Gen 37 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
Joseph stands at the very end of the age of the patriarchs on the line of God’s story.
God had told Abraham, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3). He had also said, “Your offspring will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them” (Gen 15:13). Abraham’s grandson Jacob had twelve sons. Joseph’s story is the story of how this family ended up in Egypt.
This lesson begins with a piece of clothing.
Jacob lived in the land of Canaan. Joseph, seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. (vv. 1–2)
3Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a tunic of many colors.
4His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him.
5Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him all the more.
6He said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed:
7for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves came around, and bowed down to my sheaf.”
8His brothers asked him, “Will you indeed reign over us? Will you indeed have dominion over us?” They hated him all the more for his dreams and for his words.
Joseph dreamed another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. He told his father and his brothers, and his father rebuked him. (vv. 9–10)
11His brothers envied him, but his father kept this saying in mind.
The brothers went far away to feed the flock. Jacob sent Joseph to see whether they were well, and Joseph went looking for them until he found them at Dothan. (vv. 12–17)
18They saw him afar off, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him.
19They said to one another, “Behold, this dreamer comes.
20Come now therefore, and let’s kill him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, ‘An evil animal has devoured him.’ We will see what will become of his dreams.”
21Reuben heard it, and delivered him out of their hand, and said, “Let’s not take his life.”
22Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father.
23When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him;
24and they took him, and threw him into the pit. The pit was empty. There was no water in it.
25They sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.
26Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?
27Come, and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh.” His brothers listened to him.
28Midianites who were merchants passed by, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. The merchants brought Joseph into Egypt.
Reuben came back to the pit, found that Joseph was not there, and tore his clothes. (vv. 29–30)
31They took Joseph’s tunic, and killed a male goat, and dipped the tunic in the blood.
32They took the tunic of many colors, and they brought it to their father, and said, “We have found this. Examine it, now, and see if it is your son’s tunic or not.”
33He recognized it, and said, “It is my son’s tunic. An evil animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces.”
34Jacob tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days.
35All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, “For I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” His father wept for him.
The Midianites took Joseph to Egypt and sold him to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, the captain of the guard. (v. 36)
To read the whole chapter: Genesis 37, 36 verses.
A piece of clothing. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children … and he made him a tunic of many colors” (v. 3). The tunic put a father’s favoritism on display, where everyone could see it every day. The passage goes on: his brothers “hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him” (v. 4). Joseph did not cause the favoritism, but the whole family paid for it.
Dreams and words. Joseph told his dream, and his brothers “hated him all the more” (v. 5). It was not only the dreams: “They hated him all the more for his dreams and for his words” (v. 8). The passage does not judge whether Joseph was right to tell them. It only records a family drifting further apart. Even his father rebuked him, yet “his father kept this saying in mind” (v. 11).
From hatred to murder. The brothers see him from far off and say, “Behold, this dreamer comes” (v. 19). Hatred held for a long time turns, on this day, into “let’s kill him” (v. 20). The passage records it step by step: they could not speak peaceably, they hated him all the more, they envied him, they conspired to kill him.
Two who held them back. Reuben said, “Shed no blood,” meaning to bring Joseph back to his father (v. 22). Judah said, “He is our brother, our flesh,” but what he proposed was selling him (v. 27). One wanted to save him and could not; the other saved his life and sold him “for twenty pieces of silver” (v. 28).
Joseph in the pit. This chapter does not tell us what Joseph said in the pit. Years later in Egypt, the brothers finally said it aloud: “We saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us, and we wouldn’t listen” (Gen 42:21). When that tunic was stripped off him, someone was pleading, and no one listened.
The bloodstained tunic. The last time the tunic appears, the brothers “dipped the tunic in the blood” and sent it to their father (v. 31). They never said outright that Joseph was dead. They only asked him to “see if it is your son’s tunic or not” (v. 32), and let their father say it himself: “An evil animal has devoured him” (v. 33). Jacob “refused to be comforted” (v. 35).
The God no one sees. In all 36 verses, not one line says that God spoke, and not one line says that God acted. This family acts on its own favoritism, its own envy, its own schemes. But the story is not over. In the next lesson Joseph arrives in Egypt, and the first thing the passage says is: “The LORD was with Joseph” (Gen 39:2).
Jacob himself grew up with favoritism: “Isaac loved Esau … Rebekah loved Jacob” (Gen 25:28). Later “he loved also Rachel more than Leah” (Gen 29:30), and Joseph was Rachel’s son (Gen 35:24). The family’s wounds were passed down from one generation to the next.
God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would bring blessing to all the families of the earth. That promise now rested on a family full of envy and hatred, a family that sold its own brother. God did not trade it for another family.
Maybe your family has its own ‘tunic’: a favoritism, a comparing word, someone everyone avoids talking about. Maybe you are in a pit right now where you cannot see where God is.
This chapter does not explain why. It only lets you see this: where God’s name does not appear, the story has not ended.
This week: Think of someone in your family you feel distant from. This week, say one peaceable word to them, even if it is only a greeting.
Stephen, in his sermon, told this story: “The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt. God was with him” (Acts 7:9).
At the end of the same sermon he said to his hearers: “They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers” (Acts 7:52).
Stephen does not say that Joseph was a picture of Jesus. His sermon moves from one scene to the next: Joseph sold by his brothers, Moses refused by the people (Acts 7:35), the prophets persecuted (Acts 7:52). Readers can set these two verses side by side and see for themselves.
Scripture: World English Bible.