Bird's-eye view
This section of Psalm 105 provides a masterful and compact retelling of the Joseph narrative, but with a crucial theological lens. The psalmist is not merely recounting history for history's sake; he is interpreting it to highlight the absolute sovereignty of God in His covenant faithfulness to Israel. The central theme is that God's mysterious, and often severe, providence is always purposeful. What appears to be a series of tragic and unjust events, famine, betrayal, slavery, imprisonment, is revealed to be the meticulous outworking of God's plan to preserve His people. The human actors, with all their sin and folly, are but instruments in the hands of a God who is orchestrating everything for His glory and the good of His chosen. The passage emphasizes that God is the primary actor: He called for the famine, He sent the man Joseph, and it was His word that tested and ultimately vindicated him. Joseph's suffering was not random; it was a divine refining process, preparing him for the authority he would wield to save the very people who had wronged him, and in so doing, preserve the line of the covenant.
In short, these verses are a case study in what the New Testament calls Romans 8:28. The psalmist wants Israel to remember that their history is not a chaotic jumble of events. It is a story, written and directed by God, in which even the most painful chapters are essential to the plot. The pit, the prison, and the palace are all connected by the unbreakable thread of God's sovereign decree. This is meant to foster a rugged faith in the God who works all things, even the treachery of brothers and the affliction of irons, according to the counsel of His will.
Outline
- 1. God's Sovereign Hand in Hardship and Deliverance (Ps 105:16-22)
- a. The Divine Cause of Crisis (Ps 105:16)
- b. The Divine Provision in the Crisis (Ps 105:17)
- c. The Painful Path of the Provision (Ps 105:18)
- d. The Timing and Testing of Providence (Ps 105:19)
- e. The Sovereign Reversal of Fortune (Ps 105:20-22)
- i. The King's Decree (Ps 105:20)
- ii. Joseph's Exaltation (Ps 105:21)
- iii. Joseph's God-Given Authority (Ps 105:22)
Context In The Psalm
Psalm 105 is a hymn of historical recital, a call for Israel to "remember the wondrous works that he has done" (v. 5). It begins with a summons to praise and proclamation (vv. 1-6) and then grounds this praise in God's covenant faithfulness, starting with the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (vv. 7-11). The psalm then traces the fulfillment of these promises through the history of the patriarchs as sojourners (vv. 12-15) before arriving at our passage. The section concerning Joseph (vv. 16-22) serves as the pivotal narrative hinge. It explains how God's people, the small band of patriarchs, ended up in Egypt. This is not presented as an accident, but as a deliberate act of God's providence to set the stage for the even greater work of the Exodus, which the remainder of the psalm goes on to celebrate (vv. 23-45). Joseph's story is therefore the bridge that gets Israel from Canaan to Egypt, demonstrating that God's plan was at work even when His people were being moved about as pieces on a chessboard.
Key Issues
- Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
- The Nature of God's Providence
- The Purpose of Suffering in the Life of a Believer
- Typology: Joseph as a Type of Christ
- The Relationship Between God's Word and God's Timing
- The Authority of God's Appointed Leaders
God's Man in Irons
One of the central glories of the Christian faith is that our God is not a distant, deistic clockmaker. He is intimately and sovereignly involved in every detail of His creation, and particularly in the lives of His people. This passage is a potent antidote to the kind of thinking that sees God as being in charge of the "big picture" but absent from the messy details. The psalmist will have none of it. God does not just react to famines; He calls for them. He does not just make the best of a bad situation when a young man is sold into slavery; He sends him there. This is what we mean by a robust doctrine of providence.
And this providence is not always comfortable. In fact, it is often terrifying. The one whom God sent to be the savior of his family is first afflicted, bound in fetters, laid in irons. This is the pattern of God's working throughout Scripture. The path to glory is the path of suffering. The way up is down. This is preeminently true of the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater Joseph, who was betrayed by His brothers, sold for the price of a slave, and bound, all so that He might be exalted to the highest place and become the bread of life for the world. The story of Joseph is our story in miniature, and it is Christ's story in prototype. God's man is often in irons, precisely so that God's purposes might be unbound.
Verse by Verse Commentary
16 And He called for a famine upon the land; He broke the whole staff of bread.
The psalmist begins not with human action, but with divine decree. The famine was not a random meteorological event or a cyclical economic downturn. He, Yahweh, called for it. The language is that of a king summoning a servant. Famine is one of God's covenantal judgments (Lev. 26:26), and here He deploys it as an instrument of His purpose. The second clause, "He broke the whole staff of bread," is a classic Hebrew idiom. Bread is the staff on which human life leans for support. To break that staff is to remove the basic means of subsistence. God is asserting His control over the most fundamental aspects of life. Men may plow and plant, but God gives the increase, and He can withhold it. This sets the stage. The problem is divinely created so that the solution can be divinely revealed.
17 He sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
Notice the glorious tension. God called for the famine, but before He did, He had already put the solution in place. "He sent a man before them." God is always ahead of the crisis. From the perspective of Joseph's brothers, they were getting rid of a nuisance. From the perspective of the Midianite traders, they were making a business transaction. But from the perspective of heaven, which is the only perspective that ultimately matters, God was sending His man on a mission. The psalmist collapses the human means into a parenthetical note: "who was sold as a slave." The selling was the vehicle, but God was the driver. This is exactly how Joseph himself would later interpret these events: "God sent me before you to preserve life... so it was not you who sent me here, but God" (Gen. 45:5, 8). This is the bedrock of a Christian worldview. We must learn to see the hand of God behind the hands of men.
18 They afflicted his feet with fetters, He himself was laid in irons;
The path of God's chosen instrument is not an easy one. The one sent by God is immediately subjected to intense suffering. The word "they" is indefinite, referring to his captors and masters in Egypt, particularly in Potiphar's house after the false accusation. His feet were shackled, and the Hebrew for the second clause is stark: "his soul came into iron" is a possible rendering. It wasn't just that iron was around him; the iron entered into him. The affliction was deep, personal, and soul-crushing. This was not a minor inconvenience. It was a brutal, painful, and humiliating reality. This is an essential part of the story. God's providence does not exempt us from suffering; it works through our suffering. The iron in the soul was part of the preparation for the ruler.
19 Until the time that his word came to pass, The word of Yahweh refined him.
This verse provides the divine timetable and the divine purpose for the suffering. How long was Joseph in irons? "Until the time that his word came to pass." This likely refers to Joseph's interpretation of the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker, the event that ultimately led to his release. But it can also look back to his own youthful dreams of dominion. God's promises have an appointed time. In the interim, during the long years of waiting, another process was at work: "The word of Yahweh refined him." The promises of God, which seemed so distant and impossible in that prison, were the very instrument God was using to purify Joseph's character. The word "refined" is the word for smelting metal, burning off the dross to get to the pure silver or gold. The prison was God's crucible. God was testing Joseph's faith in His word, burning away any pride or impatience, and forging him into a man who could handle the immense power that was coming his way.
20 The king sent and released him, The ruler of peoples sent and set him free.
When God's time came, the release was swift and decisive. The agent of the release is Pharaoh, designated here as "the king" and "the ruler of peoples." But just as God was the true sender of Joseph into Egypt, so God is the true agent of his release. The king of Egypt is the most powerful man on earth, but he is merely a pawn in the hand of the King of Heaven. When God's appointed time arrives, He simply moves His piece. The king "sent." He didn't know he was acting on a divine timetable, but he was. The prison doors that were shut tight for years swing open in a moment, because the word of the Lord had decreed it.
21 He set him up as lord of his house And ruler over all his possessions,
The reversal of fortune is total and absolute. The prisoner becomes the prime minister. The one who was a slave in Potiphar's house is now made "lord" over Pharaoh's own house. The one who owned nothing is now the "ruler over all his possessions," the manager of the entire wealth of the Egyptian empire. This is the pattern of exaltation following humiliation that we see throughout Scripture. It is a foreshadowing of the one who, "though he was in the form of God... emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant... Therefore God has highly exalted him" (Phil. 2:6-9). God does not just restore what was lost; He elevates His servants to a position of glory and authority far beyond what they could have imagined.
22 To imprison his princes at will, And that he might teach his elders wisdom.
This final verse describes the breathtaking scope of Joseph's new authority. He had the power "to imprison his princes at will." The Hebrew literally says "to bind his princes by his soul," meaning according to his own desire or discretion. The man who was himself bound in iron now has the authority to bind the highest officials in the land. This is not vindictive power, but the necessary authority to carry out his task of saving the nation. And his authority was not just political, but intellectual and spiritual: "that he might teach his elders wisdom." The pagan elders and counselors of Egypt were now to sit at the feet of this Hebrew slave, because the wisdom of God was with him. The suffering had produced not just strength, but wisdom. The man refined by the word of God was now qualified to teach the wisest men of the world's greatest empire. God's purpose was not just to save Israel, but to put His wisdom on display before the nations.
Application
The principles laid out in this passage are not confined to the life of Joseph. They are timeless truths about how God governs the world and cares for His church. First, we must learn to see the hand of God in our hardships. We are tempted to see only the malice of men or the randomness of circumstance. But our faith must go deeper. The God who calls for famines is the God who is in control of your job loss, your sickness, your betrayal. This is not to say that the sin of those who harm us is excused, Joseph's brothers were still culpable, but it is to say that their sin cannot thwart God's ultimate, good purpose.
Second, we must understand that suffering is often a tool of divine preparation. When you are in the prison, when the iron is in your soul, it is easy to believe that God has forgotten you. But this passage tells us that the prison is God's workshop. He is using His word and your difficult circumstances to refine you, to burn away your impurities, and to make you fit for the task He has prepared for you. The waiting is not wasted time. It is training time.
Finally, we must trust God's timing. Joseph was in prison "until the time." We are all impatient. We want out of the crucible now. But God's timing is perfect. When He has completed His work in you, and when the external circumstances are perfectly aligned, He will act. And when He acts, the release and the exaltation can be stunningly swift. The same God who took Joseph from the dungeon to the palace in a single day is the God who can turn your deepest trial into your greatest platform for His glory. Our job is not to figure out the timetable, but to remain faithful in the fetters, trusting the word that is refining us.