This is week two’s message from the nine-week series “Joseph – What God Intended For Good” that focuses on the life of Joseph and his family as authored by Moses in Genesis.
The ‘back story’ for this series is that Joseph’s family and family history were far from perfect. Consider that there were four mothers in Joseph’s immediate family. His father, Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel (sisters) two concubines, Bilhad and Zilpah. In addition, Jacob loved Rachel more than he did Leah. Talk about a complicated family. And then there was the contentious relationship of Jacob and his brother Esau combined with the fact that their father, Isaac favored Esau and their mother, Rebekah favored Jacob. Going back even further, we find that this pattern of favoritism began with Isaac’s father, Abraham favoring him above his older brother, Ishmael.
Yet, through all this tangled family history, God had a plan for each of them just as he has a plan for each and every one of us.
Last week, we began the series by looking at Jacob’s family and the role that favoritism played in it with the focus on Joseph’s ornate coat and his two dreams. This week we will see how the jealously of Joseph’s brothers and their hatred of him played out.
12 “Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem, 13 and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.”
“Very well,” he replied.
14 So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron.
When Joseph arrived at Shechem, 15 a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?”
16 He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?”
17 “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’”
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. 18 But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
19 “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. 20 “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”
21 When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. 22 “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— 24 and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
25 As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.
26 Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? 27 Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
28 So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
29 When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. 30 He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”
31 Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. 32 They took the ornate robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”
33 He recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”
34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. 35 All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” So his father wept for him.
36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.
A few observations:
v.12 A distance of about 50 miles. From 20 miles south of Jerusalem to 30 miles north. Far enough, in any case, for Joseph to be beyond the range of his father’s protection. It would have taken him perhaps 4 or 5 days traveling on foot.
v.14 Jacob had reason, of course, to be concerned about his sons, for Shechem is where two years before they had made themselves odious to the Canaanites when they massacred the sons of Hamor. It is surprising that they returned there, but it was an area of rich pasture land. Clearly, Jacob, dull-witted in family matters as we have found him to be, was worried about dangers from without, not about the lack of peace and love within the family. But, the fact is, Joseph was safer in the hands of a Canaanite stranger than he would be in the hands of his own brothers.
v.17 That is, another 14 miles farther north and farther from Jacob and the prying eyes of family acquaintances. Dothan was in a valley also famous for its rich pasture.
v.18 They could recognize him at a distance because he was wearing the distinctive robe his father had given him (v. 23). It was probably a reminder of their hatred of the brash young man who had dreamed of his brothers bowing down to him. They hated that robe!
v.19 “Dreamer” was said sarcastically, no doubt. They would prove his dreams wrong by killing him. In fact, they were intending to kill the future, but you can’t kill the future when it is God’s plan! Remember, Esau planned to kill his brother Jacob as well.
v.20 The cisterns from ancient times were large pits hewn out of rock for the storage of water and found everywhere in Israel.
v.21 Reuben was Jacob’s first son and was supposed to be the leader among the brothers. However, after his sexual sin with Bilhad (Jacob’s concubine), he lost his place of spiritual leadership and influence other his brothers.
v.22 Reuben apparently showed up after the plot to kill Joseph had already been hatched. Whatever Reuben’s motive was in seeking to rescue Joseph, his plan was overtaken by events. He did not seem to be an effective leader, even though he was the eldest brother.
v.24 We are left to imagine what Joseph’s response to all of this must have been. But, later, in Genesis 42:21, when the brothers recollected the scene, they remembered how terrified he was as he pleaded for his life.
v.25 With their brother stripped and imprisoned in the cistern, they callously sat down to eat. That would have consumed some more time, as it happened. Now it happened that Dothan lay close to the main trade route through Palestine. These Ishmaelites will also be called Midianites in v.28.
v.27 Perhaps Judah really was bothered by the prospect of murdering his brother; but, in any case, he seized on a way both to soothe his conscience and turn a profit. For the first time, we see Judah as a leader in the family. His brothers listened to him in a way they had not listened to Reuben.
v.28 They had disposed of Joseph and his dreams, so they thought. 20 shekels was the standard price for a slave in those days.
v.30 Reuben apparently wasn’t present when the plot to sell Joseph into slavery was proposed by Judah. Perhaps he had been guarding the flock.
v.31 There is real irony here. For Jacob had deceived his father by taking his brother’s clothes and with the use of an animal.
v.35 Titanic hypocrisy. They were attempting to comfort their father in the death of his favorite son when they knew very well he wasn’t dead and that what had happened to him had been their own doing. But Jacob’s grief was so intense, he could not be comforted and continued to mourn long after the accepted period had concluded.
v.36 The narrator reminds us that while Jacob struggled to adjust to the tragedy, Joseph was beginning a new life in Egypt.
One of the great themes of this account from chapter 37 to the end of the book is the providence of God, His ordering of all events, down to the last detail, to ensure that his divine purpose comes to pass. And all through this history, we can see that divine hand, controlling, ruling, orchestrating events to ensure that we arrive safely at the happy end of the story in Genesis 50.
Everything is connected to everything else; even the smallest and seemingly unimportant details. But it is God who plans, who orders, and who makes those connections, precisely to ensure that everything turns out according to the counsel of his will. He sees, as we cannot, as we never could, the infinite complexity of connections between everything and everything else, stretching both backward and forward in time.
We have a particularly interesting and important illustration of that already here, at the very outset of the story, in what seems at first glance to be a very inconsequential detail, one we might easily pass over without notice. We find it in verse 15.
“When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, ‘What are you looking for?’”
Here too is the hidden hand of divine providence that is worth pondering. If Joseph hadn’t “wasted” his time looking for his brothers at Shechem – that is what Joseph must have thought, that he had “wasted” his time – but if Joseph hadn’t “wasted” that time in a fruitless search, he wouldn’t have reached his brothers in Dothan just when the Ishmaelite caravan was happening by, providing his brothers with an ideal way of disposing of him without killing him, and, unknowingly to them, sending him ahead of them to Egypt.
To get Joseph to Egypt, there was needed a means that would surface at the very moment his brothers were, in their murderous frenzy, ready to kill him, and that means was a caravan of Ishmaelite traders. But, had the traders’ caravan arrived too early or too late at the place where the brothers were, Joseph would either not yet have arrived or had already been killed. So it was that Joseph wandered for a time in the fields near Shechem looking for his brothers, so he thought, but, in fact, in the plan and purpose of God, he was killing time to ensure that he arrived at Dothan when the Ishmaelites did.
Concluding Remarks and Application
The brothers at the time could not see the divine hand; nor could Joseph. That is an important part of the lesson. We remain in the dark as God works out his plan. But now we can see it; we are intended to see it; because we read the story already knowing its outcome. And when the story is read that way, even what would seem to be the most inconsequential or the most baffling or the most discouraging development, proves to be the wisdom of God, a stitch in the tapestry of His sovereign will.
That is the providence of God as it works itself out in our daily life. In our daily life, there probably have been a number of times when we have found ourselves “wandering around” and “wasting time”, not realizing, not conscious of the fact that what seemed to be aimless, wasteful wandering in life was also God’s plan and purpose for us.
