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Context No. 1614 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 37:21-28: in context

21Reuben heard it, and delivered him out of their hand, and said, “Let’s not take his life.” 22Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father. 23When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him; 24and they took him, and threw him into the pit. The pit was empty. There was no water in it. 25They sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. 26Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27Come, and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh.” His brothers listened to him. 28Midianites who were merchants passed by, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. The merchants brought Joseph into Egypt.

Joseph's brothers, jealous of their father's favorite, seize him when he comes to them in the field. Reuben persuades them not to kill him but to throw him into a pit, hoping secretly to rescue him later. They strip Joseph of his special robe and cast him into the empty pit, and then sit down to eat. Seeing a caravan of traders passing, Judah proposes selling him rather than killing him, and they sell their brother to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, and he is carried down to Egypt.

This is a story of betrayal by those who should have loved him most. Joseph was wronged not by strangers or enemies but by his own brothers, who hated him, stripped him, threw him in a pit, and sold him into slavery, then sat down to eat while he cried out from the pit. It is one of the deep wounds a person can suffer, betrayal by family, by those bound to us by blood who should have protected us and instead did us harm. The passage does not spare us its cruelty; the brothers' act was harsh and callous, and Joseph's suffering was real. And yet this betrayal is the beginning of a story that would end very differently than it began. The pit and the sale that seemed the end of Joseph were, in God's hands, the first steps of a path that would carry him to Egypt, to authority, and to the saving of many lives, including the very brothers who betrayed him. Joseph himself would later say to them: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive. This does not excuse the brothers' sin or make the betrayal any less real; what they did was evil, and Joseph felt its full weight. But it means that even the deepest betrayal was not outside God's power to redeem; God wove the evil done to Joseph into a good neither he nor his brothers could have imagined. There is hard hope in this for those who have been betrayed by their own. The wound is real, and God does not pretend otherwise; but the God who worked through Joseph's betrayal can work through ours, weaving even the evil done to us by those closest to us into a good we cannot yet see.

When I have been betrayed by those closest to me, who should have loved and protected me, can I hold, without excusing the evil done, the hard hope that the God who wove Joseph's betrayal into the saving of many can weave even the wrong done to me into a good I cannot yet see?

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