Egypt Today

This will be another post only tangentially related to our reading, but I don't feel too bad about that since this a well-known story. Enjoy the next couple of weeks, because once we get past the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, we're in for a 6-week immersion into the LAW. Those of you who think we talk too much Gospel and not enough Law, this should be right up your alley.

I want to contrast the Egypt of Joseph's time with what's been going on the past couple of days. As we read, apparently only Egypt among the nations has enough food. If you recall, 20% of the harvests were held back during the years of plenty to tide them through the years of lean. I won't bore you with the math that would suggest that this couldn't come close to sustaining a nation over a 7-year period, let alone leave surpluses sufficient to supply surrounding nations--let's just take it as it is explained, an example of what had to be the richest nation in the world, one with food.

Contrast that with what's been happening recently. The stage was set when the people of Tunisia overthrew their tyrannical leader a couple of weeks ago, and that catalyst is starting to spread throughout the Arab world. It reached a boiling point in Egypt a couple of days ago, and one of the articles in today's (Saturday) Wall Street Journal (there were a total of 9, plus an editorial) had this sentence that immediately put a sense of dread in me: "...the order that mobile phone and Internet connections be disabled throughout the country." That's a pretty drastic step and warranted an article of its own, which had the following chart:

In case you can't tell what it says, it shows the complete drop-off of Internet activity. In effect, Egypt is attempting to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Despots in every era attempt to control the flow of information. The theme of Orwell's "1984" was this type of totalitarian control over information, indeed down to the level of changing history to fit updated circumstances. North Korea does this today. If you view North Korea using Google Maps, you'd see NOTHING--no roads, no infrastructure, nothing. Look at South Korea and you'll see roads, buildings, everything. When a ruler decides that things are so bad that all communication needs to stop, it probably won't end well.

Actually, this connects better with today's reading than I thought. Imagine if Joseph had taken the same approach. What if he had decided to retaliate against his brothers by withholding the food, or even worse, not even talking with them in the first place? I'll admit, he certainly didn't go out of his way to make things easy for them, but he could have done the same thing that is happening in Egypt today (closing the borders) for the OPPOSITE reason--to keep the outsiders from coming in (as opposed to information getting out). As we all know and will see tomorrow, he obviously didn't choose that path.

The parallels keep coming--we'll see in a couple of days when "a new king, who did not know about Joseph" (NEWS FLASH--you're going to LOVE my post for that day, which will be February 2nd), and the modern-day Egyptians might be facing the same thing--there have only been three leaders since 1956, and all (Gamal Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak) are connected, and Mubarak was in the process of transitioning power to his son, but most observers see that as close to impossible now. Indeed, as I write this (Saturday night), Mubarak may have already been overthrown or resigned. By all means, pray for a peaceful resolution, and remember the really big point--this was the mightiest country in the world in Joseph's time, and it's on the verge of a monumental collapse today. Nothing in this world lasts--except God.

Scott