The Favored Son and His Betrayal
According to the Book of Genesis, Joseph was the first of two sons born to Jacob and Rachel, and Jacob's eleventh son. His father favored him above his brothers and gave him a long coat of many colors. At the age of seventeen Joseph had two dreams that seemed to imply his future supremacy over his family, which deepened the resentment of his brothers.
While his brothers were at Dothan, they plotted against him. Reuben proposed casting him into an empty cistern, intending to rescue him; the brothers instead sold Joseph to a passing caravan of merchants carrying spices toward Egypt. Brought down into Egypt, Joseph became the servant and then the household superintendent of Potiphar. When Potiphar's wife attempted to seduce him and he refused, she falsely accused him, and he was imprisoned.
From Prison to the Governance of Egypt
While in prison Joseph interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker, foretelling that the cupbearer would be restored to his office within three days and the baker executed within three days. Two years afterward Pharaoh himself dreamed of seven lean cows that devoured seven fat cows, and seven withered ears of grain that devoured seven full ears. Joseph interpreted these dreams as seven years of abundance to be followed by seven years of famine, and counseled that grain be stored against the coming want.
Pharaoh thereupon appointed Joseph as vizier over Egypt, giving him the Egyptian name Zaphnath-Paaneah and Asenath, daughter of Potipherah the priest of On, as his wife. Joseph oversaw the storing of grain through the seven years of plenty. To him were born two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, whom the aged Jacob would later bless as his own heirs.
The Famine and the Reconciliation
When a severe famine came, Joseph's brothers traveled down to Egypt to buy provisions and did not recognize the brother they had sold, now grown and raised to power. Joseph tested them, at one point planting his silver cup in the sack of his youngest brother Benjamin, before revealing himself to them, weeping so loudly that the household heard him. He forgave his brothers and provided for them.
Joseph then settled the whole household of Jacob, numbered at seventy persons, in the land of Goshen in the eastern Nile delta. Jacob, by then aged 147 and nearly blind, blessed Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh. Joseph lived to the age of 110; before his death he bound the Israelites by oath to carry his embalmed remains out of Egypt. During the Exodus his bones were carried to Shechem and buried in the parcel of ground that Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, a site traditionally identified as Joseph's Tomb.
Type of Christ and Commemoration on Holy and Great Monday
The Orthodox Church honors Joseph as the All-Comely, an epithet that reflects the tradition of his great physical beauty, and reads his life as one of the foremost Old Testament prefigurements of Christ. On Great and Holy Monday, at the beginning of Holy Week, the hymns of the Church recall Joseph, whose innocent suffering at the hands of his brethren and false accusation are understood as a type, or foreshadowing, of the Passion of Christ.
Several elements of his life are drawn into this typology: his betrayal and sale by his own brothers, his chastity and innocence maintained under false accusation and temptation, his undeserved suffering, and his exaltation in Egypt after that suffering, which is read as foreshadowing the glory of Christ following the Passion. The commemoration on Great and Holy Monday joins his memory to that of the barren fig tree, that the faithful may be prepared to contemplate the sufferings of Christ.
Joseph is also commemorated among the Holy Forefathers, the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ.
