Genesis 42:1-26

Hey, y’all, thanks for being with us on this Monday, Valentine’s Day,
the middle of February
as we continue to move through Genesis today,
moving into chapter 42 as we draw closer to
the end of the story,
and as we find it,
Joseph, just to recap from last week,
very empowered in Egypt,
settled,
married,
children,
doing very well,
second behind only the Pharaoh,
a key player in Egypt,
a man who was able to engineer their success in a time of hardship,
a time of famine.
Essentially, everything is going well.
And it’s interesting that in life as in the
Bible, that’s typically where stories turn.
And that’s the case here,
as now the famine has
affected other regions, including the place where Joseph’s father Jacob and his brothers still live.
And so now in a very unexpected,
not unexpected to us,
I suppose, because we know the story,
but in a very strange turn,
their paths will once again cross in a way that I doubt any of them
could have ever foreseen.
And so we pick up that part of the story as we move into chapter 42.
“When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt,
he said to his sons,
‘Why do you keep
looking at one another?’
He said, ‘I’ve heard there is grain in Egypt.
Go down and buy grain
for us there, that we may live and not die.’
So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt.
Jacob didn’t send Joseph’s brother Benjamin with his brothers,
for he feared that
harm might come to him.
Thus the sons of Israel were among the other people who came to buy grain,
for the famine had reached the land of Canaan.”
Now Joseph was governor of the land,
it was he who sold all the people,
sold to all the people of the land,
and Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their face to the ground.
When Joseph saw his brothers,
he recognized them,
but he treated them like strangers,
speaking harshly to them.
“Where do you come from?” he said.
They answered from the land of Canaan to buy food.
Although Joseph had recognized his brothers,
they did not recognize him.
Joseph also remembered the dreams that he had dreamt about them,
and he said to them,
“You are spies.
You’ve come to see the nakedness of the land.”
And they said, “No, my Lord, your servants have come to buy food.
We’re all sons of one man.
We are honest men.
Your servants have never been spies.”
But he said,
“No, you’ve come to see the nakedness of the land.” And they
said, “We are your servants.
Twelve brothers,
the sons of a man in the land of Canaan, the youngest, however,
is now with our father,
and one is no more.”
But Joseph said to them,
“It’s just as I’ve said to you,
you are spies.
Here is how you will be tested.
As Pharaoh lives, you shall not leave
this place unless your younger brother comes here.
Let one of you go and bring your brother,
while the rest of you remain in prison,
in order that your words may be tested.
Whether there is truth in you or else,
as the Pharaoh lives,
surely you are spies.”
And he put them all together in
prison for three days.
So,
it’s interesting here.
The Bible doesn’t give us a lot in terms of motivation.
There is this profound moment.
It’s important, I think, for us, Michael, to read behind the words.
The Bible gives us the bones of the story.
But we’re going to find out in a little bit,
there is deep emotion here.
Joseph is profoundly affected by this experience.
He recognizes his brothers.
He sees men before him
that the last he saw of them years ago,
he looked up to them from the pit they had thrown him in.
He watched them as he was
carted off by the people they sold him to.
And there is deep pain,
there is deep sadness,
there is deep emotion in this story.
We don’t get it so much in this portion.
We also get no
indication of Joseph’s motives.
We’re not told why he does this,
but with his brothers in front of
him, he decides that he will flex a little bit and exercise some of the authority he has over them.
So, the story here has actually been setting us up for this since the very beginning.
Of course, we remember the two dreams that Joseph had in those dreams,
the second of which was the straw
that broke the camel’s back.
We had this idea that he would be bowed down to, and now
with the interesting interplay of the dreams that he’s interpreted up to this point,
of course, first the king’s servants,
then actually the pharaoh himself,
this is what leads to his ascendancy,
to his place of power and privilege far beyond his family.
And now where we discover Joseph is
in a position where that his own dream of years ago is now literally coming true.
We have here verse 9.
He remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them,
and then that is what instigates
this action that we see here,
where he is kind of getting after his siblings,
where he is taking
them to task and calling them spies.
It’s striking here because the text has already set us up from
the beginning that there would be a role reversal,
and here we see that role reversal now for the
first time.
We’re going to live here for a little while,
and in fact, things get a lot more complicated
before they get any more clear.
But you’re right, Clint.
The text is actually shockingly silent on motivation.
There’s no clear clue here as to why Joseph is doing this.
We can fill in the gaps
pretty easily, and in fact, I think interpreters sometimes make a mistake in doing that.
We think of it as an opportunity to manipulate,
to move the brothers to a particular end.
Maybe we even could read it as just a surprise and him sort of responding in the moment,
but however we want to
sort of fill in the background character Joseph,
it’s important to note the biblical text doesn’t
do that.
It doesn’t really lay out for us the case here,
and I think some of that’s because it doesn’t
matter.
It’s not germane to the story.
What does matter is that the dream fulfilling is now
happening right in front of us,
and we as readers know it.
We can see it.
The question is what’s
going to happen now.
Yeah, I think if you’ve been with us through most of Genesis,
you’ll know that the book of Genesis likes reversals.
It likes the underdog.
It likes kind of standing things on its
head, and we see that again here where the younger brother is in authority over the others.
He has risen up over them,
and to some extent,
that dream that began this narrative has come to pass.
They’ve bowed before him.
Now, they’re not done with that yet.
That’s still in the story,
but it is a moment
where Joseph has authority over his brothers.
Now,
he does exercise that authority to
manipulate them to some extent,
but he’s not violent to them.
He doesn’t have them
punished.
He doesn’t have them executed.
He could have done all of those things,
and yet he also doesn’t say,
“Hey,
don’t you recognize me?
Guess what?” You know,
so it’s not 100% at this point
clear what he is doing,
but he’s setting them up.
He seems to see a path
to get Benjamin to him,
and he seems to desire that he would have his younger brother, his full brother,
same mom, same dad,
his full brother in front of him,
and so he uses their words to test them, to bring that
about by saying,
“Okay, you’re telling me you have a brother still at home.
One of you, go get him.
That’s what I’m going to make you do,
and if you don’t do that,
then I know your spies and you’re
in trouble.” So, let me just finish the rest of this narrative,
just a few more verses here, starting with 18.
“On the third day Joseph said to them,
‘Do this and you will live,
for I fear God.
If you’re honest men,
let one of your brothers stay here while you are imprisoned.
The rest of you
shall go and carry grain for the famine of your households,
and bring your younger brother to me.
Thus your words will be verified and you shall not die.’ And they agreed to do so.
They said to one another, ‘Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother.
We saw his anguish
when he pleaded with us,
but we wouldn’t listen,
and that is why this anguish has come upon us.’
Then Reuben answered,
‘Didn’t I not tell you not to wrong the boy?
But you would not listen,
so now there comes a reckoning for his blood.’ They didn’t know that Joseph understood them,
since he spoke with them through an interpreter.
He turned away from them and wept,
and he returned and spoke to them.
And he picked out Simeon,
and had him bound before their eyes.
Joseph then gave orders to fill their bags with grain,
to return every man’s money to his sack,
and give them provisions for their journey.
And this was done for them.” So,
after this third day,
they’ve been waiting, they’ve been stewing, they’ve been wondering.
He says, “Okay,
here’s a plan.
I fear God.
I want to test you,
but we’ll do it this way.
I’ll give you your provisions.
I’ll send you with
food.
I’ll give you what you came for,
but one of you has to stay here until somebody brings the
younger brother back, and then I’ll let everyone go.” And again,
he chooses Simeon,
maybe on purpose.
You know, Simeon was not kind earlier in the story.
So, Joseph may not be above a little
specific dose of revenge here,
but he also doesn’t keep their money,
which is significant in the
context of the story.
And he sends them with enough to help their families,
help his father, help their own families.
And I don’t know,
Michael, he maybe couldn’t call it generous,
but he does make sure they’re cared for.
Right, and he weeps.
So,
clearly,
we don’t get a lot of this in Genesis.
Clearly, the text wants us to know that this is a very difficult,
emotional thing for him to see playing out.
I do think that it’s worth noting as we begin this part of Joseph’s story that Benjamin really
has now become a very important character in the story.
Of course, we know that he is Joseph’s actual blood brother,
and we know that the situation at home with Joseph’s family really
hasn’t changed that much.
There’s favorites.
There certainly was when Joseph was there,
and that continues to be the case,
so much so that Israel was unwilling to send him on this trip.
Of all of the brothers,
they get to go to Egypt not knowing exactly what will come when they
ask for provisions, but they get the privilege of knowing that their youngest brother gets to stay
at home where he’s safe.
So, in some ways, the family culture remains the same.
There’s still favoritism.
In this case, we are left with the idea that he’s the last remaining brother or son
left in his union with his wife,
so there’s a sense in which here he’s now become an important character.
Benjamin has, and so as he connects with Joseph in the story that’s going to move ahead,
Joseph actually uses that
younger brother as leverage to his point.
In other words, he says,
“If you want to prove to me you’re not spies,
you need to verify that that brother that you spoke
of actually exists.” And so here’s another way that this younger brother is being brought into
importance in the text.
In one case,
he shares a particular kind of connection and family relationship with Joseph.
Here also, Joseph is going to use him as leverage to get him to come
back to Egypt, and so it’s a fascinating sort of build-up in the text where Benjamin hasn’t received
a lot of language thus far.
He’s now clearly becoming important for the story to keep moving on.
And I do think we want to be careful not to
insert our own psychology into the text.
Psychologize?
I don’t know if that is an official
word.
But I
do think this is one of those texts that gives us a wonderful jumping-off place
to really try to envision and imagine what’s happening here.
Joseph,
who has excelled beyond any imaginable standard,
who sits in line only behind the Pharaoh,
who has piles of money and
success and prestige and honor,
looks upon the brokenness of his past,
and that wound is still there.
He listens to his brothers,
and as he hears them,
not aware that he can understand them,
tell his own story.
We shouldn’t have done that.
I told you not to do that.
We are being punished for his blood.
He returns there.
It overwhelms him.
He has moved to tears, as he both
probably simultaneously feels animosity,
maybe even hatred toward these brothers,
and
they are home.
They’re the first glimpse he’s had of the place that he wished that he would have been,
the place that he was taken from and forced to leave.
And it is a very powerful intersection
of what can only be dozens of deep feelings and emotions for Joseph.
And
as a rule,
the Bible doesn’t get bogged down in that kind of stuff,
but I do think this is a moment
where really a full range
of human experience, from very negative to positive,
is all on display.
And I think that makes this, in some ways,
a unique text.
One of the themes that’s been present throughout Joseph’s entire story is the question of consequence,
who’s responsible,
who’s at fault.
We’ve said before that the things that
have happened to Joseph,
generally we would expect,
as we’ve seen in Genesis elsewhere,
that when you do something wrong,
that you’re going to have a negative consequence from that action.
Here,
we don’t
really see that play out for him.
He’s not done anything wrong,
as it related to Potiphar’s wife.
He certainly didn’t deserve to be sold into slavery just
because he had a nice coat and because he was a little bit of a snitch.
So it’s been clear that
Joseph has gotten outcomes that aren’t necessarily connected to choices he’s made.
Here,
it’s impossible to not notice that his brothers go to jail for three days,
the same place that Joseph was for more than a year.
It’s interesting how there’s a sense
in which they directly attribute,
“We’re in this spot because of what we did to our youngest
brother.” The roles have somewhat reversed here.
The text has made it clear that the
consequence isn’t related to Joseph in particular, but rather to
Joseph’s family.
That is a turn from what we’ve seen elsewhere in the book of Genesis.
I think, Clint, that’s what makes Joseph’s story so interesting for me,
if I’m going to be honest with you.
So many
of the tropes and so much of the ground we traveled thus far gets not reversed necessarily,
not thrown out, but it gets changed.
It’s shaped in different ways.
I find Joseph’s story really
interesting because of the different ways that we encounter some of the things we’ve already seen.
Yeah, and we don’t know the timeline exactly.
We’re not sure how long in Potiphar’s house,
how long in prison before the two men get there.
But even from what we know,
two years waiting in prison,
seven years of prosperity,
and some portion of years into a seven-year famine.
So at the very least,
we’re about 10 years in the future,
and Joseph’s brothers still expect a shoe to drop.
They still expect, they still live out of that,
if not guilt, at least awareness that what
they did was heinous.
And when this happens to them,
they attribute that to what they deserve
from that event.
And part of that’s the Bible’s way of anchoring this story as Joseph’s story,
but part of it is also,
I think, an insight into what it means to kind of live with
unrepented guilt,
and it certainly is taking its toll on them.
There’s more of that coming.
There’s a sense in which it’s the sins of the generations.
I mean, we’ve seen this
generation to generation.
Now, not this exact thing,
but we’ve certainly seen trickery families
turning on one another in fighting,
and it has consequences.
It has consequences for the one
who has sold the slavery.
It also has consequences clearly for those that remained.
And anyone who’s lived in a messy family context of any kind knows that that leaves deep wounds and burdens,
and it’s actually quite a spiritual task to not pass those on.
Of course, we’re all going to inflict harm on
others, not because we intend to,
but because sin is a reality of our condition.
But if you
have found yourself in a position where you live in that messy kind of circle,
then it takes a substantial amount of effort and intentionality and prayer and humility and courage
to trust God to lead you through and to be a stopping point for that instead of a channel for it.
Yeah, and I think with families,
as Joseph shows us,
rarely can there be deep anger without deep
pain underneath of it.
And so we will continue to explore some of those themes as we continue with this story tomorrow.
Hope you can be with us.
Thank you for being with us today.