Joseph in the Pit
Genesis 37:12-36
His brothers had gone to pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem.
Israel said to Joseph, “Your brothers, you know, are pasturing the flocks at Shechem. Get ready. I’m sending you to them.” “I’m ready,” Joseph replied.
Then Israel said to him, “Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are doing, and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he went to Shechem – Genesis 37:12-14.
Joseph’s story, as told in the Bible, is a beautiful illustration of how God’s purpose can be found in our pain. If we could understand that there is always a reason why God allows pain in our lives, we would be able to endure anything. Before we deal with that though, I want to give you a different perspective of Joseph’s story Let us approach it from his viewpoint: without the knowledge of the purpose God had for him.
Joseph was an ordinary person with an ordinary life. Long before the dreams, he had witnessed the death of his mother Rachel as a little boy and it made him even closer to his father. By the time he was seventeen, life was somewhat better. Somewhat I say, because although he was the favorite child of Jacob, his brothers did not get along with him. All of them were half-brothers and had grown up seeing their father show special affection to Joseph. They initially disliked him but soon that dislike turned to hatred.
Joseph felt more isolated every day; his brothers avoided him, whispered when they saw him and often ridiculed his honesty and integrity. He really did not do anything to warrant that treatment but he at least had the love and support of his father. Jacob knew that his sons did not like Joseph but had no idea just how much they detested him.
Having to live with ten elder brothers most of whom were hostile to him was not easy. He endured it but around this time he had the dreams. These dreams reaffirmed him. Jacob had already given his son a special coat that made him feel like a prince, and now God seemed to say, “I see how they treat you and I see how you try to do what is right; I will make you great. “ Of course his brothers only hated him more when he shared the dreams, but his father considered what he said.
Jacob is apparently oblivious to the hatred of the older brothers for Joseph when he sent Joseph to Shechem —or, if he is aware of the tension, he did not think that the older brothers would harm Joseph. Jacob would never knowingly send Joseph into a dangerous situation.
Joseph also appears as oblivious to the danger from his brothers.
Perhaps Jacob considers this to be a routine status check—it is also strange that he did not consider that the populace of Shechem may turn against his sons because of the incident which happened some time ago. This is related in chapter 34.
Let me repeat the incident here. Jacob passed through Shechem (the city) when he was fleeing Laban and was returning to Gerar/Beersheba. While there, Shechem (the ruler’s son) raped Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter. Shechem loved Dinah and wanted to marry her, and Shechem’s father, Hamor appealed to Jacob to allow Shechem and Dinah to marry. Jacob’s sons agreed to the marriage provided that “every male be circumcised.” Hamor and Shechem complied with that requirement, but Jacob’s sons had no intention of honoring their agreement. While the men of Shechem were still hurting from their circumcisions, Simeon and Levi killed all the men of Shechem and Jacob’s other sons joined Simeon and Levi in looting the city of Shechem “ (chapter 34). This was the background of the incident but it appears that the people had forgotten it by now.
Now Joseph came to Shechem but he did not find them there but was led by a man to a nearby location named Dothan where his brothers were shepherding the flock. It is indeed strange that this man was at the exact time and place to overhear the brothers saying “ Lets go to Dothan” - 37:15-17
The brothers were able to see him coming from afar and discussed how they could get their revenge on their brother. You can tell that they were still angry and were mulling over the dreams that Joseph had because they say to one another, “here comes that dreamer” (37:19). As you read Genesis 37:18-28 you see their conspiracy in real time. They initial desire was to kill him and cover it up as the work of a wild animal, but one brother desired to rescue him by convincing them to throw him in a pit and leave Joseph there.
“Reuben heard it, and wanted to deliver him out of their hand, and said, ‘Let’s not take his life'” (v. 21). Reuben is the oldest brother and is therefore responsible to Jacob for the welfare of his younger brothers—and also for their actions. It is Reuben who will have to break the news of Joseph’s death to Jacob. It is Reuben who will have to explain what happened. It is Reuben who will have to tell Jacob why none of the brothers could have saved Joseph. It is Reuben who will have to help Jacob make funeral plans. It is Reuben who will have to help Jacob through his grief. It is no wonder that Reuben balks when he learns of the plan to kill Joseph.
Reuben’s ploy might also have something to do with the guilt that he bears by virtue of sleeping with Bilhah, his father’s concubine—something of which his father is aware (35:22). Reuben might be trying to make up for his grievous sin—or to avoid sinking further in his father’s esteem
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We have no indication here that Reuben loves Joseph—or even that he hates Joseph less than the others. Nor do we have any indication that Reuben’s protest arises out of ethical concerns. As we will see in verse 22b, Reuben does intend to rescue Joseph, but we cannot know for sure whether Reuben cared about Joseph or was just trying to avoid the difficult position that he would find himself in if Joseph was killed.
“Reuben said to them, ‘Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him'” (v. 22a).
Reuben’s proposal is a halfway measure - “that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father” (v. 22b). Reuben’ proposal is devious. He has given his brothers the impression that he supports the idea of killing Joseph by leaving him to die, but his true purpose is to delay Joseph’s death so that he can rescue Joseph from the pit later and bring him home to Jacob.
Years later, when Joseph has risen to a position of power in Egypt, Reuben will speak to his brothers, unaware that Joseph can understand him:
‘Then they said to each other, “Obviously, we are being punished for what we did to our brother. We saw his deep distress when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen. That is why this trouble has come to us.”
But Reuben replied: “Didn’t I tell you not to harm the boy? But you wouldn’t listen. Now we must account for his blood! ”” (42:22-23).
To the best of our knowledge, Joseph did not know until that time of Reuben’s efforts on his behalf.
“and they took him, and threw him into the pit” (v. 24a). We aren’t told what kind of pit this is. If it is a cistern, cut into rock to gather water, it is bottle-shaped with a narrow neck. There is no way for Joseph to escape.
“The pit was empty. There was no water in it” (v. 24b). If this is a cistern, it would be usable (would contain water) only on a seasonal basis. The fact that the pit is dry is both good and bad news. The good news is that Joseph won’t drown. The bad news is that he will die of thirst after a few days—a truly miserable way to die.
The willingness of Joseph’s brothers to throw him in the pit rather than to kill him outright suggests that they think the pit to be escape-proof.
With their brother stripped and imprisoned in the cistern, they callously sat down to eat. That would have consumed some more time. “They sat down to eat bread” (v. 25a). This small detail reveals their hate and cold-bloodedness. Most people, having participated in an act that would result in another person’s death, would be sufficiently disturbed that they would have little appetite for food. These men are completely unaffected by the impending death of their brother. And not only did they sit down to eat they did not care about the hunger of their brother in the pit.
We cannot possibly imagine how God could build His chosen people from these brothers, later forgiven by Joseph. They did not understand that God is a God of grace. He forgives the guilty and changes them
Now it happened that Dothan lay close to the main trade route through Palestine.
“and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from Gilead” (v. 25b). Gilead is a region to the east of the Jordan River and to the south of what will later be known as the Sea of Galilee. Gilead is known for plants from which valuable incense and medicines are made. The caravan is traveling from Gilead to Egypt. There is a textual problem here. The people of the caravan are called Ishmaelites here and in verse 27. Ishmaelites are also mentioned in verse 28, as are Midianites. They are called Midianites again in verse 36.
Ishmael, of course, was Abraham’s son by Hagar, Sarah’s maid (chapter 16). Midian was Abraham’s son by Keturah (25:1-6).
We find that Judges 8:22-28 also intermixes Ishmaelites and Midianites, so it is possible that these are interchangeable words.
“with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt” (v. 25c). Gum, balm, and resin are materials that would be associated with Gilead. They are products of various plants, and are valuable as incense or medicine.
Reuben was not present with his brothers when Ishmaelites were on the way and “Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?” (v. 26). When Reuben persuaded his brothers to throw Joseph into a pit instead of killing him outright, he had an ulterior motive—to rescue Joseph so that he could return him to Jacob. It is possible that Judah has a different motive—to sell Joseph into captivity so that he won’t die in the pit. The narrative mentions only the prospect of profit as Judah’s motive.
“‘Come, and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh and blood.’ His brothers listened to him” (v. 27). The two parts of Judah’s proposal reveal the tension under which the brothers are operating. On the one hand, selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites is engaging in slave trade. On the other hand, selling Joseph into slavery is less terrible than leaving him to die in the pit. The fact that he is “our brother, our flesh” heightens the tension.
“ and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. They brought Joseph into Egypt” (v. 28). Once again, we are presented with the intermixing of Ishmaelites and Midianites. Whoever they are, they pay twenty pieces of silver for Joseph—the going price for a slave in that time and place.
It is worthy of note that Reuben, who proposed throwing Joseph into the pit so he (Reuben) could save Joseph, was not present when the other brothers sold Joseph into slavery. Once again, he is faced with the prospect of breaking the bad news to his father and comforting his father while all the time deceiving his father. However, having no good alternatives, the brothers revert to the earlier that a wild animal has killed Joseph. But they did not directly tell Jacob that Joseph is dead. Only they presented the blood stained coat and asked Jacob to identify it. Jacob seeing the blood immediately assumed that Joseph was torn to pieces by wild animals 37:33.
The last verse, which tells of the Midianites selling Joseph to Potiphar, “an officer of Pharaoh’s, the captain of the guard,” sets the stage for the next act of this lengthy drama.
For narrative purposes, it may sound as if all of Joseph’s brothers conspired against him (37:19). But that the narrator explicitly excludes Reuben, who is not part of the conversation but overhears it. (37:21). Reuben was not with these brothers all the time (37:29-30). Some of the brothers had probably been watching flocks that were spread out.
Ironically, the hostile brothers’ plan to throw Joseph into a pit and then “see what will become of his dreams” (37:20) ultimately serves God’s plan to bring fulfillment to those very dreams (50:20).
To get Joseph to Egypt, there was needed a means that would surface at the very moment his brothers were ready to kill him. 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 have already been killed. So it was that Joseph wandered for a time in the fields near Shechem looking for his brothers, but, in fact, in the plan and purpose of God, God ensured that he arrived at Dothan when the Ishmaelites did.
Do you see it ? Joseph never would have been enslaved in Egypt; he never would have faced the temptation posed by Potiphar’s wife; he never would have been thrown in prison and so would never have met Pharaoh’s baker and the cupbearer; he never would have had the opportunity to interpret Pharaoh’s dream and as a result rise to the highest position in the Egyptian government save that of Pharaoh himself; he never would have rescued the Egyptians from famine and so gained virtually unquestioned authority in the kingdom; and, consequently, he never would have been in a position both to save his family from starvation and, more important still, save them from the sins that had overspread their life as sons and brothers. Without this history there never would have been an exodus from Egypt, the defining redemptive act of Israel’s history and the precursor of the atonement of the Son of God. None of this would have happened, could have happened, if Joseph had gone straight to Dothan and hadn’t lost time looking for his brothers near Shechem, and if he hadn’t happened upon that stranger when he did; a man who knew where the brothers could be found because he happened to have overhead them talking! He happened to be in the exact place to have heard them say “Let us go to Dothan “ Coincidence or the providence of God ?
This is the providence of God as it works itself out in the daily life of Joseph.
The whole biblical doctrine of divine providence, of God’s absolute control of everything so as to bring everything to pass according to His will, is slipping away from the consciousness of the church in our day. The Bible teaches you that your ordinary daily life – every moment of it – is supercharged with significance, because every piece of it is falling through the fingers of your Heavenly Father.
What is providence of God? Here's a theological definition: Providence is the means by which God directs all things — both animate and inanimate, seen and unseen, good and evil — toward a worthy purpose, which means His will must finally prevail. Or as the psalmist said, “ The LORD has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all. “ (Psalm 103:19). In Ephesians 1:11 Paul tells us that God " …. works out everything in agreement with the decision of His will, " Our God is running the universe today, friends, even though there are some who think that it has slipped out from under Him.
God is not doing isolated things in the world, or doing things that are utterly disconnected from one another. He is working out a marvelous unified pattern of His gracious purposes, and when very often we have only one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and are tempted to cry out to Him, 'O God, what are You doing?!'
Could Joseph ever have dreamt that it was absolutely essential, if he were going to be prime minister of Egypt, and in some sense the savior of the ancient Near East- could he ever have imagined that it was necessary for him to be betrayed by his brothers, and sold into slavery? That Potiphar's wife should need to seek to seduce him, so that he would find himself in prison; that he should be left there over a period of two years before he would be raised up to become the prime minister? He never could have imagined it! But yet, as he looks back on the whole of his life, he sees that one of God's workings in his life has led to another, and led to another, and there has been a whole pattern of God's purpose. God, who in His wisdom has seen the end from the beginning; God, who has seen the whole picture and therefore in every detail of His working, has been working together for Joseph's good, and for the blessing as Joseph himself says, of many others.
You see, sometimes we demand God to know what His will is, when the more important question in a sense is, what His timing is. Not just what His will is, but what His timing is. And this is why the Bible is full of the exhortation to “wait on the Lord” . And it's clear one of the great lessons that Joseph himself was learning in those days was precisely that: “to wait on the Lord in the confidence that He knows the end from the beginning”. He knows His timing. And He can be absolutely trusted.
Also He's always working in a variety of people, and this is a great and important lesson for me to learn, because my instinct is to say, 'O God, what are You doing in my life?' when, if I could hear Him, He would say, 'Let's hear less about your life. Let's see you committing your life to Me in order that your life may be employed for the blessing and benefit of the lives of others'
And you see that marvelously here in the story of Joseph, how all that happened to him, for example, was one of the ways in which God was wanting to work in the life of his father Jacob. The whole situation of Joseph's life goes back to Jacob making the same, mistake his own father had made, of favoritism between the children, and how like his own father he himself was deceived when the boys brought the multicolored long-sleeved coat back. It was Jacob himself who was deceived! Joseph was not dead, and the brothers in that instance didn't say he ways dead. They simply sent the cloak back, and he was deceived by the evidence of his hands. And in an amazing way [he] had to be willing to lose Benjamin in order to be restored to integrity. And in this amazing way God takes away for a season his son Joseph, in order that as He works in His mysterious ways He brings together not only Joseph with his father, but his father with his brothers, and together they are most marvelously reconciled together.
And then, of course there are the brothers. The opening verses of the Joseph narrative tell us about their jealousy and hatred towards him, and some of it you might think Joseph richly deserved all this hatred. But they had twisted hearts, these boys, and great hatred. And of course, that hatred of the brothers got out of control, and their hatred became a mercenary selling of their brother, and that led to lies and to deceit,. And then later led to the acknowledgment of their sin and confession and receiving forgiveness – 50 : 17-18.
And then there is Joseph– Joseph, to whom God gives dreams of greatness. It is one of the great mysteries to me. I can't understand it I that in the life of Joseph, and in the lives of most others too, that God sometimes seems to give us things that we are unable to cope with. Instead of keeping it to himself, instead of keeping it to himself, he blurts out his dreams to all hs family . But God begins to grind down his folly until even a pagan king recognizes that in this young man, now about 30 years old, there is the wisdom of the gods. And you see in the way in which he handles his brothers that God has done something quite amazing in changing this young man's folly into a maturity of witness that is really quite amazing. 50:16-21.
And so this is for Joseph, and for us too , a summons to bow ourselves before His sovereign will and say, 'Use me when and where and how You will.' So God is always working together a variety of circumstances and always working simultaneously in a variety of people,
God was working in the life of Jacob, to bring him joy and restoration; in the lives of the brothers, to bring them grace in their reconciliation with Joseph; and in the life of Joseph–notice this–in the life of Joseph, not only to bring him to the right place at the right time, but to bring him to the right place at the right time as the right man to bring about the change in his father and his brothers. Yes as the right man.
And as the story ends with Joseph as the prime minister of Egypt, the amazing thing that you see in the way in which he takes the dream that Pharaoh has and begins to meditate on it, is that this boy who had been overeager to say to his brothers and to his parents, 'God is going to do something great in my life, and you'll all come and bow down before me' this boy who was so radically impatient he couldn't keep silent about his dreams , is now a man who has the wisdom to develop a seven-year plan, and to be patient and to be careful, and to be self-disciplined in a marvelous way in his leadership. And this young man who strutted the privileges that God was intimating he would receive, God has marvelously worked , not only in the way he shows grace to his brothers, but in the way in which he says to them in very telling words, ' Am I in the place of God. My dear brothers, You did it for evil but God turned it to good. “ 50: 16-21
And I suppose of all the lessons that God teaches us in providence that is we are not sovereign. He is teaching us that we are not the creator. He is teaching us that we do not have the wisdom to plan the best things in the best way for our own lives, but He alone is God. And He alone, at the end of the day, is to be absolutely trusted. And all of this in Joseph's life was shaped by pain. Yes shaped by pain, hatred from his brothers, dumped into a empty cistern, sold as a slave and thrown into prison for a crime he did not do. And he had o wait more than 20 long years to have his dreams come to pass. .
Brothers and sisters, our God is in the business of long-term investments with long-term dividends, and we can trust Him. And the reason we can trust Him is because not only has He done this in the life of Joseph, but He has planted at the very center of history the guarantee that He is able to do this in the lives of His people ,is doing this now , and will do this.
The doctrine of providence assures us that—in His sovereignty—God is at work carrying out His perfect decrees for our good and His glory. It assures us that God is not far away, but He is near. He is aware of all our ways, and attentive to all of our needs. Job said, “Does not he [God] see my ways and number all my steps?” (31:4). The psalmist affirmed, “I have leaned on You from before my birth ; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you” (71:6). God is constantly working out His will in the lives who love God and are called according to His purpose..
The world is inherently evil, but God purposes all circumstances for good and for His glory on the individual scale, but likewise on a global scale. If you understand that, then you can fully realize that the Apostle Paul truly means “all things” in the passage, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 ESV
