Pharaoh has made Joseph his second-in-command and has put him in charge of storing up food in Egypt during the seven years of plenty so that the people will not perish during the seven years of famine. To honor his new official, Pharaoh arranges a high-status marriage for Joseph and Joseph finally has a family of his own.
"Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, 'I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt.'" (Genesis 41:44) He says, "I am still the king and am not relinquishing my throne or making you the heir to my throne. But other than that, you are as powerful as I am in this land. You will be the person anyone must come to when seeking permits or advice." Those high officials who formerly went straight to Pharaoh with requests will meet with Joseph instead and they are to treat Joseph with all the respect they would show the king. With the exception of the throne itself, Joseph is in every way Pharaoh's equal now and the people are to regard him as such.
"Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt. Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh's presence and traveled throughout Egypt." (Genesis 41:45-46) It was a common practice in ancient cultures to give new names to foreign persons who were being integrated into a new culture. In the book of Daniel, for example, Daniel and his friends who are taken captive to Babylon to be trained as wise men are given new names for the purpose of disassociating them with their former way of life. Their previous names all reflected a belief in the God of Abraham but their new names included references to the pagan gods of Babylon. In Joseph's case his new name probably reflects his new status in life, but scholars have been unable to come up with a satisfactory translation of "Zaphenath-Paneah" that they all agree upon. Some say the Egyptian alphabet lacked the letters to pronounce "Joseph" exactly as it would have sounded in Hebrew and that "Zaphenath" was as close as they could come to it. If we say these two words out loud we can hear some similarity between them. The name "Paneah" may mean "he lives" or "life giver". We need to keep in mind that there has always been and still is a great deal of disagreement regarding the meaning of Joseph's Egyptian name, but it's possible it may have meant something like "Joseph, who gives life", meaning he is he man whose dream interpretation and whose food-storage plans would save the lives of the Egyptians.
Joseph is still a single man when he enters Pharaoh's service, so Pharaoh shows him honor by arranging a very prestigious marriage for him. As we were told in verse 45 above, his wife is Asenath, the daughter of the high priest of the city of On which was the first capital city of ancient Egypt. It was the center of worship for the sun god Re, so Asenath's father very well may have been the highest ranking priest in all of Egypt. The city of On later became known as Heliopolis (meaning "city of the sun" in reference to the sun god) and an original obelisk dedicated to the sun god still stands in the portion of the city where remnants of the ancient city walls can be found.
The Bible has nothing negative to say about Joseph's marriage to a pagan woman. I think this is because he had no choice but to marry an Egyptian. He will spend the remainder of his life in Egypt and he has no way of meeting a woman who worships the God of Abraham. In addition, I doubt he had any say in regard to his marriage partner. Although he's second-in-command to Pharaoh, he is still under the authority of Pharaoh and he owes his freedom and his new position in the government to the man who sits on the throne. It would have been unwise to refuse to accept the marriage Pharaoh arranged for him. Pharaoh is giving him a wife that he personally considers the best for a man of Joseph's standing. He is giving him a wife whose status makes her eligible to marry princes which means Pharaoh is treating Joseph as he would treat one of his own sons. Joseph cannot turn down such an honor. Besides that, he's thirty years old and has been of marriageable age for quite some time now. Men married young in the Egyptian culture. In fact, males from families of high political standing had marriages arranged for them while they were still minor children and the marriages would be made official as early as their teen years. A man of thirty like Joseph is going to be keenly aware of his loneliness due to his lack of a wife and children. I imagine Joseph welcomed the addition of a woman to his life and that he looked forward to starting a family. I feel that he was a godly influence on his Egyptian wife and that there's a good chance she converted to the worship of the one true God. Joseph is not the type of man who would want his children brought up in the pagan religion of Egypt and I think he did his best to live out his faith in the sight of his wife in such a way that she came to know and love the God he served.
"During the seven years of abundance the land produced plentifully. Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it. Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure." (Genesis 41:47-40) The Lord is so good to these idolatrous people! They bow their knees to false idols and yet He gives them seven years of such abundance that they can't even keep track of how much their blessings overflow. God is good! God was good to me during the years when I didn't serve Him. He still put food in my belly and clothes on my back and a roof over my head. He did the same for you, didn't he? He kept us alive and well while we lived in sin. In taking care of us He wasn't condoning our sins but instead He was displaying His loving and merciful nature to us as a means of drawing us to Himself. Would we be attracted to the presence of a God who is not good or who can't provide for us? No, but when hard times come (as they inevitably do from time to time in this world) His previous goodness to us has a tendency to make us turn to Him when the going gets tough. His goodness shows us that He is approachable. His goodness proves that He is able to help in our time of need. The Lord gives the Egyptians seven years of enormous blessings, and when the seven years of hard times come, I wonder if a number of them didn't turn to Him. They won't go without food during those years due to Joseph's wise management, but every day they'll be faced with the sight of empty fields. Every day they'll be aware that if not for God's help and mercy, which He has shown to them through His man Joseph, they'd be starving to death. Yes, I believe there's a very good chance that some of the citizens of Egypt turned from idolatry to the living God.
"Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, 'It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household.' The second son he named Ephraim and said, 'It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.'" (Genesis 41:50-52) During the first seven years of his marriage he fathers two sons. Their names mean "forget" and "twice fruitful". He names them in honor of the God who stuck with him when his brothers abandoned him. He names them in honor of the God who made him prosper in spite of what his enemies did to him. God gets all the honor and praise for the blessings in Joseph's life. No one else deserves the honor and the praise, for God alone has made Joseph who he is and has given Joseph what he has.
As we close our study today, let's take a moment to thank God for all he's done for us. We can't take credit for anything we've accomplished, not really, because we couldn't even draw the next breath unless the Lord was holding our bodies and souls together. He deserves all the thanks for every blessing we've ever had or ever will have.
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