Great Moments in Bible History
Number 40
The Real Hero
We humans are strange creatures. How often does someone who has a parent with poor parenting skills say, “I’ll never be like that when I grow up!” yet they end up raising their children exactly like they were raised? Jacob did that. His own father had a favorite son—and it wasn’t Jacob. As a result, Jacob lied to his father and pretended to be Esau in order to get the blessing his father was going to give to his brother. That led to all kinds of troubles. But when Jacob had children of his own, he acted just like his father had.
Jacob’s favoritism was the result of having two wives—Rachel his favorite and Leah whom he had never wanted. After Rachel died, her oldest son Joseph became his favorite.
Jacob didn’t try to hide his favoritism, either. He made Joseph a special robe that showed to everyone who the favorite was. The biggest loser in this was Joseph. “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him” (Genesis 37:4).
Joseph was 17 years old as this story begins. All of his brothers except Benjamin were older—some of them quite a bit older. No doubt they viewed him as an arrogant, spoiled brat—and they were probably more than half right.
Joseph himself did not seem to notice any problem. He had a dream that he and his brothers were binding sheaves of wheat at harvest time. Suddenly, his sheaf stood upright and all the other sheaves gathered around and bowed down to his sheaf! Rather than keeping this dream to himself, Joseph proceeded to tell it to his brothers. Their response could easily have been predicted by anyone who wasn’t completely blind to what was going on. “‘Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?’ So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words” (verse 8). But Joseph still didn’t get it. He had a second dream which even more clearly predicted that he would be the ruler of his entire family. He promptly told that one as well. Three times in this story the author tells us that Joseph’s brothers hated him.
The author of Genesis intends us to understand that Joseph’s dreams came from God. This is the first of three sets of dreams in the story and they were all sent by God. God obviously felt that it was important for Joseph to understand that God had a plan for him. He would go through some very difficult times in the not very distant future. Things would be so bad that the average person would simply have given up. But the knowledge that God was working behind the scenes to accomplish His purposes would be a big encouragement to him in the hard times to come.
In the meantime, though, it would certainly appear that God had His work cut out for Him. This was the family He had promised to make into a blessing to all the earth (Genesis 28:14), yet the family wasn’t even a blessing to each other. The father played favorites. His son Joseph was being spoiled. The other sons hated him. But this kind of situation is not unusual in the Bible. It really seems like God delights to do His work with the most unpromising people.
In this case, not only was God starting with unpromising material, but the dreams He sent to Joseph actually made things worse. Of course, Joseph didn’t have to tell those dreams to his brothers, but God certainly knew He would. In fact, as the story unfolds it becomes obvious that God had wanted things to get worse. God was going to use one of the worst deeds in the history of families as His means to bless that family.
This will be a preview of how He will use the very worst deed in all of history—the crucifixion of His Son Jesus—to bring about the greatest blessing for the whole world.
For a lot of us this story of Joseph is our favorite in the Bible, yet as we begin to study it, we must keep in mind who the real hero of the story is. It is not Joseph, but God.
What Hatred Can Lead To
Human passions are extremely powerful. They often lead us to do things we would never imagine ourselves doing. In a brief moment they lead us to do things that we spend the rest of our lives regretting. That is exactly what happened in the next scene of the Joseph story.
The story begins with Jacob sending Joseph off to check on his brothers. They were pasturing their sheep about 50 miles away in Shechem. Apparently both Jacob and Joseph were unaware of just how deeply the brothers hated Joseph.
As Joseph approached, the brothers recognized him while he was still a long way off. They immediately plotted to kill him. The oldest brother Reuben talked them out of that. He said, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him” (Genesis 37:22). So instead of killing him outright, the brothers threw him into a pit and left him to die of thirst. This is the first of two appearances Reuben makes in the Joseph story in which he tries to save the day. It does not work in either case. He is not destined to be the hero of the story. In this case his plan was to wait until the other brothers weren’t looking, and then go back and rescue Joseph. But while Reuben was away tending to other business, the brothers came up with an idea of their own. They saw a caravan of traders headed for Egypt. In those days Egypt was a big market for slaves. This time the fourth son Judah spoke up. “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh” (verses 26-27). The traders payed the brothers 20 shekels of silver for Joseph. Given that a shepherd would not expect to make even half that amount in a whole year, it was certainly good “profit,” as Judah had put it.
This is the first appearance of Judah in the story. He is destined to play a major role—second only to Joseph. Indeed, he will end up giving one of the most heart-warming speeches in the Bible. But we would never expect it from the way he began. Selling your brother as a slave has to be one of the most despicable things anyone can do. It will take years, but God will use that despicable act to begin a change in Judah that will eventually lead to his wonderful speech at the end of the story.
The Cover-Up
Ignorant of what his brothers had done with Joseph, Reuben snuck back to the pit, intending to rescue Joseph. When he saw that the pit was empty, he tore his clothes in grief. “The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?” (Genesis 37:30) Reuben’s problem was what to tell their father. “Then they took Joseph’s robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, ‘This we have found; please identify whether it is your son’s robe or not’” (verses 31-32). Of course, Jacob immediately recognized the fancy robe he had given his favorite son. As the brothers had intended, he assumed a wild animal had eaten him. Jacob tore his clothes and put on sackcloth (a material like burlap that people wore when they were grieving).
In those days official mourning for a departed loved one might last a week. In Jacob’s case he had no intention of ending his mourning that quickly. His children tried to comfort him, but he rebuffed them, insisting that he would go to his grave still mourning for his son.
I’m sure at that point the brothers began to doubt the wisdom of what they had done in the passion of their hatred. At the time, though, none of them discussed the matter with the others. Each was left with his own guilty thoughts. Years will go by before the Lord brings them to repentance and—ultimately—to get forgiveness for what they had done.
The chapter ends with a single verse letting us know what is happening to Joseph. “Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard” (verse 36). Our author will then leave us hanging for a whole chapter. The next chapter seemingly has nothing to do with the story of Joseph, but—as we will learn in the next issue of this paper—it actually has a lot to do with it.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible.