Shabat 4th December 2021. Parashat Miketz (Genesis 41) Joseph is given by Pharaoh the name “Tsaphnat Pha-ne-ach”. This means “the concealed one who solves the mystery”. Pharaoh knew well that Joseph was the concealed one, the solver of mysteries, who had been concealed or hidden in a dark and lonely dungeon, lost, forgotten and rejected for years, forgotten by the wine-bearer who had witnessed the mystery then solved and predicted by Joseph, the baker’s life forfeited and the wine-bearer’s spared. We ought not to reject Yshua the “Concealed One”, the “Mystery Solved”, of whom Joseph is a type. Yshua was forever concealed in the Father (John 5:37-38), but the contemporary leadership did not recognize this. That is why he said “you have neither heard his voice [of the father] nor seen His form, neither does his word dwell in you, because you have not believed the one he sent”. If they had diligently sought to hear the voice of the father, to see his form and let his word dwell in them, they would have recognized that Yshua was concealed in the father and would have received him as their Lord and Messiah. They would not have overlooked or taken for granted the “seven years of their plenty”, but they would have realized that these were given in lieu of seven years of adversity, for which the plenty was given in preparation thereof. Yshua is our concealed One, our Mystery Solver, our riddle Revealer. He was rejected to the grave and forgotten, but God raised him from the dead, just as Joseph was forgotten for so long yet became the essential key to the saving of the people of Egypt and even to the saving of Jacob and his family whose region was also affected by the same famine. Our lives too are hidden in Yshua the Messiah (Col 3:3), just as he is hidden in the Father, so that the mystery of His Life may be revealed in us.
