her would interfere with his worship of Jehovah.  So the slave owner's wife framed Zaphnath-Paaneah and accused him of attempted rape. 

When the wife's husband heard about this he was so upset that he had the young lad put in prison.  Even in prison, he was so likeable and capable, that he was soon promoted to be in charge of the other prisoners.  Because of this, he got to meet them all and converse with them, and it was soon learned that this innocent, young victim had the gift of interpreting dreams.

One night Pharaoh had two dreams and he wanted to have them interpreted, so a former prisoner, one who had done his time, told Pharaoh that there was a man in prison who could interpret dreams.  Zaphnath-Paaneah was a humble man and he did have that special gift; with Jehovah's help, he could interpret dreams.  Zaphnath-Paaneah always gave his God the credit for his gift.  He was brought into Pharaoh's court and he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams, and because of that, he was set free from prison.

Egypt Is For Sale

Soon after that, Pharaoh arranged for the ex-prisoner to marry Asenath, the daughter of a priest in the polytheistic religion of Egypt.  Zaphnath-Paaneah and Asenath had two sons; Manasseh and Ephraim.  That is the last we hear of Asenath in the Bible.  It was then that Pharaoh gave Joseph the name, Zaphnath-Paaneah.  However, the story did not end like someone thought it should and so he (or she) added another 29 chapters to the story, but they are not in our Bible.  

The problem with the story, as it is in our Bible, is that those two sons each became a leader of a tribe in Israel.  It seems unlikely that Jacob, or Joseph's brothers, would have allowed the sons of a polytheistic mother to attain to such a status. 

The story needed to be changed, and in the new story, the mother of the two boys gave up her old religion and became a monotheist before Zaphnath-Paaneah (Joseph) would even consider marrying her.  

So if you are interested in reading a fiction romance story, go to the web and type in, Joseph and Asenath.

The famine was over all the face of the earth, and Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians. And the famine became severe in the land of Egypt. So all countries came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe in all lands. Genesis 41:56-57.  

Again, the idea that all the countries of the world were in starvation mode seems unlikely.  Even if such a coincidence did occur, how would the people of Australia or North America, for example, have come to Egypt to buy grain almost 4000 years ago?  

Would they have come in huge cargo ships so that they could haul enough grain to feed their country back home?  It seems that here, just like in the story of "Noah's flood", we must not think of the whole world, but rather just the "whole world" in the area of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Egyptians could not eat food with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. Genesis 43:32.  This sounds rather ironic, considering that later, the Jews had so many rules about what to eat, and traditions as with whom to eat.  Here it was the Egyptians who thought they were above eating with the Hebrews.  Later in this story, the role was reversed and it was Joseph who refused to eat with the Egyptians.

So when the money failed in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us bread, ...Then Joseph said, “Give your livestock, and I will give you bread for your livestock.”  So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them bread in exchange. Thus he fed them with bread in exchange for all their livestock that year. ... they came to him the next year and said to him, ... "There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our lands. ... Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants of Pharaoh; "

Then Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for every man of the Egyptians sold his field, because the famine was severe upon them. So the land became Pharaoh’s. And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt to this day, that Pharaoh should have one-fifth. Genesis 47:15-20+26.

Archaeology confirms that this actually happened in Egypt at the time of Moses.

From Archaeology

Page numbers from "Pharaohs and Kings" by David Rohl

The local chieftains found their own grain silos exhausted and were forced to sell their land holdings to the Pharaoh. The power of the governors of Egypt was broken and Pharaoh became the sole authority in Egypt — the evidence for this is that the grand tombs of the governors of Egypt ceased to be built. This signals the diminution of the authority of a semi-independent nobility and the return of political control to the kingship. (pg 342)

Joseph was a shrewd businessman.  When Pharaoh's countrymen were down and destitute, Joseph legally stole their property from them so that the bulk of Egypt belonged to the pharaoh.  

Back in the "dirty thirty's" in Canada, when the famine was severe year after year, the government did not repossess the farmer's property, rather it sent monthly cheques with which the starving farmers could buy some food.  

As the depression carried on 1 in 5 Canadians became dependent on government relief.  Thirty per cent of the Labour Force was unemployed, whereas, in Canada, the unemployment rate had previously never risen above twelve per cent.  

Even though we, Canadians, love to complain about our government, we have very much to be thankful for.