Genesis 37:12-36

Hey,
everybody. Welcome back.
Thanks for joining us as we push on through Genesis,
and as we continue the
Joseph story, the front end of the Joseph story,
really remember yesterday that Joseph had gotten sideways with his brothers,
gotten reprimanded even by his father for talking about his dreams.
That is the set amidst the backdrop of
also being the favored one,
having a gift, a special coat of some sort.
And today we continue that story in what I think is
a well-known part of Joseph’s story.
I don’t know if we’ll read this all because we are going to
try and get through the rest of the chapter.
But essentially,
we start here,
verse 12 of chapter 37,
“The brothers are sent off to the fathers’ pastures near Shechem,
and Israel, that is Jacob, said to Joseph,
‘Are not your brothers pastoring the flocks?
Come, and I’ll send you to them.’
And he said, ‘Here I am.’ So Jacob said to him,
‘Go see if it’s well with your brothers and with the flock,
and bring word back to me.’ So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.”
So just right off the bat here as we enter the story,
a couple of interesting things.
First of all is that the brothers have gone without Joseph.
Somehow he seems to have gotten out of
going to pasture the flock.
He stays at home.
Jacob seems perhaps surprised by that.
He sends him, but then he says,
“Go and bring word back to me.” Which, if you remember,
is kind of what got
him in some trouble yesterday.
He brought a bad report back.
So whether Jacob is kind of saying
spy on him, or whether he’s saying,
“You go watch things and tell me what happens.”
But it’s interesting, Michael, it’s interesting that he didn’t have to initially go with them
to do the work.
And it’s interesting that in a behind the scenes conversation Jacob says,
“And, you know, let me know what they’re up to.”
Yeah.
So there’s a lot here,
Clint.
And just to be very brief, know this,
geography matters, that the flocks are over by Shechem,
which should make you think of the last time that we had the experience at Shechem,
which if you remember that story of Dinah and her honor being taken,
and the trickery that involved the brothers going down and destroying really every man in that city,
that is the sort of overhanging kind of mood to this story because of its location at Shechem.
So we know that this place already has kind of a checkered past.
And so as we now look forward
towards this idea of Israel sending his prized son to go be with his brothers,
who can’t even say a single good word to him,
Joseph has already, as you said, Clint, gotten in trouble because he’s
bringing bad reports.
Now he’s supposed to go get another report.
We already see, we’re only a few verses, and we already see how this is all building up to be a massive cataclysmic kind of event.
And we see that background hanging over it.
We see these elements that have already
been teased previous in the story.
They’re going to come together and it’s going to be rather combustive.
And it escalates quickly.
If we jump ahead a few verses, verse 18,
they saw him from a distance and before he came near to them,
they conspired to kill him.
They said to one another,
here comes the dreamer.
Let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits.
And we’ll say that a wild animal devoured him and we’ll see then what becomes of his dreams.
So here we have the plan is hatched.
They want to harm their brother.
And it’s very interesting.
If you remember yesterday,
if you were with us yesterday,
we talked about the way that dreams
are woven throughout the rest of this narrative.
And here we have it said explicitly,
here comes the dreamer.
We’ll kill him, throw him in a pit.
Then we’ll see about his dreams.
Then we’ll see if we bow down to him.
Then we’ll see if the sun and moon bow down to him.
We’ll see how far this
business goes when he’s dead in the bottom of a well.
And if they’ve talked about this before,
again,
it would be fascinating to have some information, some backstory here.
The Bible is just hitting the high points and this is their plan.
This is what they plan to do.
Yes.
So once again,
the idea of the threat that we talked about yesterday is not a threat here.
This is an active plan.
And in fact, it’s only going to be a change to the idea that it’s really
only derailed because one of the brothers has misgivings about it.
So there’s a real existential
threat on Joseph’s life.
Of course, his mother has already died,
which means that between himself and Benjamin,
these are the only remaining sort of connections to Jacob, or now Israel’s
favorite, most loved wife.
And so this plot is not just bad news.
It is bad news,
but it’s not just that.
It’s really a kind of existential threat against Israel’s only remaining connection
towards that love that we’ve had named.
There’s a lot at stake here, in other words.
And so continuing here,
just the next verse 21,
“When Reuben heard it,
he delivered him out of
their hands and said,
‘Let’s not take his life.’
Reuben said to them,
‘Shed no blood, throw him into one of the pits here in the wilderness,
but do not lay a hand on him.’
He thought he would
rescue him out of their hands and restore him to his father.
So when Joseph came to his brothers,
they stripped him of the robe,
the robe with sleeves that he wore,
and they took him and
threw him in a pit.
The pit was empty.
There was no water in it.” So these are dried up wells, essentially.
Now, remember where we last saw Reuben.
Reuben had been with
Jacob’s concubine,
and we find out later that he’s going to be cut out of the inheritance for that.
So whether this is Reuben acting for what he believes to be good,
doing the right thing,
or whether Reuben sees a chance to scheme his way back into Jacob’s good graces,
it’s not clear.
The text would sort
of, in my opinion,
lean toward the latter rather than being an affectionate brother.
I think this is probably him trying to get back on Jacob’s good side.
That’s a personal opinion.
The text doesn’t say that outright,
but it does have the effect of saving Joseph.
Rather than killing him,
they throw him in the pit,
and it’s not clear what they plan to do,
but Reuben plans on going
to set him free later.
I just want to add,
I agree with you,
and what would happen to Reuben
if he does that?
If he delivers the son who was supposed to die in a pit,
and before all of the other conspiring brothers,
Reuben brings him alive.
I mean, that’s going to be a very schismatic
moment in this already troubled family’s history.
So I agree.
There does seem to be conspiring here, but once again,
here we have the dreamer,
this thing being named,
this idea that he’s the one
who’s seen the future.
In a way,
Reuben is actually here activating and making that dream possible
because of his scheming,
his desire to subvert this.
We’re going to see that the story is going
to take a different path here, and
this is actually one step on the road to that accusation
or that insult to actually become bore out by the story itself.
Dreamer is one of those things that
turns when we discover that’s exactly who Joseph is,
and that’s exactly the gift that he’s been given.
And there’s an interesting kind of callousness to this text.
Verse 25,
“They sat down to eat,
they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming,” continues on in verse 26.
“Then Judah said to his brothers,
‘What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?
Let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites
and not lay our hand on him,
for he is our brother,
our own flesh.’ And his brothers agreed.
When some of the Midianite traders passed by,
they drew Jacob out of the well,
they sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver,
and they took Joseph to Egypt.” So,
very interesting.
Reuben is evidently not a part of this.
We’ll see in a moment, but Judah now
comes on the scene and says, “Hey,
we don’t need to kill him.
We can still get rid of him and we
can make some money doing it.” And then there’s this line,
“For he is our brother.” They sit down
to eat lunch with this brother in an empty well in a hole in the ground.
They’re deciding whether they kill him or not.
He says, “Oh, let’s not kill him.
He is our brother after all.
Let’s sell him
instead.” This
isn’t a lighthearted text,
but there’s almost a kind of humorous aspect to the
way this is told.
It is almost so callous that
you smile at the way that the author tells a story.
One thing to point out here,
you see that they took the coat off of him.
That may seem like a
small detail, but hold on to it because that detail is actually going to come up at other
pivotal moments in Joseph’s life.
The removal of clothing signifies a substantial change in his life.
So here,
the removal of this robe signifies the removal of his favor towards his father.
He’s being separated from his father’s gracious choice and actions,
and he’s being now sold into a power
beyond his own.
That may seem insignificant,
but that’s a theme that we’re going to see in future
points of the story,
so just hold on to that.
Yeah, that’s a really good insight.
Early next week, you’ll see another deceit being fostered upon Joseph that involves having someone take his coat.
So yeah,
be on the lookout for that.
So when Reuben returned, 29,
when Reuben returned to the
saw Joseph was not in the pit,
he tore his clothes.
He returned to his brothers and said,
“The boy is gone.
Where can I turn?” Then they took Joseph’s robe,
slaughtered a goat, dipped the robe in blood.
They had the long road with sleeves taken to their father,
and they said, “We found this.
See whether you think it is your son’s or not.” He recognized it and said,
“It is my son’s robe.
A wild animal has devoured him.” Joseph is without a doubt torn to pieces.
Then Jacob tore his garments,
put on sackcloth,
mourned for his son for many days.
All his sons and all his daughters sought to comfort him,
but he refused to be comforted.
Said, “No, I will go down to Sheol to my son in mourning.” Thus,
his father bewailed him.
Meanwhile, the Midianites sold him in Egypt to Potiphar,
one of Pharaoh’s officials,
the captain of the guard.
So again,
you know this story.
Some of this is a transition story,
how Joseph ends up in Egypt
and so that the story can move on to what happens there.
But here we have this profound moment of
grief as these brothers deceive their father,
a theme we’ve seen before,
deceiving your father.
Here they do that saying that they found the robe.
They even, you know, they go so far as to say,
“See if you think it’s his robe.
We found this bloody robe.
We’re not sure.
You take a look at
it.” And then Jacob
is so distraught that he refuses to be comforted.
Interesting, all his sons and all his daughters.
We’ve only had one daughter mentioned,
but there might be or must be others.
And he says, “No, I shall go down to Sheol,” in other words, to death,
“mourning.” I will grieve
this for the rest of my life,
which is certainly true for
someone that has lost a child,
but it is also for Jacob a sign,
a way of saying,
“There is no comfort.
There is no end to this grief.
This sadness is my new reality.”
Clint, there’s a kind of difficult precision of a text like this,
because if you remember,
it was Jacob himself,
who with the help of his mother,
used clothing and animal skins to trick his father
into getting the blessing.
There was a kind of
blatant in-your-face deception that he was key to.
Yeah, right, exactly.
And so now,
looking down to the next generation,
here we have that very same
kind of trick.
I mean, it’s not the same in exact form,
but we have the deception happening.
These sons are making up this story.
Really,
are they even trying that hard?
Could it be your son’s robe,
as if they hadn’t seen it and been jealous of it?
So the reality is here,
we have this moment
in which the next generation is passing on this same kind of deceptive practice.
The question is,
what tributary that leads down.
In Jacob’s case, or now Israel’s case,
it led to a moment where he
went to another land,
where things went well for him there.
And when he returned,
and we had that
whole climactic scene with his brother Esau,
he returned as someone who had been blessed.
The question that will now hang over the text from here on out is,
what do you do,
or what happens to Joseph,
who’s now a slave?
That’s certainly not the kind of position that Jacob was ever in.
And the fact that he’s a slave in a notable,
very powerful Egyptians house,
also kind of teases
that the story ahead has some very substantial,
influential kind of capabilities in it.
But up to this point, as readers,
if we didn’t know the end,
what we know is that Joseph is in a whole lot of mess,
and Israel has now got a whole lot of comeuppance that is very similar to the kind of
thing that had happened in his own youth.
And the text doesn’t moralize it,
doesn’t say it’s good or
he is now on the receiving end of what he gave his own father,
of deceiving him, of
being deceived.
Michael,
you have your electronic Bible.
See what it tells you about this word
“bewailed.” See, I’m curious about that.
And while you check on that,
if you don’t mind,
I will say, we’ll see this tomorrow,
we’ll look at another story.
But it’s fascinating
that following this story,
the Bible gives us a chapter that doesn’t mention Joseph.
We’re going to have to wait until Monday,
or in the text,
we’ll have to wait until the 39th chapter
to get to this Joseph story,
which is the Bible’s way of sort of hanging it out there
and making us wonder what happened to him.
This change of direction as we just go to a random story,
a completely different set of characters,
not a completely different,
we’ll know who they are.
But
it’s a change of pace that the effect of which is to leave us thinking, “Well,
what happens to Joseph in Egypt?
Are we going to go back to that?” Which we will,
but not until the next
story is told, the next chapter is told,
which is an interesting and I think a very
climactic way to tell the story.
It sort of prolongs the natural information that we want
and makes us hang in there to get it.
Yeah, so here, I’ll throw this up for you,
Clint.
Not sure if this will be big enough that
you can see, but the glossing is weep,
is what they gloss it as here.
And call is the Hebrew word.
So cried out or loud, loud,
mourning,
like that kind of sobbing type.
Yeah, and I don’t think that this idea here that we saw,
I’m going to keep this up here,
mourn for his son many days in verse 34.
I don’t think that is in any way a
symbolic or metaphoric kind of term.
I think we’re supposed to know and see in this man’s reaction that the
death of this son has particular significance.
Now, the text doesn’t, I’m making this up,
the text doesn’t say that if Reuben had died,
that Israel wouldn’t have grieved.
It doesn’t, and I’m not sure that it would mean that,
but- – We get close to that later in the story.
Yeah, that fair.
Yeah, essentially,
a version of that gets said.
But I mean, here,
we have seen characters die,
and this particular text is going out of its way to point out the
extent of mourning, such that all of the sons and daughters are trying to do the consoling.
It’s not working.
The idea of,
I’m going to grieve until Sheol,
till the end, till the moment in which I cease to exist.
Clearly,
what’s at play here is a kind of destructive
moment that Israel is unable to process.
And that is partly,
possibly, why Reuben knows it’s such an
important thing to avoid,
why it may have great gain for him.
I mean, that’s a very negative
reading of Reuben, possibly.
But if he can save his father this grief,
I think he rightly
intuited that it may have profited him in some meaningful way.
Yeah, I think you have to be a little bit careful poking around behind the scenes
in the Bible,
treating it like it was some kind of television drama.
But imagine the place,
the situation these brothers are in,
that they may go from,
“We have to tell him the truth,” to,
“We can’t tell him the truth.” As he mourns,
as they see him day after day,
as that mourning period is prolonged,
as he refuses to be comforted,
they all know something that he doesn’t know.
And they have to choose whether to keep that to themselves.
I mean, that sort of secrecy,
that sort of deception,
that sort of sinfulness,
the Bible doesn’t…
It’s just not interested in
the drama of that, per se.
But when you stop and think about what’s happening in this text,
this is ugly,
messy,
and painful.
This is wrong at many levels.
And remembering that, I think,
may soften our reaction to some of the story later.
And we’ll point out when we think that may be true.
Yeah, that’s 100% accurate.
My last note here is just to say,
this is why you don’t turn to
Genesis when you’re doing family counseling,
when you’re trying to talk about parenting,
and you’re trying to talk about the way in which we try to live out the faith in our closest relationships.
Genesis is not a primer on the way in which we practice vulnerability and honesty,
and we speak to one another in kindness,
right?
The characters here are so
enfolded in their own deep levels of deception,
self-advancement, their own kind of generational
sins that get passed from one to the other.
It’s not a soap opera.
It is remarkable that the
blessing continues.
It’s remarkable that this is somehow transmitting from one generation to the
next God’s willful and committed,
faithful determination to keep the thing going on.
It’s clear that the humans are not doing much to help it.
God is the one who’s bearing the brunt
of this, and we don’t hear a whole lot of judgmentalism from the text itself about what
these humans should have been doing or what these characters should have been doing,
but what we do know is that they would not be where they are if it’s not for the God who
stands behind them, because this is an unsustainable model as you look forward.
Yeah,
the Bible assumes that for God to be active in the lives of humans,
it will be in
the lives of broken and sinful reality of people.
That’s all the Bible knows.
The Bible
isn’t shocked by human behavior.
In fact,
it sort of assumes it won’t be good.
And so it surprises
us to see some of these stories,
but I think the Scripture just says, “Well,
yeah, this is how people act sometimes,
and yet God is in the midst of working with them and through them,
even in spite of their brokenness.” And that will be,
again, not to keep saying this,
but that will be, I think,
particularly poignant later on,
and we’ll have a significant conversation
about it near the end of the book.
For anyone who may be broken,
that is good news.
It is very good news.
We’ll see you tomorrow, friends.