Chip Off the Old Block

(Lectionary for August 13, 2017

The fourth and final section of the book of Genesis comprises the story of Joseph, favorite son of Jacob. It has been termed a novella, because it consists of a tightly woven tale, focused on a complex protagonist whom we observe from his teenage years to his death. The overwhelming consensus of the commentators on this story is that Joseph is some sort of paragon of virtue and wisdom, a model human being created as a living epitome of the Israelite wisdom teachers. “Be like Joseph,” these interpreters say, “because he is what humanity should strive to emulate.”

I could not disagree more! Such a reading is partial at best, thoroughly wrong- headed at worst. I am amazed at the consensus about Joseph as I actually read what the narrator has to say about him. Far from being the exception to the Genesis rule that all Israelite “heroes/heroines” are deeply flawed, Joseph is very like all those who have preceded him, from Abraham/ Sarah to Isaac/Rebekah to Jacob/Rachel. He is one of them, and I hope briefly to show how that is the case.

The beginning of the tale is indicative of the character of the man. “Joseph, seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock along with his brothers; he was a young man with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s women. Joseph brought an evil report of their actions to their father” (Gen.37:2). In a time when people did not live nearly as long as we may expect now, a seventeen year old is a nearly a grown man, fully trustworthy to work on the family farm. Thus, Joseph is working with the flocks as a shepherd. But we note, too, that he is only working with the secondary sons of Jacob, those born in Haran to his concubines, here called his “women” (the translation ”wives” is interpretive; these women were the servants of Jacob’s two wives, Leah and Rachel). The boys are Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher, by any measure not the prominent sons of the patriarch. Might it be that Joseph feels slighted, neglected to be working with them and not with Reuben, the first-born, or Judah, a later significant figure in the story? We can only speculate here, but the next line removes us from speculation.

“Joseph brought an evil report of their actions to his father.” The only conclusion is that Joseph is a tattletale, one of those odious children who cannot wait to tell on their siblings, thereby, they think, gaining favor with the powerful father, and thereby, they think, raising their stock with the old man. However, it turns out that Joseph did not need to blab bad things about his siblings: “Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons, because he was the child of his old age; he made for him a long-sleeved tunic” (Gen.37:4). Alas, the “coat of many colors” of KJV and Broadway fame must go the way of the dodo; the words have nothing to do with color, but seem to suggest a fulsome robe, one that would take a huge amount of expensive cloth to complete. In a time when only the rudest and briefest of garments would suffice for farming folk, Joseph prances around in an eye-catching robe. That alone would make him a target of jealousy, but he adds to his brothers’ rage by revealing to them two of his dreams. The collectors of the lectionary omit these verses, but they are important for the characterization of our central figure.

His first dream suggests that his brothers will one day come and bow before him, and the second says that even the sun, moon, and stars of the sky will lie at his grandiose feet! Even if one had such dreams, it would take a deeply narcissistic person to share them aloud, especially with those who are its subjects. But share them Joseph does, all too completely, and the result is the fury of his brothers and the angry rebuke of his beloved father (Gen.37:5-11). The tattletaling twit is cruisin’ for a bruisin’, and it is soon to be as we fear.

Since the brothers “hated him even more for his dreams and his words,” they plot to murder him in the desert. It is the time when the flocks are to be moved to different pastures, away from the farm. The brothers herd the sheep to Shechem, up in the hill country and far from Jacob’s prying eyes. But either Jacob is complicit with his favorite in being a spy for him among his sons, or he blindly sends Joseph to his potential doom, for he enlists Joseph by commanding him to “Go now; see if it is shalom with your brothers and with the flock; bring word back to me” (Gen.37:14). Jacob may be in the dark about the deep enmity between Joseph and his siblings, but we are not. We know well that it is not at all “shalom” with the brothers; they intend murder.

Joseph heads for Shechem, but when he arrives, he does not find his brothers in the expected pasture. He asks after them and is told that they have moved the sheep on to Dothan, even further from home. At Dothan the brothers set a watch, waiting for the one they detest: “Here comes the dreamer,” they say, as they catch sight of him; “Let’s kill him and toss him into a pit; then we will say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we will see what happens to his dreams” (Gen.37:19-20).

But the first-born Rueben is reluctant to join the murder. He suggests that they merely throw him into a dry pit, because Rueben wanted to “rescue him and restore him to his father” (Gen.37:22). No reason is given for this surprising mercy on the part of Rueben within the story at hand, but there is a tiny note, easily overlooked, back at Gen. 35:22 where we learn that Rueben slept with Bilhah, the concubine of his father, and Jacob found it out. Sleeping with women who belong to another man, particularly a father, is tantamount to announcing that one wants to push the father from power. It may be that Rueben hopes to save his brother, Joseph, as a way to assuage his father’s anger, and win back his withheld favor, far less than any love he may hold for the repulsive Joseph.

The brothers decide that that is a good plan, absolving them of actually soiling their hands with Joseph’s blood, so they quickly toss him into a dry well, after of course stripping off of him that disgusting robe. Then they sit down for a luscious picnic, apparently not hearing or closing their ears to the cries of the pitiable man in the well. Then they see a passing Ishmaelite caravan on the way to Egypt, and Judah has the bright idea of selling their brother off to that fabled land as a slave, a sure means of ridding themselves of the jerk forever. But before that plan can be implemented, some Midianite traders come by the well, pull Joseph up and drag him off to Egypt with them. Rueben thus loses his meal ticket back into Jacob’s favor, and the brothers lose the chance for some financial gain by Joseph’s sale. But it has been for them a good day’s work nonetheless. They have rid themselves of their nasty brother, and a quick lie to old Jacob about his death by wild beast will complete the story. But we all know this story is far from over.

Yet, if we were one of the other brothers, might we not too side with them? Joseph is a preening, narcissistic, tale bearing little twit, and seeing him carted off to slavery in Egypt and almost certain death might not give us much pause. After all, he is getting what his appalling actions so richly deserve. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Yet, we should know by now that YHWH has plans that move well beyond what we can imagine or conceive, and is bent on using the most unlikely folk to work those plans out. Joseph is not at all a model of Israelite wisdom; he is one more of those biblical characters that end up doing the work of God, despite what we think of them, reminding us once again that “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are God’s ways our ways.” We forget that truth at our peril and dismiss those who differ from us too quickly, when they may well be “angels unawares.”