Did Joseph Sin When He Lied to His Brothers? Fundamentalists Ask the Darndest Questions

Did Joseph Sin in Hiding His Identity? This is the question posted by Troy Lacey in a recent piece for the young earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis.

Lacey was referencing the story of Joseph of the coat of many colors fame, who, once established as a powerful official in Egypt, concealed his identity from his brothers when they came from Canaan looking for food during a drought. (Joseph’s brothers, remember, had sold him into slavery in Egypt because they were jealous of his status ass their father’s favorite.)

If this seems like a lot of hair splitting, it absolutely is. It’s a story. What’s the big deal? What’s actually going on here? Let me slice and dice it for you.

Fundamentalist Christians like those at Answers in Genesis frequently inveigh against “situational ethics” and moral relativism. They argue instead that morals are absolute: that right is always right and wrong is always wrong. For example, lying is wrong, period. It is never, ever okay to lie. Some may find this level of certainty comforting. It makes finding answers easy. It completely mucks up reality, however. For example, was it moral for people hiding Jews during the Holocaust to lie to Nazi officials?

As a child, I was told a story about a Christian who believed that lying was always wrong. When Nazis searched their home and demanded to know the whereabouts of the Jews they suspected were hidden there, told the truth: “They’re under the table,” he said. And they were—under the floorboards under the table. The Nazis assumed he was pulling their leg, because they could all see there was no-one under the table, so they left, and the hidden Jews were saved. See! It all worked out! He didn’t have to lie!

Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell echoed this same idea when she was interviewed by Eddie Izzard in 2010. O’Donnell founded a group she named Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), which is, I assume, what led Izzard to this line of questioning:

IZZARD: What if someone comes to you in the middle of the Second World War and says, ‘do you have any Jewish people in your house?’ and you do have them. That would be a lie. …

O’DONNELL: I believe if I were in that situation, God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously. I believe that!

MAHER: God is not there. Hitler’s there and you’re there.

O’DONNELL: You never have to practice deception. God always provides a way out.

God always provides a way out. 

Now it’s time to return to Joseph. Fundamentalists’ discomfort with justifying lying even to save actual lives from literal death squads should offer some context for Lacey’s interest in whether Joseph’s actions constituted lying and malicious deceit. Did Joseph sin, when he hid who he was?

I should probably pause to note another layer of what’s going on here: Lacey is reading a Jewish text and interpreting it through his Christian lens of what morality is. As a result, he’s asking questions that are weird. The Old Testament is riddled with characters who are deeply flawed. Consider David’s dalliance with Bathsheba, for example. There are many, many characters and stories that are fraught with gray. This isn’t a problem for many Jews (I’m trying to avoid talking in absolutes here), because the idea that even God himself is fallible and makes mistakes is not at all incompatible with Judaism.

It’s Christians who look at things in black and whites, and fundamentalists sin particular. I suspect that’s one reason so many fundamentalists like to fob off the blame for David’s actions on Bathsheba—they want to count David as one of the good ones, and they don’t like their heroes to exist in shades of gray. People are good, or they are bad. (This may be a slight overgeneralization, but fundamentalists do like to put people in “good” and “bad” categories, and they don’t like nuance or loose ends.)

So. Joseph. Lacey begins his piece as follows:

The charge has been labeled against Joseph by some who say that Joseph was spiteful (if not actually vengeful) here, and at the very least, he was cruel to them by hiding his true identity. There are also some Christians who believe that omitting detail is the same as lying. There are those who therefore claim that Joseph was actually lying to them about his identity, while there are others who do not view this as lying, nor being maliciously deceptive.

I don’t remember every considering whether Joseph’s actions his brothers were immoral. It was a story in the Bible like so many other stories; I probably heard it first in flannelgraph. I don’t remember ever analyzing this story in any particular depth.

Before we turn to Lacey’s conclusions, let me refresh your memory.

Joseph is in charge of distributing Egypt’s grain during a famine. Joseph’s brothers come to buy grain in Egypt, as there is no food in Canaan. They do not recognize him, so he pretends to be a stranger. He accuses them of being spies. They say they are not spies but twelve brothers, with one left in Canaan with their father and one dead. Joseph says he’s going to test whether this is true by keeping one of their number in prison and sending the rest back to return again with the youngest brother.

When the food they take back from Egypt runs out, Joseph’s brothers return, bringing their youngest brother, Benjamin. Before they leave, Joseph has his silver cup planted in Benjamin’s bag of grain. After they leave, he sends his men after them; they find the cup in Benjamin’s bag and drag the brothers back to Egypt. Joseph says he is going to keep Benjamin as a slave.

Joseph’s brothers beg him not to, and offer themselves in Benjamin’s place, which is rather the point—Joseph was testing his brothers to see if they had changed. Joseph and Benjamin were the only sons of their father’s favorite wife, and after Joseph was gone Benjamin became his father’s favorite. Once they offer their lives to save Benjamin from slavery so that he can return to their father, Joseph knows his brothers have changed.

Now that I look at the story, Joseph definitely does lie. He doesn’t just lie, he also practices deceit—he has his silver cup planted in Benjamin’s bag! I don’t actually have a problem with Joseph’s actions because I don’t ascribe to a black-and-white Christian morality that holds that these things are always wrong. But if you’re going to argue that lying is always wrong, well, that’s definitely present.

So, what does Lacey conclude?

So motivationally, we can see that Joseph was not out for revenge or seeking to do what he could to spite his brothers. His “deception” was not malicious, nor do we ever see Joseph act hatefully to his brothers, even after their father died 17 years later. Concealing his identity was prudent given the circumstances, and Joseph’s endgame was to bless his brothers, not repay evil for evil. While it may be tempting to view this as a case of situational ethics, where the (supposedly harsh) means justify the ends, that is not the case at all. The means were not wicked, just cautious, and the outcome was definitely loving.

I … what.

No, I’m sorry, but this is definitely situational ethics.

As soon as you get into arguing that the motivations matter more than the action itself, you are doing situational ethics. And I’m okay with it! I think all ethics are situational on some level! But don’t play with words like that and pretend you’re not doing what you’re very obviously doing!

Incidentally, I just looked back through the passage and I don’t see any statement of Joseph’s motivations in it. Sure, we could conclude based on the outcome that he was lovingly testing his brothers—but we could also conclude, based on his actions, that he started out with some interest in revenge, or at least in tormenting his brothers before revealing who he was.

Frankly, taking revenge out of Joseph’s motivations entirely and arguing that he acted purely out of love and a desire to bless his brothers makes the story far less interesting—and realistic. Joseph suddenly feels less like a human being and more like some sort of cardboard cutout. But then, maybe that’s rather the point: fundamentalist Christians like cardboard cutouts better than human beings.

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