receive His grace and mercy. Behold, this day I buy you and your land for Pharaoh, paying you with grain to survive, seeing you squandered your seed, never conserving it for survival, wasting it when abundant, leaving less to sow in good times, harvesting little to store for times of need, giving insufficient amounts to Pharaoh for later needs, trusting your meager plantings could flourish without water, but you must come to me now, selling your land and yourself to provide food for yourselves, your households and to feed your little ones.
Egyptians: You having saved our lives, may it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh.
Joseph: You should be slaves to no one, for God never created you to be in bondage, with your only possible enslavement being to your free will, making unwise choices, some perhaps being sinful, dedicating you to evil intent, dragging out innate greed, envy, and pride, fating you to live in sin, consuming costly pleasure at the expense of goodness, bankrupting any integrity you could cherish, doing everything for fleeting moments of happiness. Watch how we live, our family from Canaan, following our God's direction only, denying the many pleasures you worship, never praying for your gods to provide, ones luring you into passing moments of contentment, chiding any calls by God for moderation, trusting only what feels good, do it. Watching our people live, according to our one God's ways, could soon bring you to despise us, as I know, one having been loathed for being His prophet, reporting visions to my loved ones. We have been saved from your position, never allowing this prevailing famine to harm us, to be despised as gaunt beggars, but as you see, we live by God's laws assuring us life sustained by the needs He provides.
Egyptians: With your God not favoring our desires, pilfering our wants, just as He directs you to steal from harvest's abundance, you ask us to abandon our trusted gods, compelling us to worship the poverty your God offers. We must return to our gods, trusting they will free us to live as we want, to enjoy the things they created us to desire.
Joseph: Human will determines disaster ravaging our lands, famine resulting from waste, people living extravagantly, spewing out litter from nature's goodness, deteriorating their bodies with idols of delight, never acknowledging scarcity also follows for the word of God, people starving their souls more than their bodies, never wanting to heed His way. Famine continues for the Egyptians, trusting in their wisdom, preparing its table, victimizing victims with afflictions of people's doing. Those rich in faith will gather feasting on God's wisdom and drive out the famine prevailing over their souls, but our sojourn with pagans should not be lengthy, minimizing time to bind us to another ruler's desires, a time when a prophet's visions will be harder to prevail.
Egyptians: Then we need not be slaves to Pharaoh for any lengthy time, enlisting our reason to determine its ending.
Joseph: You can choose its ending, but remember people are likely to give up enslavement to one thing only to enlist trust in something else, selecting an idol to worship, capturing it to dominate them. Find God as the only One who can set you free.
Egyptians: As one who sells us everything to sustain our lives, we must hold you accountable for our poverty, assuming it will last as long as some foreigner dictates terms for our survival.
Joseph: I am only a messenger for God, foretelling what will happen, and a servant of Pharaoh, carrying out his orders, indeed making me an alien for those never wanting to deny their wants.
Egyptians: Your family thrives so you must favor and take care of your own.
Joseph: My family prospers as long as they heed my words to follow the Lord. They will be free as long as they choose God's truths instead of theirs, trusting His truth will set them free. Your gods know no truths other than yours, stamping your beliefs on their stone, ones unable to set you free from worshipping idols. You who never renounce all you possess cannot submit to follow my God. Your gods claiming earthly possessions, willing them for you, have no portion laid up in the Lord's treasures.
Egyptians: You offer me little but your way.
Joseph: Pharaoh accepted my way, receiving a unknown messenger, trusting his premonitions, coming in the name of God, a prophet bearing His word, trusting his majesty would receive a prophet's reward, saving his kingdom from famine, realizing this only by making his subjects accountable, convincing, no forcing them to live in moderation.
Egyptians: We still do not trust your God, believing you proclaim Him for your benefit, worshipping One who none of us trust, having none of the powers you claim for Him, using Him to support your agenda, enslaving us to Pharaoh's ways, preparing us to ordain him as a another god and worship everything he does. We do not need another god, multiplying the ones we have, increasing their number to match the many laws you must remember, for we know by your ways how they are counted.
Joseph: You are as one of us, created by the Lord, a human being my Father has blessed with life, showing me you are hungry so I can give you something to eat, bringing me to where I am, trusting Him as our loving God, generously surpassing without fail everything we are able to do. We accept God's providence, trusting it even though He might change our circumstances. For those weak in understanding, He beckons, calling them to Him, to be filled with wisdom greater than their own.
Egyptians: You may be favored now, privileged by the grace of your God, unlike our people who are now enslaved by Pharaoh, but your time will come, when with a different Pharaoh, less benevolent, you will be treated as we are now, maybe worse, looking for victims to snare, probably considering aliens for enslavement before others.
Joseph: Our God determines all circumstances for His followers.
Bystander: Thus, Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in its fertile region called Goshen, gaining many possessions, leading exceedingly fruitful lives, multiplying their numbers as promised by God, verifying this to Jacob, soon to pledge blessings, foretelling all by visions describing his sons' destinies, as he approaches his last days sojourning in Egypt, living there seventeen years, completing his days with peace never encountered before, beginning to end his life after a hundred and forty-seven years. Realizing God was preparing to call him home, he summoned his son Joseph for final words.
Jacob: If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh, and promise to deal loyally and truly with me. Even though I have rejoiced being with my family in Goshen, always drawing closer to my Lord, thriving, drinking from His fountain of joy, Egypt is not my home, and when I die don't bury me here, but take my body out of Egypt and return me to lie with my fathers, inhuming me in their resting place, in our promised land, designated by God to be our home, the haven for sleeping with my forebears, all having passed on, waiting for the Day of the Lord, patiently trusting for completion of their covenant, resting until then in its partial fulfillment, having received an installment on His promise, but still seeing its fulfillment from afar, I can only greet it with hope, trusting my final vision from God.
Joseph: I will do as you have said.
Jacob: Swear to me, giving your word, trusting it to be true. Your oath is most important, more than any monument marking the soil for my decay. Needing no gravestone, chiseled rock to honor my achievements, my Lord needs nothing to recall my deeds, knowing grave markers crumble, wiping away their words with time, where the Lord's memory for my time here will never escape Him, hoping the virtue of my being will be sufficient for Him to lament little of my deeds, and perhaps invest me with a crown for a race well run.
Joseph: Father you are aged, speaking as one ill and ready to accept death, so I must call our family for a final visit before you leave.
Jacob: Listen to me first, hearing my recollections, urgently coming on me now, strengthening me enough to sit up, as I tell you one of my visions, reminded now by God to repeat for your understanding, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, saying, Behold, I will make you fruitful, multiplying you, making of you a company of people, and will give this land to your descendants coming after you, assuring them
an everlasting possession. And now your two sons, born to you in the land of Egypt before I came here, are mine, claiming Ephraim and Manasseh as mine, no different from Reuben and Simeon, and the offspring born to you after them will be yours, but called by the name of your brothers in their inheritance. Having so much to say now, knowing there is little time left, I must disentangle my jumbled thoughts, all competing for my words to utter, maybe digressing to speak of my sorrows, still plaguing my composure, never ceasing during my final breaths, as I never forget coming from Paddan, when Rachel to my sadness died in the land of Canaan, journeying on the way to Ephrath, before reaching its destination, compelling us stop and bury her near the way, at a site I can remember to find today, recalling a memory I could never forget.
Joseph: I remember her well, my mother lost during my childhood, moving from her home to settle where it would never become the promised land for her.
Jacob: Should not dying unveil God's mysteries, bringing discernment to reward us for the penalty of death,