Is it an example to be followed? I can actually remember a group of Christian businessmen called the "Joseph Company" with whom I once found myself sharing a conference call (I can't actually remember how). The lynchpin for their self-conception was the narrative of Genesis 47, in which Joseph shrewdly concentrates Pharaoh's power base by a series of judicious investments. God tells Joseph to save his grain, Joseph does so, and when famine comes Joseph turns all Egypt into a Pawn shop.
Hauerwas wasn't at morning prayer this morning when Genesis 47 was read (he often is), but I would have loved to sit next to him to see whether he actually cringed at this display of Constantinian capitulation or whether he kept the cringe inside. It cannot be escaped; Joseph shrewdly turns Pharaoh into the slavemaster whose power can later afflict the generation of Moses. This is everything Hauerwas and Yoder feared: the people of God actually handing the keys of the kingdom to the principalities and the powers. They don't need to breach the walls when we show them in and give them tea!
But the words of the Egyptians themselves speak against too hasty a panic: "you have saved our lives" (הֶחֱיִתָ֑נוּ—note the root, חָיָה). The word recalls the revival of Jacob's spirits in Gen 46 at the news that Joseph was still alive as well as Ezekiel's valley of the dead as they "revive." These people thought they were going to die.
It is true that what we see here is the development of absolute power for the Pharaoh and the possibility of the ruthless dictatorship that we see in the opening chapters of Exodus. Joseph literally makes slaves out of the Egyptians. Thus, it cannot be denied that what seems to be a bit of shrewd over-reaching by Joseph creates a nasty situation for his children later on: again, the sins of the fathers reaching their children. It will be helpful to note, however, that Pharaoh was already the power over Egypt. One can overcook the changes that Genesis 47 narrates. To whom else could Joseph's interpretation of the dream have gone? Would anyone else have had the means to save enough grain to support not only Egypt but the immigrant children of Abraham? Infrastructure has an importance in this story as well. I think, then, that in Genesis 47 one sees a stark realism at play about the goods and risks of power. The risks do not negate the goods; the goods do not justify the risks. Both just are.
There is an inevitability to power in a world like ours. To readers of Genesis, this comes as no surprise. We are told as far back as Genesis 15 that the promise of YHWH's blessing entails not only Abraham's sojourning but that of his children as well. They will be slaves. Famines come, and powers rise. But if the unflinching realism of Genesis makes the fact of power as pervasive as its abuse, it also creates grounds for hope by that very realism. "Know for certain that your descendants will be slaves," but just as certainly, "I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out." The sins of the fathers will follow their children, but YHWH will show mercy to a thousand generations of those who love him.
The logic of election is that there will always be, for as long as the world endures, the possibility of power's abuse, the chance that we will use our blessing to inflict harm on our neighbors. What God meant for our good, we have twisted to evil. But Genesis is a God book; what we mean for evil, God turns incomprehensably to good. This, I think, can allow us to engage with power in constant awareness of how small we are and how big God is. In the time between times, we can (and should) focus on the proximate. Yes, our wickedness will seek always to make the proximate goods of the world into ultimate ones. But God will punish the nation we serve and will punish us if we are that nation. We willl receive from the Lord's hand double for our sins. And those whom God loves God disciplines.
The urgency with which theological ethics is pursued belies a deep uncertainty about the character of God, who will judge and save. Joseph's responsible use of power and his idolatrous over-reaching are bound together in the same actions. His rises and falls grow out of the same earth. Who is equal to judging them for what they really are? I take comfort in the surety of God's promise to punish sin (my own included), because God's good judgment frees me for real, imperfect action in the world. It frees me to discern the good as best I can and to trust that my evils will be made right. It frees me to be humbled in the fact that the evils with which I am unwittingly complicit will be judged (and me with them). But it is better to be judged by God than flattered by the devil.
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