I won't follow you, will you follow me? Isn't that how the song goes?

Finally go to the end of Genesis [the book, not the band who's only lead singer has been Phil Collins and nobody else] and it's certainly enjoyable as a narrative from the creation of the world to God's example of men and their descendants.  Most of the book is focused on the last few generations and is itself a set-up for the sequel which stars Moses.

My suspicion is that the next few books are mostly covering setting up a religion, a temple of worship, and from there working out laws to run a society.  To the extent I've gone through the rest of the Torah, that's what it looks like, but I'll hold off on further speculation until I get that far.  But Genesis itself is a coherent story even though much of it takes place above the reader's head.

The climax is the most dramatic moment.  It's difficult to figure out what it looked like to the people at the time, then there's all the changes in perception since.  Jacob just looks like he's been failing his way upward all his life and the result is the celebration of his establishment for feudalism.

Joseph's brothers hated him, so they were willing to kill him, or at least let him die, or at least sell him as a slave.  That last one is what happened, where he wound up in Egypt, and did so good at his job that he kept getting promoted.  So then his master's wife is hot for him, but he refuses, so she lies about what he did to her and he's sent to prison.  But he does such a good job there that he's still promoted.

He can even comprehend dreams that come true, which leads him to meet Pharaoh, who puts him in charge of making decisions for the kingdom.  Pharaoh's dreams were about an upcoming famine, which is what happens.  Joseph's brothers need to come to Egypt to buy food, so he sets them up, claiming they stole money, then that they stole a silver cup.

There's a few verses where the text gets very unclear, repeating words like "servant," "lad," "lord" and "father," so it's not clear who's talking to who about what.  I'm sure the dialogue works at the level we humans read it, but I also think it's part of a higher dialogue with God, so we can only get bits and pieces of it.  There had been a reference to a "crimson thread" at Joseph's birth and this may be another plotline which we don't understand.  Maybe it's mentioned in the sequels.

But Joseph finally tells the truth since his brothers didn't recognize him, they make up and the whole family is moved to Egypt.  Or rather, Goshen, because Egyptians are prejudiced against shepherds.  They also discriminate against Hebrews, as we saw earlier when they refused to eat dinner when Joseph was dealing with his brothers.  Whatever reason Egypt has for this, it's definitely their decision.

So ok, the family moves and gets very wealthy selling food to Egypt in a famine.  Nothing stereotypical about that.  To deal with the famine, Joseph gathers up all the money in Egypt *and* Canaan and gives it to Pharaoh.  But that doesn't help.  Strike one.

People still need food, so Joseph offers to give them bread if they turn all their cattle over to him.  They agree with this, so they get to eat for a year.  But then they run out, and now they have no money or cattle to get more food.  Strike two.

So Joseph says he'll buy up all their land for Pharaoh and move them to cities, but he'll provide them with food.  And they go along with that.  And they praise Joseph and Pharaoh for the generosity.  They're such devoted servants and all they had to do was give up everything.  They own nothing and like it.

It's even worse than that, the text says the people are the ones who came up with the 'buy our land' solution to the problem.  I'm just being cynical to assume it was actually Joseph's idea, maybe it was Jacob or somebody's.  Maybe Egyptians are a very different breed when it comes to getting enough bread.

There's realizing that life was very different back then, there's believing in God's higher plan, and there's wanting to smack these people in the face and ask "what the f*ck are you thinking???"  'Praise Pharaoh' is not the right answer here, even on a day-to-day basis, never mind the centuries that Joseph's ancestors had spent getting him to this point.  Egypt just let this Hebrew shepherd out of jail a few years ago and now he's effectively in absolute power.

I'm a little nervous about moving on to Exodus.  What if Pharaoh changes his mind about something?  It's not like you have the right to claim you're oppressed after imposing this tyranny on the population and saying it was their idea.  But a lot of this seems to be very, shall we say, "modern."  That's not even counting that Egypt had the habit of impregnating your sister and any number of other perversions.  Would Joseph and his family be able to resist that?

The rest of the book is mostly a summery of the rest of Jacob's life, death and descendants.  He's old and realizes that God had brought him this far, having told him about this in Luz, just before he met his wife Rachel.  He even seems to be a bit senile, mentioning Joseph's sons, then Rachel's death, then asking who these boys are with Joseph.

But he wants to be buried in his family graveyard back in Canaan, and blesses his sons, the 12 tribes of Israel.  They'll be in the sequels but this is where the main story has ended.  Jacob dies and is buried in the family grave his grandfather bought.  Even that was a tie-up of plotlines to this point.

A son of Canaan, Heth, had helped Abraham set up the deal to get the cave, as did Ephron the Hittite.  Hittites are under the Covenant of Abram, as are Amorites, who are also a subsect of Canaanites.  Abram had lived on Mamre the Amorite's land and he helped Abram rescue Lot from kidnappers.  This lead to Abram dealing with state leaders at war, where he refused to take anything from the king of Sodom [insert joke here] just before the Covenant and Sarah's cave was built at Mamre.  The covenant was what set Abram on this path, adding circumcision and changing his name to Abraham, the father of many nations.

This is one example of the theme running through long periods of time.  There's a similar one when Joseph and his brothers have it out.  They're scared that he's going to get revenge for their torment and selling him to slaveowners, now that their father is dead.  But no, it's a sign that God's plans work out for the good, even when people do evil things.  Joseph forgives them and they live happily ever after, so long as he's in charge.

When he dies, it's specified that he wanted to be brought back to the family grave, but that hasn't happened.  He had promised that his descendants would return to Canaan, and I assume the point is that they'll wait until this happens.  Wikipedia says yes, he's buried in Sarah's cave, so it'll probably be in the next few chapters, but the book has a nice dramatic exit, the coffin waiting to go back home.

So yes, it is a very satisfying and inspirational ending to the book.  It's easy to see why Jews spent the next few thousand years considering Israel as their home, and it's probably not coincidental that all their opponents refuse to accept that.  It's also very easy to see aspects that are confusing, incoherent, or just plain wrong, which is why it's far more complicated than the anti-religious believe.  Probably wouldn't be hard to find someone at least as devout to scripture as I am who disagrees with everything I've just written, yet we can both serve God.  That's the real message here.