16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: 17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. (Col 1:16-17)
Those things — meat, drink, etc. — and events foreshadowed Jesus. They are statutes of the Law of God… “the Law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things” (Heb 10:1).
The Pharaoh of Egypt is an antitype. The Pharaoh, in the time of Joseph, was a good Pharaoh who was likely not Egyptian but a Hyksos. The latter were rulers from foreign lands, and specifically the Levant. If my hypothesis from scripture is correct, the Levant — Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordon — was about the middle of Eden. Nobody knows the origin of them but that they were Semitic peoples, and thus “cousins” of the Hebrews.
Pharaoh welcomed Joseph into his dynasty as second in charge because he saved Egypt from perishing. Egypt is generally the antitype for sin, but it too can have opposite connotations. The good Hyksos Pharaoh is and antitype of Jesus, and the evil Pharaoh of the time of Moses was the antitype of Satan.
The story of the Exodus begins, “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph” (Exod 1:8). In the interim between Joseph and Moses, the population of the Hebrews grew as well as the degree of sin. Egyptians had regained Egypt and a new dynasty prevailed; a dynasty wherein Pharaoh (now let us say “king” to distinguish them), was the antitype of Satan and Egypt sin.
What had happened through the years? God preserved Egypt because inside there were Jews at heart (and by blood), just as in apostolic times: “He is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (Rom 2:290.
Pharaoh was a Jew inside although by blood he was a Semite, and not a Hebrew per se (from Eber, Shem’s son). The new “King” would be from Ham’s son Mizraim.
To the Hebrews, the name Mizraim would mean “double distress” (Abarim Publications). Spiritually, that is certainly true — they went from evil in the days prior to Joseph’s Pharaoh to good in the days of Joseph to evil again with Moses’s king.
God preserved Egypt but Satan restored his little kingdom there. Always, when God preserves, the righteous person or nation becomes even more jeopardized. And like Egypt is “lost” to this day, any of God’s people that He preserves can fall away.
Paul said it well: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thes 2:3). That day came for Egypt when the Jews there fell away from the true God. The king of Moses’s time, by then, was a self-anointed “god” and to this day, the god of Egypt is an unknown God that they call, “Allah”. Thus, Egypt also foreshadows the dangers of falling away from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to any other false god.
“Falling away” in that passage is apostasia in the Greek. (Strong’s Dictionary). It means “to forsake” God. Note that it does not mean that God would forsake them!
By the time of Moses, the Hebrews had all but forsaken God. They lived in sin much as if they were Mizraimites, and not Semites. I have written before that the genes of Cain somehow overcame the flood. Since Ham was disrespectful of his father, Canaan was cursed. His mother was most likely one of “the daughters of men” (from Cain in Gen 6:4). Egyptians, as Mizraim, would be of the Wicked One just as Cain. [i] During the time of the Joseph’s Pharaoh’s dynasty, Egypt was ruled by Semites. The Wicked One had been overcome by the seed of Shem.
Between Pharaoh and king, the nation of Egypt had returned to the seed of Mizraim. It had fallen away from Pharaoh and accepted a “king” that was not of the same blood nor spirit. Never can anyone have two masters; they must choose one above another. [ii]
The Egyptians accepted the king as Pharaoh. What is in a name anyway? In doing that, the Egyptians were apostate. On the other hand, the Hebrews who would follow Moses and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were reprieved. They had not, at that time, completely fallen away. There remained hope for them, and the Book of Exodus was what the Hebrews did with that grace. Eventually, all but a few lost hope, and were either slain by God using vipers and such until none made it to Paradise.
Satan, in the body of the king, endeavored to snatch them back. After all, he was a god! He insisted that the Hebrews be as the pagans, and he would be their god and not Yahweh. Whereas Yahweh removes bonds and makes men free, kings chain their servants to their thrones.
That describes the periods leading up to the exodus, and the exodus describes the journey of Christians once they were safe in the hands of God. Nowhere did God use force like the king did. The Pharoah of Joseph’s time allowed the Hebrews to come and go as they pleased!
Hence, Egypt represents the world as well. The Hebrews there were symbolic of Christians who must live in the world and are chained to its customs and the law of sin. Paul explained that dualism to the Roman Christians:
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members… I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Rom 7:23, 25)
Original sin was also in Paul. Neither was he without sin. He described the dualism inside himself — his mind served God, but his flesh was bound by the law of sin. His mind was free, along with his spirit, but his flesh belonged to another. That is the situation in which the Hebrews in Egypt found themselves — they were willing to serve God but even after exiting from the place of sin, they still served sin.
The flesh can be moved but the spirit must follow. In spirit, the Hebrews of the exodus were “spiritual Egyptians”. Their blood had become tainted by mingling with Mizraimites, and their spiritual DNA, by then, had been with the Wicked One and not with The Righteous One!
In the next installment, I will continue with the baker, the butler, and the dream that Joseph interpreted. He told them of its immediate meaning but inside the interpretation was so much more!
(picture credit: Bigstock; "Shadow of a Man")
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