Joseph: A Sacred Narrative Drawn From the Book of Genesis (Part 1)

Wondrous it is how the thought of gratitude to God comes to the righteous in the midst of their afflictions—the Apostle has said:[1] “for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:18). The practice of thanksgiving is explained with particular satisfactoriness in the responses of Venerable Barsanuphius the Great. It wrenches their hearts from sorrow and darkness, bears them up to God, into the realm of light and consolation. God always saves those who flee to Him with simplicity and faith.

The holy patriarch Jacob was returning from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan, to the land of his birth, to the heritage predetermined for him by God (Gen. 32). Suddenly there came word to him that his angry brother Esau was approaching to meet him, and with him four hundred armed men. When still in the days of his youth, Esau, moved by envy, had sought to take Jacob’s life. To escape an untimely, violent death, Jacob departed to Mesopotamia. He remained there twenty years. Time might have healed the heart of Esau, wounded by malice… but no, he comes to meet his brother with an armed company. The multitude of the throng, its warlike appearance, revealed an evil intent. Time had not healed the hatred in Esau: he had grown to manhood, and with him his hatred of his brother had grown.

Jacob was afraid: he did not know what to do. He resolved to divide his possessions, consisting of his household and numerous flocks, into two columns. “If the enraged Esau”—he reasoned—“cuts down one column, perhaps his anger will be exhausted, and he will not touch the other column”. Behind the two columns stood Jacob’s wives and children, and last of all stood his second wife Rachel, with her only son Joseph, the youngest of Jacob’s sons. They took the last place, as the youngest, but this place was given them also by the particular thoughtful love of the husband and father, as the safest. The eye of love is keen, and so is the eye of jealousy. Having made such an arrangement, the righteous man hastens to the customary refuge of the righteous, hastens to stand before God in reverent prayer. “I am unworthy”—he confesses to God—“of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that You have shown to Your servant; for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies” (Gen. 32:10). Surrounded on all sides by disaster, the righteous man pours out his heart before God, reckons with his fate, finds himself fully content, finds that God, who commanded him the journey to Mesopotamia and the return from it, has done all according to His promise. “I am unworthy of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that You have shown to Your servant”. Deep, true humility! It alone is worthy to stand before God, it alone is worthy to converse with God: God never abandons it. God listens graciously to it, pouring out abundant mercies upon him who prays with humility. At God’s nod, the heart of Esau changed: till now it had burned with enmity, now suddenly it blazed with love for his brother. Esau throws down his sword, runs into his brother’s embrace, and the two brothers weep in each other’s arms (Gen. 34-35).

Now Jacob had long been in the land of Canaan. His beloved wife Rachel had already died in childbirth with his second son Benjamin. Jacob had already experienced many sorrows from his wild sons, who conducted themselves in the Promised Land as if in a land conquered by force (Gen. 34-35). In the environs of his tent, pitched near Hebron, they tended their numerous flocks, sometimes going quite far to more fertile pastures. Jacob remained constantly at home, held there by both his years and his spiritual progress. It drew the mind and heart of the aged man toward God, and therefore he came to love solitude in his tent. It was unseemly and unnatural for such a man to give himself over to worldly cares. Never absent from him was his consolation—his beloved son, fair in soul and body, Joseph. Service to the aged father and attentiveness to the deep, holy teaching of the God-seeing father constituted the boy’s entire occupation, his entire joy. Into his soul fell the word of piety, as seed falls on rich soil, and soon it bore fruit: there shone forth in Joseph’s soul a holy purity. In the purity of the heart, God begins to be reflected, as the sun is reflected in still, transparent waters like a mirror. Joseph’s virtue aroused not emulation but envy in his brothers: so, unfortunately, it most often happens in human society. The brothers invented and circulated an evil calumny against Joseph—which exactly, Scripture is silent about. But the discerning and graceful Jacob was not deceived by the cunningly woven falsehood; he continued to love—to love Joseph, and as a sign of his special love gave his son a coat of many colors. The brightness and variety of colors were especially valued and are still valued in nomadic lands of the east. Was not this coat a symbol of a life checkered with opposing circumstances, which lay before the youth? Divine inspiration moved the far-seeing old man to express prophecy not in words—but in a symbol: a coat of many colors. From this begin the strange adventures of Joseph. He serves as a foreshadowing, a distant biblical shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ, and for practical life is an example of a pious and virtuous man, subjected to varied, strange afflictions, during which he preserves faithfulness to piety and virtue, never and nowhere abandoned by God, protected everywhere, and finally glorified wondrously. Let us hear, let us hear the curious account of the wondrous and instructive adventures of one clothed by the prophet-father in a coat of many colors.

Joseph’s brothers (Gen. 37), seeing that their father loved him more than all his other sons, hated him: at each word from him, at each look at him, dark turmoil rose in them. But he did not understand the sickness that had seized them: his pure soul saw all as pure-hearted and well-intentioned. With trust he opened his heart before them. This innocent heart was already chosen by God as a vessel of mysterious revelations. The grace of the Holy Spirit, in accord with Joseph’s youthful years, began to manifest its presence and action in significant dreams. Strange dreams were vividly drawn by a mysterious hand in his virginal imagination. Joseph was seventeen years old when the first prophetic dream came to him. With openness suspecting no evil, he recounted it to his brothers: evidently, the dream had left an extraordinary impression in the youth’s soul, which needed explanation. He wished to draw forth, to hear this explanation from his older brothers’ lips. “I dreamed”—he said to them—“that all ‘of us were binding sheaves’ in the field; ‘my sheaf’ suddenly rose and ‘stood upright’, while ‘your sheaves’ turned toward my sheaf and ‘bowed down’ to it”. His brothers answered: “Are you really” indeed going to “reign over us” or become our lord? And the brothers doubled their hatred of him because of the graceful dream, because of their twisted, distorted understanding of his holy candor that had wounded them. Joseph sees a new dream. With childlike innocence, as if in justification of the first dream and in proof that significant dreams come to him unwillingly, independent of him, he tells the dream to his father and brothers: “I saw”—he says—“that the sun, moon, and eleven stars” bowed down to “me”. His father, hearing his son’s account, stopped the youth. “What dream”—have you seen? he said to him. —“Are we, I, your mother and your brothers,” going to bow “down to you?” The experienced and spiritual father stopped his son not because he thought the dream was idle fantasy, the product of a soul troubled by pride, but to protect the young soul from falling into pride and also, with a stern remark, to somewhat extinguish the envy and hatred in his brothers.

Thus Christian ascetic teachers command not to pay special attention to all phenomena appearing to the senses of soul and body: they command to maintain prudent coolness, salutary caution in the face of all phenomena generally.[2] There are dreams from God, to which Joseph’s dreams serve as examples and proof, but the condition of one who sees dreams and visions is dangerous, very close to self-deception. The vision of our own defects—that is safe vision! “A broken and contrite spirit” (Ps. 51:19)—that is a state essentially profitable, free from self-deception, a state which God approves! Discernment, capable of grasping, assessing and explaining visions, belongs only to those advanced in spiritual struggle: it is acquired over a long time, it is a gift of God. Saint Jacob possessed this gift of God: he stopped his son who was telling of the prophetic dream, and he himself—Scripture testifies—kept his words in memory, which bore the anointing of the Spirit.

The new dream did not have the same effect on Joseph’s brothers: it only increased in them hatred and envy of him. Once they had driven the flocks to Shechem. Jacob said to Joseph: “Your brothers are in Shechem; I want to send you to them”. Joseph answered: “I am ready”. “Go”—Jacob continued—“and see whether your brothers are well and our flocks are well. Then return and tell me”.

Sometimes people part easily: parting, they seem not to part, saying farewell, they scarcely say farewell. Yet such parting is often farewell forever; often a prolonged, sorrowful separation follows it. The aged man, in sending off Joseph, did not know that he would not see his beloved son for a long, long time! Could he think that, in sending Joseph to his brothers, he was sending him to his murderers? He was aware of their hatred for the youth: but could it occur to him that this hatred had grown into a conspiracy, into a plot, into the resolve to commit fratricide? The old man’s guilelessness was experienced guilelessness—not the childish guilelessness with which Joseph was filled, he who walked straight to the knife, like a lamb. Wise Jacob, with all his spiritual progress, with all the experience accumulated in his many years of suffering, could not imagine that his wild sons could be capable of the terrible crime of fratricide. It is characteristic of holiness not to suspect evil of one’s neighbors; it is characteristic of holiness to account even the most obvious, open evildoers as less evil than they truly are. And we see many holy people, not deceived by manifest sin, deceived by their great love, their trust in their neighbors. Old man! You are parting for a long time from your beloved son, Joseph! You have the gifts of prophecy and discernment; but for this time God, unfathomably ordering the fate of man, has covered the future from you with an impenetrable veil. You sent Joseph for a few days—you will see him after many sorrowful years. And he will see the land of Canaan, that place where your tent is pitched, when the days of your burial come—and only for the short days of this burial! His bones will be brought here; with them will return his numerous descendants, and with armed hand will take possession of the inheritance of their ancestor—now the youth Joseph.

Joseph set out from his father’s house, from Hebron, and came to Shechem. His brothers were not there. He did not know where to find them—and began to search and inquire. Suddenly there met him a stranger, who asked him whom he was seeking. Joseph answered him: “I am seeking my brothers; tell me”, do you not know “where they are” tending their flocks? The stranger answered: “They have gone from here; I heard them say” to one another: “let us go to Dothan”. By the word of this man, whom fate seemed to have sent to meet Joseph, to direct him to his predetermined fate, the youth begins again to seek his brothers—his appointed sacrifice—and finds them in Dothan. From a distance they recognized him, and began to conspire about killing him. Terrible words about their brother rose in the assembly of his brothers: “Behold, here comes the dreamer. Let us kill him and throw him into one of these pits”, and say: a wild beast has devoured him. Then we shall see what becomes of his dreams! Following the terrible words, criminal hands rose up. But Reuben, Jacob’s oldest son, rescued him from them. “Let us not kill him with our own hands”—he said to them—“Throw him into one of these pits here in the wilderness, but lay no hand upon him!” And the softened Reuben thought to return the beloved son to the aged father. They stripped Joseph of his coat of many colors and threw him into a deep, dry well—a living man into a terrible grave. In the well lies Joseph, in the jaws of death!.. Holy youth, with hard trial begins your spiritual experience! Wondrous steadfastness of your soul, enduring such bitter sorrow! Steadfastness in afflictions is given by a spotless, blameless conscience. Teach us to attain both your purity and your steadfastness—mighty supports for the heart in life’s changes.

Joseph in the well. What do the brothers do? They sat down to eat… Ripened hatred!.. When any passion has ripened in the soul, the soul no longer feels its deadly sickness. It is more terrible to have a heart in this depth of malice than to have a body, with an angelic soul, in a deep well. The sons of Jacob accomplished their evil deed as if they had simply done their duty: hatred had become so natural to them. “And they sat down to eat bread” (Gen. 37:25)—says Scripture.

When this meal was taking place, certainly nothing good was present at it. It was conducted wildly and boisterously. How else could murderers dine? Loud laughter broke the terrible silence—it was the laughter of a soul that had shed the garment of shame, savoring its ripened, satisfied malice. Hellish words broke out from time to time—as if from a dark abyss—from the hearts resolved on fratricide. The faces of the diners were dark, bestial. Their sight and hearing wandered gloomily, wildly everywhere. Prudence had no rule here. What prudence! When passions seize a man, the mind, deprived of its sovereignty, becomes an obsequious and inventive servant to the passions, to satisfy their cunning, capricious, criminal demands.

The sons of Jacob feast over the grave with a living corpse, and lo, their frantic eyes suddenly behold travelers. These were Ishmaelites, merchants. They appeared from Gilead, on the road to Egypt. Their camels were abundantly laden with stacte, balm and frankincense: these goods they were conveying for sale in Egypt. At this wild feast there was heard a voice: “What profit is it if we kill our brother and hide his blood? Let us sell him to these Ishmaelites! And let not our hand be upon him: for he is our brother and our flesh!” This voice was the voice of Judah, the fourth among the sons of Jacob; Judah proposed the sale of his righteous brother. Through many centuries will appear another Judah, he will speak of another Righteous One, of the very God-man himself: “What will you give me, and I will deliver Him to you?” (Mt. 26:15).

Gold coins rang out… Joseph was already pulled from the well and hastily sold to the Arabs. Not a single word of dispute about the price or the captive was uttered on either side. Scripture would not have been silent about a word worth noting, had one been spoken. Scripture in this narrative reports even those words that are somewhat worth noting. The gold coins ring out… there were twenty of them. How like is this sound to the sound of thirty pieces of silver!… Blessed youth, sold for twenty gold coins! You were deemed worthy to be a foreshadowing of Him sold for thirty pieces of silver!

Reuben was not present at the feast. He was not a participant in the evil plot and conspiracy, nor was he at the meal where the successful crime was celebrated. Secretly he comes to the well and calls to the entombed one. No answer. Again he calls… no answer! In despair he tears his clothes, runs to his brothers, saying: “The young man is not in the well! Where shall I go now?…” In response, the gold coins rang out. There were twenty: nine brothers who were present at the sale proved that they had not forgotten the tenth brother who was absent.

Meanwhile Jacob’s sons devised how to conceal their deed with Joseph from their aged father. They killed a goat, dyed Joseph’s coat of many colors in its blood, and sent it to their father with harsh words: “We found this; see whether it is the coat of your son, or not?” He recognized it, and said: “It is the coat of my son: a wild beast has devoured him? A fierce beast has taken Joseph!” Jacob tore his garments, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. His sons and daughters gathered to him, they tried to comfort the old man. But he was unwilling to be comforted, and said: “I shall go down with sorrow to my son in the grave”. For a long time he repeated these words and wept greatly.

The Ishmaelites brought Joseph into Egypt (Gen. 39), where they resold him to Potiphar, a eunuch of Pharaoh—Pharaohs was the name given to the kings of Egypt—chief of the royal bodyguard. And the Lord was with Joseph, mysteriously watched over him, helped him. Soon the lord noticed the blessing of heaven upon his slave, and came to love him greatly. As a result of this special love, Potiphar entrusted Joseph with the management of all his household and all his possessions. The Lord, for Joseph’s sake, blessed the Egyptian’s wealth: God’s grace was poured out upon all his possessions, upon his house and upon his fields. Potiphar gave himself over to his affection with all carefree trust, not even inspecting anything himself, paying attention to nothing. Joseph was very fine, beautiful in appearance. His beauty attracted the eyes of Potiphar’s wife. Passion seized her: openly, directly she declared her passion to the youth. The youth would not consent to lawlessness. He exhorted the wife burning with mad and criminal lust, he said to her: “My master has trusted me so, and has rested all his cares upon me, that he does not even know anything about his house. He has given all his possessions unreservedly into my hands: in his house there is no one above me; all is in my charge, except you, his wife. How then can I do as you say? How can I sin before God?” The criminal wife does not hear the wise words of Jacob’s son: passion, which has seized her, speaks other language. She hears only the voice of passion: Joseph’s words flew past her ears like empty sounds without meaning and significance. From time to time the wife repeats her proposal, always with the same openly ardent boldness. Once Joseph was occupied with his duties in the house; it happened that no one from the household was there except the mistress. She seizes him by his garment, begs, demands that her desire be fulfilled at once. Joseph tears himself from her hands, flees; his upper garment remained in the Egyptian woman’s hands. Unsatisfied criminal love suddenly turns into mad hatred: she who a moment before sought to enjoy the charms of beautiful flesh now wildly thirsts to drink blood. The frenzied Egyptian woman cries out, with loud shrieks and cries summons the household members. They come running. “Look”—says the Egyptian woman to them—“this young Hebrew was brought into our house to insult us!.. He came to me… he said to me… I cried out loudly… hearing my cry, he fled from me… here is his upper garment in my hands!” She kept this garment until Potiphar’s return. Another time this garment—a silent, untruthful witness—testified against Joseph. When the master returned, his wife told him of the event. She spoke sorrowfully and quietly: “A young Hebrew came to me, whom you brought into our house to humiliate us, and proposed to me lawlessness. When I cried out loudly, he fled, leaving me his upper garment”. Hearing a plausible account, in which the terrifying storm of the soul and infernal slander were cunningly covered by the simplicity and coldness of her narration, seeing in the hands of his wife the proof of the occurrence—Joseph’s garment, proof against which there seemed to be no refutation, Potiphar fell into great indignation. He considered inquiry and trial unnecessary, superfluous—so clear, vivid, and obvious seemed the slave’s crime to him. He commanded that Joseph be thrown into the prison where state criminals were kept—into the fortress—thus Scripture calls this prison.

The Lord, who had chosen Joseph from his childhood, the Lord who had helped him in captivity and in Potiphar’s house, did not abandon him in the prison. The heart of the prison warden became favorable to Joseph: he entrusted him with all the prison, all the prisoners confined in it, and, like Potiphar, rested with complete confidence on Joseph’s care. After some time, two of Pharaoh’s officials offended the Egyptian king: the chief cupbearer and the chief baker (Gen. 40). The angry Pharaoh confined them in the same prison where Joseph was held. The prison warden entrusted them to Joseph. When they had been several days in the prison, in one and the same night each of them saw a dream. In the morning Joseph comes to them and notices that both are disturbed. He asks Pharaoh’s officials: “Why are your faces sad?” They answer: “Each of us saw a dream, but there is no one to interpret our dreams”. Joseph said: “Does not God give the gift of explaining those dreams which are sent by Him? Tell me your dreams”. From Joseph’s words one can see his spiritual progress, the fruit of his trials. When in childhood he saw dreams, he only felt that they had significance, and told them to his father and brothers, as if seeking explanation, but not daring to add any interpretation. But here, hearing that the officials had seen dreams, he already hopes to find the solution of the mysterious visions in God, to whom he has drawn near, to whom he has united himself through sorrows, faith, purity, and prayer. Dreams led him into the furnace of sorrows; dreams will lead him out of this furnace, into which Providence ordinarily casts those people destined for great works. The chief cupbearer began to tell his dream: “It seemed to me”—he said—“that before me was a vine; in the vine I saw three branches, and as soon as they budded, they produced ripe grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand. I took the grapes, pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and gave it to Pharaoh”. Joseph answered: “This is the meaning of the dream: the three branches are three days. In three days more, Pharaoh will remember you, will restore you to your former position as chief cupbearer: you will give the cup to Pharaoh as before. Then, in your prosperity, remember me. Show me kindness: tell Pharaoh about me, and get me out of these gloomy walls. I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews, and here I have done nothing wrong, yet they have thrown me into this terrible prison”. The chief baker, hearing the favorable interpretation, also told his dream to Joseph: “I too”—he said—“saw a dream. It seemed to me that I was carrying three baskets on my head with bread. In the upper basket was every kind of baked good that Pharaoh eats. Suddenly birds came flying and ate the bread”. Joseph answered: “This is the meaning of the dream: the three baskets are three days. In three days more, Pharaoh will lift your head from you—and hang you on a pole; and the birds will eat the flesh from you”. The third day came: it was Pharaoh’s birthday. He made a feast for his courtiers; conversing with them, the king remembered the two imprisoned officials: to the chief cupbearer he restored his former position, and he again began to serve the cup to Pharaoh, but the chief baker he had executed, according to Joseph’s prediction. And the chief cupbearer forgot about Joseph. The righteous man still needed to endure suffering in prison! He still needed the solitude and darkness of the prison cell, so that his soul would sink more deeply into prayer, would draw even closer to God through it, would be illumined even more brightly by spiritual discernment.

Two years passed, and Pharaoh saw a dream (Gen. 41). It seemed to him as if he stood by the river: behold, seven cows, fat and beautiful, came up out of the river and began to graze on the bank. After them came up seven other cows from the river, thin, of poor appearance—they too began to walk with the first ones by the river bank. Suddenly the thin cows devoured the fat ones, and it was not noticeable that the fat ones went into them: they retained their former appearance of leanness. Pharaoh awoke. Then he fell asleep again and saw another dream: he saw as if from one stalk grew seven ears of grain, full of ripe seeds, and after them grew seven other ears, thin, as if dried up by heat and wind. These thin ears swallowed up the seven full ears. Pharaoh awoke, his soul was troubled; when morning came he commanded that all the learned men and wise men of Egypt be called together, and he told them his dream. But they could not interpret the vision, which had produced confusion and disturbance in the king. Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh: “Now I remember my offense! When you, O king, were angry with your servants, with me and with the chief baker, you commanded us to be imprisoned in the prison that was in the house of the chief of the bodyguard. That same night each of us saw a dream. With us there was a young Hebrew, a slave of the chief of the bodyguard; we told him our dreams, and he interpreted them for us. To me he predicted the restoration of my office, and to my fellow—execution. So it came to pass with both of us”.