JOSEPH, JESUS, JEWS AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BLOODY COAT
The parallels between Joseph, the son of Jacob and Jesus Christ are striking.
Both were beloved of their father but hated by their brothers. It says specifically of Jesus,
“He came to His own and His own did not receive Him”
(John 1:11)
Joseph was thrown into the pit and sold into slavery by his brothers. He rises from there to become king over those same brothers and over the land he was sold into slavery to.
Jesus Christ on the other hand was thrown into the pit of death by His brothers, the Israelites, betrayed by Judas, a disciple and He, through the resurrection from the dead, rises from that pit to become king over death, the Israelites, His brothers, and all of creation.
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
(Acts 2:36)
The parallels continue but we could stop there for now to focus on one bit of Joseph’s story… The bloody coat.
Jacob, to signify his love for Joseph above all his other children made him a coat of many colours. This coat would play a very important role in Joseph’s story when the brothers returned it bloody to Jacob, their father, who concluded that Joseph was dead. The coat was a tangible sign of his father’s love for and preference of him. In Jesus’ case, the tangible sign of His Father’s love is a declaration during His baptism,
“ And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
(Matthew 3:17)
Joseph wore that coat of many colours among his brethren when he walked among them. This parallels Christ’s express affirmations of His divinity among His brothers, the Jews. He forgave sin in their midst and when the high priest at his trial asked Jesus if He was the Christ, the Son of the Highest, He stated without mincing words that He is.
Both Joseph and Christ were unabashed about their father’s special love for them in the midst of their brethren but if there is something the blood on the coat tells us, it is that there is a cost to being loved by the Father, there is a cost to being God’s favourite. Christ also ended up being stripped off His garments (prior to crucifixion) and had blood flowing from Him (during His scourging) on account of His testimony of Himself which His Father agreed with.
Being God’s chosen is the greatest blessing one could ask for, but it is also a great burden. Ask Abel, the first innocent man to be slain because God favoured his sacrifice above that of Cain his brother (Genesis 4), ask Isaac, who the Philistines envied because God prospered him tremendously (Genesis 26:12–14), ask Jeremiah, the prophet who God chose from the womb, about his continuous imprisonment and mistreatment for prophesying truth as opposed to the other false prophets prophesying peace to a rebellious Israel, ask the other prophets who were slain by the Israelites, ask the 11 disciples of Christ, 10 of whom were martyred and one of whom was exiled after repeated attempts to murder him proved abortive, ask Paul, the chosen vessel of Christ to the gentiles, whose testimony reads thus,
“Are they ministers of Christ? — I speak as a fool — I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness — “
(2 Corinthians 11:23–27)
If this all sounds, far fetched and distant, let me bring it closer home, ask the Jews today. Ask them why they are so hated. Ask why the world masks its hate for them by holding them to standards they would hold no other nation on the planet to. Ask why they are the only country in the world whose civilians could get raped, murdered in cold blood with their corpses desecrated and yet they remain the villains when they respond even as they strive to minimise casualties among civilians who cheered for the very events that triggered the war and are held accountable for civilian lives which the very government of those civilians do not care about. Why does the world hate the Jews?
Answer? They wear the bloody coat! They are God’s special people, they have had a target on their backs since God made the promise to Abraham that the promised seed would come through Him. The attempted genocide of Israelis under the Pharaoh who did not Joseph in the book of Exodus as well as Haman in the book of Esther, to Mohammed’s expulsion of Jews and putting them under a death sentence in the hadith, down to the various exodus of Jews in modern history, to Adolf Hitler and more recently, the delusion of HAMAS (that it is illogical for Israel to exist and they can wipe it out).
What bloody coat do the Jews wear? The fact that the saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, came as one of their kith and kin. The whole world which lies under the power of the evil one dances to the tune of its father, the devil, in hating the Jews because the gift of Jesus Christ, is the eternal seal of God’s favour upon Israel.
So far as much as salvation is of the Jews (John 4:22), the one whom they have saved mankind from, the devil, would perpetually hate them.
In conclusion, the bloody coat of Joseph, the bloody side of Christ and the blood of innocent Jews all through history down to this present day teach us that being the Father’s chosen comes at a cost, the cost of being hated by the world.
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
(John 15:18–19)
