Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.” And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh. Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph provided his father, his brothers, and all his father's household with food, according to the number of their dependents.
When Jacob meets Pharaoh something was going to happen. Joseph was worried about. Previously (in verses 33-34), he told his father that if he is asked what his occupation was to not say that he was a “shepherd” but rather a “keeper of livestock.” A “shepherd” was a disdained person in the eyes of the Egyptians. Of course, when asked, Jacob (Israel) does not say a “keeper of livestock.” He tells Pharaoh, straight up that he is a shepherd. Joseph, being educated and ingrained with Egyptian thought, must have cringed. Jacob is NOT impressed with Pharaoh. It is Pharaoh that is impressed with Jacob, as the above passage shows us. We can see that Joseph is so tainted with his society that he has lost sight of some things. He still worshiped God and even gave God the credit for the harm that was done to him by his brothers. But, the philosophy he has learned in Egypt did not fit his father. Jacob even goes on to “bless” Pharaoh. God has put Jacob in a place of honor. This was not what we read about him in his younger years. God can do that. God can take a trickster like Jacob, turn him into a man of God named Israel and have him be superior to the most powerful person in the land. That is what God does. He transforms the shepherd into the one who blesses the pharaoh, even though the son is embarrassed by it.
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