Joseph sold by his brothers: favoritism, dreams and the pit

Genesis 37 opens the last major section of Genesis, which begins with the words 'This is the account of Jacob' (verse 2). The heading, the same word 'generations' (toledot) that structures the whole book, introduces the story of what grew from Jacob, and the story it tells is mostly about Joseph. Jewish and Christian tradition ascribes the book to Moses. Critical scholars see the Joseph story as interwoven from two strands, in which Reuben is the rescuer in one and Judah in the other, and the traders are Ishmaelites in one and Midianites in the other; others read the tension as the style of a single storyteller. The events are usually set in the Middle Bronze Age, around the time of the patriarchs in the early second millennium BC, with Egyptian details (an officer of Pharaoh, a captain of the guard) that fit various periods.

The first hearers were Israel, by the traditional view in the wilderness or at the edge of the land, and by the critical view later. For them, the question was how the people of the twelve tribes had come to be in Egypt, and why their ancestors had gone there. The story answers with a family quarrel. Jacob is now living in the land of Canaan, where he has settled after a life of trouble. He has twelve sons by four women, the children of Leah and Rachel and their servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Rachel has died (35:19), and Joseph and Benjamin are her sons.

The cultural setting is a semi-nomadic household of shepherds. The brothers are pasturing their father's flocks near Shechem and then Dothan, in the hill country. Trade caravans bearing spices, balm and myrrh from Gilead to Egypt were a feature of the age. Slavery was a normal part of that world, and the price of a young male slave, twenty shekels of silver, is consistent with the valuation in Leviticus 27:5.

This is Hebrew narrative, and the plot turns on small details. The reader should watch the objects (the robe, the pit, the silver, the blood) and the verbs of seeing and recognising. The narrator is restrained and almost never states a moral. God acts in the narrative's background, not in the foreground: God is not named as speaking, and there is no angel or voice. Yet the dreams point beyond the brothers' control, and the later chapters will make the hidden hand explicit (45:5-8; 50:20). This restraint is a deliberate teaching technique. The first audience would see that God's purpose works through human sin without cancelling its guilt.

Two literary patterns help. The story echoes Jacob's own life. Jacob deceived his blind father with the skins of goats (27:16) and is now deceived by his sons with the blood of a goat. The verb 'recognise' (haker) in verse 32, where the brothers ask Jacob to examine the robe, appears again in 38:25, where Tamar asks Judah to recognise the signet and staff. Deceit comes back on the deceiver. Second, the story has two dreams and two proposals to spare Joseph: Reuben, the firstborn, plans a secret rescue, and Judah makes the practical suggestion to sell him.

The rule for the Joseph story is to read the dreams as the text presents them: as dreams that come true (42:6; 43:26; 44:14; 50:18). They are not proud boasting invented by Joseph, though the narrator does not hide that Joseph's telling of them is tactless. The cause of the hatred is partly Jacob's open favoritism and partly the dreams.

Verses 1–4

Joseph is seventeen. He brings his father a bad report about his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Israel (Jacob) loves Joseph more than all his sons, because he was born in his old age, and makes him a robe. The Hebrew phrase (ketonet passim) is uncertain. Many translations say 'of many colors', following the Greek translation; others render it a long robe with sleeves. Either way it marked a favored status. His brothers hate him and 'could not speak a kind word' to him. The favoritism has a history: Isaac and Rebekah had each a favorite (25:28), and Jacob's own preference of Rachel over Leah had shaped the household.

Verses 5–11

Joseph has two dreams. In the first, the brothers' sheaves bow to his. In the second, the sun, moon and eleven stars bow to him. His brothers say, 'Do you intend to reign over us?' and hate him more. Jacob rebukes him, yet 'kept in mind what he had said'. The second dream includes the father, and in verse 10 Jacob interprets the moon as Joseph's mother, though Rachel is dead (35:19), so the mother figure may be Leah, or the image may be loosely used. The dreams give no instruction and no explanation of how they will come true.

Verses 12–17

Jacob sends Joseph to see how his brothers and the flocks are. Joseph's reply, 'I am ready', is a note of obedience that makes the following events harder. Shechem is the place where the family earlier suffered disaster (chapter 34) and where the brothers had acted violently. A man finds Joseph wandering and directs him to Dothan. The detail of the man looks small, but without him the story could not go on.

Verses 18–24

The brothers see him from a distance and plot to kill him: 'Here comes that dreamer!' (literally, the master of dreams). The plan to kill a brother recalls Cain (4:8). Reuben tries to save him by suggesting the pit and plans to return him to his father. They strip Joseph of his robe and throw him into an empty pit.

Verses 25–28

As they eat a meal, they see a caravan of Ishmaelites from Gilead. Judah proposes to sell Joseph rather than kill him: 'What profit will we gain if we kill our brother?' The reasoning is practical and cold, though it does spare Joseph's life. He is sold to the traders for twenty shekels of silver. The text calls the traders Ishmaelites and Midianites, which are probably overlapping names for caravan people (compare Judges 8:22-24).

Verses 29–35

Reuben returns and tears his clothes. The brothers dip Joseph's robe in the blood of a goat and send it to Jacob with the cold question, 'Examine it to see whether it is your son's robe or not.' They do not say 'our brother's'. Jacob concludes that a wild animal has killed Joseph, and mourns. He refuses comfort and says he will go down to Sheol mourning. This is the first use of the word Sheol in the Bible, in its sense of the realm of the dead.

Verse 36

The Midianites sell Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard. The scene closes with Joseph in a foreign land, a slave. The next chapter turns to Judah, and the Joseph story resumes in chapter 39.

The chapter's main teaching is about providence hidden within human sin. In chapter 37 God is not named as acting, and the brothers act from envy and cruelty. The story makes clear that their sin is real and their guilt is not excused. Yet the whole Joseph story will show that God was at work in it, so that, as Joseph says later, God meant it for good (50:20). The Bible does not explain how both are true; it asserts both. Psalm 105:16-22 reflects on the same events as God's sending of Joseph ahead of Israel.

The chapter also teaches about the effects of favoritism and sin in families. Jacob's open preference for one son, the parents' own history of favoritism, and the brothers' envy show how sin spreads through generations. The brothers' deceit of Jacob with blood is a punishment fitting Jacob's own earlier deceit. The Bible does not hide the flaws of the people through whom God works.

It also keeps alive the promise. The twelve sons are the future twelve tribes, and the preservation of the family is bound up with the promise to Abraham (12:2-3; 15:13-14). The descent to Egypt begins the long sojourn that Genesis 15:13 foretold. The sale of Joseph is thus the first step toward the Exodus.

Joseph is a type of Christ, and the New Testament shows the pattern. Stephen, in Acts 7:9-10, tells how the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt, but God was with him. He uses it as part of the long history of Israel rejecting the deliverers God sent, ending with Jesus (Acts 7:51-52). Joseph is the beloved son of his father, sent to his brothers, hated without cause, plotted against and handed over for silver. These are the shape of Jesus' story: sent by the Father to his own people, who did not receive him (John 1:11; 7:5), hated without cause (John 15:25), betrayed for silver (Matthew 26:14-16).

The words of the brothers, 'Come now, let us kill him', are echoed in Jesus' parable of the tenants, where the tenants say of the owner's son, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him' (Matthew 21:38). The Greek of the parable matches the Greek translation of Genesis 37:20, so the echo is widely recognised. It is not stated by Jesus as a quotation, so it is best called an echo. That Judah proposes the sale, and that Judas is the Greek form of the same name, is a verbal coincidence, not a link the New Testament draws.

The type has limits. Joseph's early behaviour was not perfect, and Jesus' was. Jesus died, and Joseph was only presumed dead. Some Jewish tradition speaks of a slain Messiah ben Joseph (Talmud, Sukkah 52a), distinct from Messiah ben David, which shows that Joseph was also read as a figure pointing ahead. The full pattern, of rejection followed by exaltation and the revealing of the one rejected to his brothers, comes in chapter 45.