What lies behind the kind of violence we see in this passage, in which Joseph’s own brothers sell him into enslavement? What motivates and unites these men as they make terrible and terrifying decisions against a person they understand to be “our brother, our own flesh”? I wonder if these realities sometimes feel far from our own. We likely don’t deny that things like this happen in our world—but we might think that we ourselves would never be a part of it. Perhaps Joseph’s story invites us to see things differently, to see ourselves differently, to be challenged and changed.
Many of us may read these texts and immediately relate to Joseph. We’ve often been trained to read in this way. We might walk away with the moral: God has a plan, even when you can’t see it yet. Or, You will prevail against those who want to harm you. Just trust God and be faithful. Or, Don’t let anyone discourage you from pursuing the dreams God has given you.
Read our latest issue or browse back issues.
And these might all be good takeaways. But they all center Joseph.
Whereas in large portions of our text, the subject of the story is not actually Joseph. It’s his brothers. The brothers—sometimes operating as a group; sometimes, in the case of Reuben and then Judah, speaking as individuals—are the ones who think, discuss, feel, act. Joseph fades to the background, the object of their scheming rather than a main character with agency in his own story.
We might notice this and wonder: What’s going on with the brothers? How do we get from sibling rivalry to a murder plot? What drives them to take actions of physical harm, including forcibly stripping Joseph of his robe and throwing him into the bottom of a well, and then selling him into enslavement? And are there any ways we might see ourselves in these brothers, if we’re honest, brutal and unconscionable though their actions are?
Our story offers a few reasons Joseph’s brothers hate him so much. Joseph once “brought a bad report”—a Hebrew phrase that can imply slander or defamation—about them to their father. Moreover, Joseph has something his brothers desperately want but don’t imagine they’ll ever have: the exceptional affection of their father. On top of all this, Joseph is not exactly the model of sensitivity in sharing his ambitious dreams with them (Gen. 37:5–11). As Wilda Gafney puts it, “Joseph was the victim of bullying. And, he was also a little snot.”
I wonder if we might relate to something in Joseph’s brothers’ jealousy. We might know the feeling of seeing someone else achieve some measure of success, favor, or relational closeness that we desperately want. We might feel like there is not enough to go around. Our reactions turn bitter and negative, our responses resentful rather than supportive. Comparison robs us of the ability to join another person in their joy.
At times we, like the brothers, might hear about someone else’s dreams and find them obnoxious, audacious, or even threatening. Gafney writes, “Dreams and their dreamers can be dangerous. Especially to entrenched realities.” If we find ourselves among those who benefit from the current social order, those who dream of a different kind of world might make us feel uneasy. Yet it is exactly these disruptors whose voices, words, perspectives, hopes, and thoughtful dissent we need to hear and grapple with.
Rather than shutting these voices out—doing harm by ignoring, demeaning, or trying to silence them, as Joseph’s brothers do to him—we might choose to listen, to seek understanding. We might stay open to being changed by what we hear. We might choose a different path from the one Joseph’s brothers choose. We might walk a different way—not only avoiding violence but actively building peace, understanding, communication, and care.
We might learn to honor God’s image in one another, even and perhaps especially when we find ourselves tempted toward jealousy, competition, or a scarcity mindset that can’t quite imagine there is enough for us all. We might learn to live, as Desmond Tutu writes, as if “we are all of equal worth, born equal in dignity and born free, and for this reason deserving of respect whatever our external circumstances.”
Joseph’s brothers can’t or won’t see Joseph’s intrinsic worth. But Joseph deserves respect, freedom, the chance to live his life. As does each person in our world today. Placing ourselves in the shoes of Joseph’s brothers—considering how we might feel, what we might be tempted to do, what we might choose to do instead—might help us confront our own jealousy, competitiveness, or resentments and to seek transformation, to see ways of being together that make it possible for everyone to have enough.
