Lives of Great Men
39
“Joseph is a fruitful bough,
Even a fruitful bough by a well;
Whose branches run over the wall:
The archers have sorely grieved him,
And shot at him, and hated him:
But his bow abode in strength,
And the arms of his hands were made strong
By the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; ...
Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee;
And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee
With blessings of heaven above,
Blessings of the deep that lieth under: ...
The blessings of thy father have prevailed
Above the blessings of my progenitors
Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills:
They shall be on the head of Joseph,
And on the crown of the head of him that was separate
from his brethren.”
Genesis 49:22-26
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Loyalty to God, faith in the Unseen, was Joseph’s anchor. In this
lay the hiding of his power.
“The arms of his hands were made strong By the hands of the mighty
God of Jacob.”
Daniel, an Ambassador of Heaven
Daniel and his companions in Babylon were, in their youth, appar-
ently more favored of fortune than was Joseph in the earlier years of
his life in Egypt; yet they were subjected to tests of character scarcely
less severe. From the comparative simplicity of their Judean home
these youth of royal line were transported to the most magnificent of
cities, to the court of its greatest monarch, and were singled out to
be trained for the king’s special service. Strong were the temptations
surrounding them in that corrupt and luxurious court. The fact that
they, the worshipers of Jehovah, were captives to Babylon; that the
vessels of God’s house had been placed in the temple of the gods of