Chapter Thirty-Seven

The History of Joseph

Genesis 37:1. Jacob lived in the land of the sojournings of his father [Isaac], in the land of Canaan. Returning, after a break (the enumeration of the genealogies of Esau’s tribe, chapter 36) to the narrative about Jacob and his immediate descendants (cf. Gen 35:27-29), the sacred writer reminds us that after the separation and withdrawal of Esau (Gen 36:6-7) from Jacob, the latter was still “in the land of the sojournings of his father” — in Canaan, which, though by the future promises of God it was to become the possession of Abraham’s descendants — Jacob’s — was for now only the land of sojournings (Hebrew megurim — the Midrash connects it with the word ger, sojourner, proselyte, and says that Isaac, like Abraham and Jacob, acquired converts of true faith in Canaan — Beresch. r. Par. 84, s. 409). In particular, Jacob at this time lived in Hebron (Gen 35:27).

Genesis 37:2. Now these are the genealogies [the subsequent history] of Jacob. Joseph, seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, being a young man, with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report about them to [Israel] his father. Although the history of Joseph in particular follows, yet because it is closely connected with the history of his brothers and Jacob himself, the heading of Joseph’s history states: “now these are the genealogies [the subsequent history] of Jacob.” Just as after Abraham’s death (Gen 25:8) a genealogy (toldoth) of Ishmael is given (Gen 25:12-18), and then the history (toldoth) of Isaac continues (Gen 25:19); so after Isaac’s death, the genealogy (toldoth) of Esau is given (Gen 36), then the history of Jacob continues (from chapter 37 to the end of Genesis). The preference which the sacred writer shows to Joseph over Jacob, the Midrash explains by the fact that Joseph’s fate had the greatest similarity to Jacob’s fate, for example, both were subjected to their brothers’ hatred and danger to their lives, etc. (Beresch. r. Par. 84, s. 409–410). In that Joseph, after being told of his seventeen-year age, is called a young man (naar, a youth), Hebrew commentators saw an indication of Joseph’s childish-naïve (in part — in a disapproving sense) behavior, by which he unintentionally brought hatred upon himself from his brothers. Joseph fed his father’s small livestock as an assistant with the sons close to him in age — the sons of Jacob from Bilhah — Dan and Naphtali (Gen 30:6-8) and from Zilpah — Gad and Asher (Gen 30:11-13); Joseph was especially close to these first two brothers, as children of his mother Rachel, who after her death had been replaced by them as a mother to Joseph and Benjamin. Joseph’s relationship to his older brothers, according to Gen 37:13-14, reminds us of young David’s relationship to his older brothers, who had gone off to war (1 Sam 17:17-18). Immediately after mention of Joseph’s and his brothers’ occupations, the circumstance is related which served as the first cause of the brothers’ hatred against Joseph: he brought bad reports about them to his father’s attention (Vulgate; “crimine pessimo”). The Septuagint translators and the Church Slavonic text give the opposite meaning, namely that the brothers slandered Joseph (so too Saint John Chrysostom). But the Targum Onkelos, Aquila, Symmachus, the Samaritan translation, the Arabic, the Vulgate express the meaning of the Hebrew Masoretic text (as does the Russian Synodal). What the accusation consisted of, the biblical text does not say; the Midrash and the rabbis made various conjectures about it (Beresch. r., s. 410).

Genesis 37:3. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. Jacob’s special love for Joseph is explained by the fact that the latter was his son of his old age. But Issachar and Zebulun, sons of Leah, were born to Jacob almost at the same time as Joseph (Gen 30:18-23), and Benjamin was still younger than Joseph by about 15 years. Therefore, the biblical testimony can be supplemented by the account of Josephus that Jacob loved Joseph as born of Rachel (after long waiting) and distinguished by the beauty (εὐγένεια) of his body and virtue of his soul (Ant. 2:2, 1). Jacob expressed his preference for Joseph by making for him, as it were for a firstborn (cf. Gen 27:15 — about Esau’s rich garment), a special garment, ketoneth passim. By the literal meaning of the Hebrew word pas, this is a “garment of extremities,” that is, a long tunic with sleeves (tunica manicata et talaris — Gesenius, according to Aquila and Symmachus); it is in this form that one should imagine the ketoneth passim and the daughter of David, Tamar (2 Sam 13:18). But the Septuagint translators (also Church Slavonic-Russian) render: χιτῶν ποικίλον, a variegated tunic, and the customs of the East, ancient and modern — the use of multicolored materials for costumes (2 Sam 1:24; Prov 31:22) — give probability to this translation (Vulgate: “tunicam polymitam”). On one of the pages of Beni-Hassan, Semites are depicted in garments of bright colors.

Genesis 37:4. And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. This preferential love served the brothers of Joseph as a new occasion for hatred — the most unbearable and unconcealed — toward the favorite, all the more because they might fear (according to Abarbanel’s remark), lest the father should deprive them of all their inheritance because of Joseph.

Genesis 37:5–11. And Joseph had a dream, and told it to [his] brothers; and they hated him even more. He said to them: “Listen, I have had a dream; and behold, we were binding sheaves in the middle of the field; and behold, my sheaf rose up and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” And his brothers said to him: “Shall you indeed reign over us? Shall you indeed have dominion over us?” And they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. And he had yet another dream and told it to [his father and] his brothers, saying: “Behold, I have had another dream: behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” And he told it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him: “What is this dream which you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow down to you to the earth?” His brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. The hatred of Joseph’s brothers reaches its highest degree when he naively, simply tells them his two prophetic dreams, which equally foretell the future subjection of his brothers and even his father to him. The first dream, in content, reflects agriculture, which, as is known (Gen 26:12), the patriarchs had already been engaged in together with shepherding. Its significance was very clear, so the brothers, understanding the meaning of the first dream, became embittered even more. Belief in the truth and significance of certain dreams is revealed here, as in general in the Bible (Job 33:14-18; Judg 7:9-15; 1 Sam 3:5-15 and others), but only in the history of Joseph is the phenomenon of double dreams observed (Joseph’s own dreams — in this place, the chief cupbearer and chief baker, Pharaoh’s), which Joseph himself in Gen 41:32 explains thus: that the repetition of one and the same subject in two different forms signifies the providential necessity of the fulfillment of the foretold fact and moreover in the near future (the Midrash takes it upon itself to see the dream of sheaves fulfilled in the cult of golden calves introduced (1 Sam 12:28) by Jeroboam, a descendant of Joseph). Joseph’s second dream already draws his father’s attention, who, giving this dream a mysterious significance (verse 11), however, remonstrated with Joseph for his account: the obeisance of father, mother, and older brothers before a younger brother and son, by Eastern standards, was an unthinkable thing (given the usual deep reverence of younger people toward elders in the East). “Your mother” (verse 10) — not Rachel, already deceased, but either Bilhah, who replaced her for Joseph (according to Hebrew interpretation), or Leah, who now held the name of mother and from the side of Rachel’s sons. Commentators who see in the name “mother” precisely Rachel, or admit that part of what is described in chapter 37, including the dreams, took place while Rachel still lived, or else (admitting that Rachel was already dead) see in the words of Jacob “Shall I and your mother... come,” so to speak, reductio ad absurdum: “indeed your mother is dead — how then and when shall we bow down to you now? The dream is clearly deceptive.” In his heart, however, Jacob held the opposite conviction. Theodoret unites what was said about the causes of the brothers’ hatred for Joseph in the following words: “Joseph was loved by his father both because he was late-born and because he was the son of Rachel, and because he distinguished himself in virtue. Wherefore his brothers, seeing him preferred, were wounded by jealousy and first tried to put his father in a bad disposition toward him, often resorting to slander; not achieving their intention, they undertook to destroy him, and then, having taken counsel, sold him. The dream about sheaves foretells his honor for wheat” (answer to question 96).

Genesis 37:14. [Jacob] said to him: “Go now, see whether it is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring me word again.” And he sent him from the valley of Hebron; and he came to Shechem. Despite the sinister disposition of the brothers toward Joseph, “neither the father nor the young man suspected or imagined that they could descend to such madness” (John Chrysostom, Homily 61, p. 655). Therefore, when the brothers went out to the flocks in the vicinity of Shechem, Jacob, concerned for the welfare of his children, sends Joseph to inquire about their health, and Joseph immediately carries out his father’s command, which proved to be fateful. Shechem, after the well-known bloodshed (Gen 34:25), could already be repopulated and the consequences of its destruction could be eliminated. But Jacob apparently fears for the fate of his sons, all of whom could still bring upon themselves vengeance from the surrounding inhabitants. The sons of Jacob, with their flocks, apparently moved from place to place — from Hebron, where Jacob lived, to the north and east.

Genesis 37:15. Now a man found him wandering in the field, and the man asked him, saying: “What are you seeking? That Joseph lost his way near Shechem is understandable, since he lived there as a boy. Jewish tradition saw in the man who met Joseph here the Archangel Gabriel, who supposedly demanded that he not return and precisely carry out his father’s command.

Genesis 37:17. And the man said: “They have departed from here, for I heard them say: Let us go to Dothan.” And Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. Dothan, or, according to the Septuagint reading, Dothain (mentioned later in the history of the prophet Elisha, 2 Sam 6:13, and even later in the history of Judith, Jdt 4:6), according to the testimony of Josephus and Jerome, lay to the north of Samaria and Shechem, at the entrance to the Valley of Jezreel; through this valley and through the city of Dothan ran the caravan route from the northeast to Egypt. The place has retained its ancient name to this day.

Genesis 37:18–20. And when they saw him from a distance, before he came near them, they plotted against him, to put him to death. And they said to one another: “Behold, this dreamer comes; come now, and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits, and we will say: A wild beast has eaten him, and we shall see what becomes of his dreams.” Seeing Joseph from afar (perhaps by his distinctive garment), the brothers — except Reuben and Judah (as is evident from what follows, verses 21–30), and also, of course, young Benjamin — conspire to kill him; and from the name “master” (Hebrew baal) of dreams, as well as from the fact that by killing his dreaming brother they hoped to prevent the fulfillment of his dreams, it is clear that they firmly believed in the possibility of their coming true and were greatly disturbed by it. But precisely this intention of theirs God turned into one of the links of the path that led Joseph to his exaltation (cf. Gen 50:20). According to tradition, the proposal to kill Joseph came from Simeon and Levi (cf. the Shechem bloodshed) or from Simeon alone: in the latter case it would be explained why later Joseph (Gen 42:24) leaves precisely Simeon as a hostage in Egypt. Joseph’s body, they plan to throw into one of the dry cisterns (bor) of the wilderness, of which there are many, especially in summer, in Palestine and even now (cf. Jer 41:9).

Genesis 37:22. And Reuben said to them: “Do not shed blood; cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand upon him.” This he said [with the intention] to rescue him from their hands and restore him to his father. The brutally cruel intention of Joseph’s brothers meets a great-hearted resistance from the more humane nature of Reuben, who though capable of criminal excesses (Gen 35:22), as the eldest, considered himself especially responsible before his father for his younger brothers, especially for the father’s favorite — Joseph (verses 29–30). Striving to deter his brothers from shedding his blood, he repeats their thought — to throw Joseph (only alive into one of the cisterns in the “wilderness” — the empty part of the Valley of Jezreel), of course, not with the purpose of destroying Joseph without bloodshed (Knobel’s opinion), but with the intention of saving him and returning him to his father.

Genesis 37:23–24. And when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that he had on, and they took him and cast him into the pit; and the pit was empty; there was no water in it. As soon as Joseph approached, the brothers (according to tradition, Simeon first of all) stripped him of his beautiful tunic — the object of their envy and indignation — and threw him, of course, with his desperate cries for compassion (cf. Gen 42:21), into an empty pit, a cistern without water, but hardly without liquid mud at the bottom of this pit — a cistern, full perhaps of various vermin: scorpions, snakes (Beresch. r. 84, s. 404).

Genesis 37:25. And they sat down to eat bread, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing aromatic gum, balm, and resin; they were going to carry these down to Egypt. After committing this violence against their brother, the sons of Jacob, except perhaps Reuben, who absented himself, apparently in order to think of a plan to save Joseph (cf. Gen 37:29-30), — sit down to eat: the hardness and callousness of their hearts are astonishing (cf. Prov 30:20)! At this moment they saw a caravan (orechah; Vulgate: viatores; Church Slavonic: wayfarers) heading with goods along the road from Gilead through Jezreel and Dothan. Caravans (cf. συνοδία, Church Slavonic “fellowship”, Luke 2:44) were the usual way of traveling in the ancient and modern East, to avoid attacks. The merchants or members of the caravan of which we are speaking are named at times Ishmaelites (verses 25, 27, 28), at times Midianites (verses 28, 36). The Targum Onkelos translates the first name by the word “Arabs”, and Josephus calls the Midianites Αραβας τοῦ Ισμαελιτῶν γένος: this name and conception (“Arabs”) in the mouths of Joseph’s brothers is more understandable than the special names (Ischmeelim, Midjanim, and also Medanim, verse 36) — since, if by the time of Moses the inhabitants of northern Arabia were known by the name Ishmaelites, then in the time of Jacob, when only the second generation of Ishmael was living, his descendants could not yet give the land their name. The duality of the name is explained either by the fact that the leaders of the caravan were people of one tribe (Ishmael), and the merchants of another (Midian or Medan, cf. Gen 25:2), or else all three (see Hebrew text verse 36, where medanim, not midjanim, as in verse 28) names mean people of the same nation, now general, now special. The products which the merchants carried were, according to the more probable explanation, the following: nechoth — the so-called gummi tragacanti, white, fragrant, hard resin from the storax tree (Septuagint and Vulgate general: θυμιάματα, aromata); zeri (Septuagint: ῥητίνη, Vulgate: “resina”) — balm, resin from the tree balsamodendron gileadense — Gilead balm, which the Hebrews attributed healing power against wounds, and which in all ancient writers who touched upon Palestine is presented as the chief product of this country; loth (Septuagint: στάκτη, and Vulgate) — frankincense, myrrh or resin found on the leaves of the plant cistus creticus, growing in Syria, Arabia, and Cyprus. All these products in raw form were being carried to Egypt, where they were prepared into spices; later Jacob (Gen 43:11) sent these products as a gift to Joseph. The Midrash remarks that these aromatic substances were carried by the merchants, by God’s ordering, — for the sake of the righteous (Joseph).

Genesis 37:26–28. And Judah said to his brothers: “What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our flesh.” And his brothers listened to him. And when the Midianite merchants passed by, they drew Joseph up out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver; and they brought Joseph to Egypt. Judah (in Reuben’s absence) on his part proposes a measure which, by his intention, was to serve to save Joseph from a hungry, agonizing death in the well: the sale of him to the merchants — a proposal which in some measure is characteristic of the future Judean tribe, the mediator of worldwide commerce — a proposal less humane compared to Reuben’s entreaty (verse 22), but which proved more persuasive to the hard-hearted brothers. And they sold him to the merchants (apparently with the condition of taking him precisely to Egypt, as one can conclude from Joseph’s words in Gen 45:4-5) for 20 shekels of silver, that is, the price later appointed by Moses for the redemption of boys from five to twenty years old at the sanctuary (Lev 27:5), whereas the average price of a slave (Joseph was sold into slavery, Ps 104:17) was considered (Exod 21:32) to be 30 shekels of silver. The Septuagint, apparently considering 20 shekels of silver (about 17 rubles in our money) too low a price, renders: “golden coins” (εἴκοσι χρυσῶν). Having sold Joseph, his brothers committed the crime of human trafficking, for which the law of Moses later appointed capital punishment (Exod 21:16; Deut 24:7).

Genesis 37:29–30. And Reuben returned to the pit; and behold, Joseph was not in the pit. And he tore his clothes, and returned to his brothers and said: “The boy is not there; and I, where shall I go?” Reuben, absent at the time of Joseph’s sale, returning and not finding Joseph in the pit, comes into despair, tears his clothes as a sign of unbearable grief (as Jacob later does, verse 34, cf. Gen 44:13). In his cry to his brothers — enennu vaani ani anah ba — lies an untranslatable, characteristic of the Hebrew language, assonance expressing the immediate and deep sorrow of Reuben’s good soul, who did not, however, have enough firmness to reveal to his father the true state of affairs.

Genesis 37:31–32. And they took Joseph’s tunic and slaughtered a goat and dipped the tunic in the blood; and they sent the tunic of many colors and brought it to their father and said: “We have found this; please identify whether it is your son’s tunic or not.” One crime of Joseph’s brothers leads to another — a crude deception of their father, and for this purpose they use the same unfortunate tunic of Joseph: in this memorial of paternal preference for Joseph, their troubled conscience wished to find justification for itself. Rabbi Maimonides said that in the law of Moses, a goat is often required for the sins of the society of Israel, to recall this deception of Jacob by his sons and to stir in the sinner consciousness of the necessity of cleansing himself of sins (Philippson, p. 201–202).

Genesis 37:34. And Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth upon his waist, and mourned for his son many days. Having donned the sackcloth, a mourning garment usual among the Hebrews (2 Sam 3:31; 1 Sam 21:27), Jacob mourned Joseph (as a dead man) “for many days,” that is, for all 22–23 years which passed from Joseph’s sale to Egypt until Jacob’s migration there with his household (Beresch. r., Par. 84, s. 416).

Genesis 37:35. And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said: “I will go down to my son mourning in Sheol.” And his father wept for him. Besides Joseph’s daughters, heretofore only Dinah is mentioned (chapter 34); others may not have been mentioned in the genealogical table, or (according to the explanation of the Midrash, Rosenmüller and others) the daughters here are called Jacob’s daughters-in-law. “Sheol,” Hebrew scheol (from the verb schaal, to require — the place which inexorably calls all people into itself (Isa 5:14; Prov 30:16) — not a grave, which, by Jacob’s thought, Joseph did not have (for he considered him torn to pieces by beasts), but the mysterious dwelling-place of the dead. As with the sacred writer’s expression (about Abraham, Isaac) “he was gathered to his people” (Gen 25:8), the idea of the patriarchal period of the plural — a testimony to the faith of the patriarchs in immortality.

Genesis 37:36. Now the Midianites sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. “Potiphar” through the Coptic “piot-furo”, is usually understood to mean: “devoted to the king,” being considered a title rather than a proper name (the similar “Potiphera”, Gen 41:45, has a different meaning: “devoted to the sun”). The name “eunuch” (Hebrew saris) is probably applied to Potiphar not in the direct sense (he had a wife, Gen 39:7), but in general: a court official. sar hattabachim — “captain of the guard,” that is, probably the captain of the king’s bodyguard. Septuagint: captain of the cooks, ἀρχιμάγειρος; Vulgate: “master of soldiers”.