Genesis 37:28

Sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver; and they brought Joseph into Egypt

Joseph sold into Egypt

I. A FAMILY FEUD THE FOUNDATION OF A NATIONAL CALAMITY. Bondage for four hundred years.

II. A DESPISED CLASS BECOMES THE INSTRUMENT OF GOD’S PROVIDENCES AND JUDGMENTS. Ishmaelites: the slave-traders of their day.

III. THE COMFORT OF DEATH FOR PERSONAL LOSS AND AWAKENED JUDGMENTS (Genesis 37:35). (W. R. Campbell.)

Joseph sold into Egypt

1. The narrative shows one of the not uncommon ways which God takes to prepare men for usefulness and blessing. The pathway to any eminence in usefulness, virtue, or joy, is commonly rugged. Muscular strength comes of abundant toil, mental vigour of hard study, moral force of temptation and discipline. It is by fire that gold is separated from its dross, and iron hardened into steel. Even the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering. One cannot guess of how many noble lives the secret, if disclosed, would be found in some great trial. An Arab once bemoaned his fate thus: “Alas, I fear that God doth not remember me. I have no trials, nothing but ease and enjoyment.” You cannot make a great life out of sunshine alone. Nor need one lose heart if his whole earthly course seems to be under a cloud. As the discipline of youth may be for riper years, so that of one’s whole earthly career is for the ages beyond.

2. Again, the narrative shows how responsible parents are for the conduct and welfare of their children. One of the gravest errors in family training is that favouritism of which Jacob was guilty. On the one hand it engenders weak and offensive pride; on the other, angry and bitter resentment. Dissension is inevitable.

3. Here, again, we are impressed with the danger of sin in thought and feeling. Apparently, the criminal deed of Joseph’s brethren was wholly unpremeditated. It was an unhappy moment’s impulse. It has been said that “with one bound a soul sometimes overleaps all blessed restraints; we flee into crime as if the dogs of sinful desire were upon us.” We rush to deeds of which at other moments we thought ourselves incapable. The petted feeling grows to be so completely master, that we obey it when obedience has ceased to be a pleasure. Some of the world’s greatest criminals were not only sweet in childhood, but apparently amiable in youth. Let us never forget the tendency of sin to grow, and that as imperceptibly as does the plant or tree. It is also to be remembered that the guilt centres in the disposition rather than in the act. “God sees hearts as we do faces.” “The powder that is explosive and the powder that explodes do not differ.” “He that hateth his brother is a murderer.”

4. Yet again, we here learn something of the unmixed wickedness of the particular sin of envy. It is the opposite of that “charity out of a pure heart,” which, while it rejoices over a brother’s or sister’s good fortune, is itself thereby enriched; of that spirit which makes all another’s gains its own, which is the richer for its neighbour’s riches, the gladder for its brother’s gladness. As love is of heaven, envy is of hell.

5. Briefly, at least, we must notice the illustration we here have of the bitter outcome of sin.

(1) One part of this is a sort of necessity for more sin. No sooner is the heartless deed of Joseph’s brethren done than they begin to add other sins for its concealment.

(2) But the full outcome of sin in-eludes also much sorrrow. Witness the entreaties and tears of the lad Joseph; the distress of Reuben; the perplexity and fears of all. The comfortless, bereaved father is overwhelmed.

6. For God’s children, the culminating lesson of this fragment of history is one of patience and trust in life’s darkest hours. (H. M. Grout, D. D.)

Sold to the Ishmaelites

I. This narrative may remind us of THE UNCERTAINTIES THAT CHARACTERIZE OUR HUMAN EXISTENCE. It is “the unexpected that happens.” The lesson is, that we should be ever ready to respond to the call of God, and should take short views of things by living, as nearly as possible, a day at a time.

II. We may see from this narrative that THE BEGINNING OF SIN IS LIKE THE LETTING OUT OF WATER. What began in envy leads to murder, and that again gives birth to falsehood. Sin thus multiplies as rapidly as the Colorado beetle, and no matter what may be the first one, you may always call its name Gad, for you may surely say, “a troop cometh.” Therefore, if we would successfully resist it, we must withstand its beginnings. Especially is this true of envy, which is purely soul-sin--the hatred of a man for the good that is in him. Envy must be supplanted by the love of Christ.

III. We may learn that IN SEEKING TO DEFEAT GOD’S PURPOSES WE ARE ALL THE WHILE UNCONSCIOUSLY HELPING ON THEIR FULFILMENT. We cannot explain the “ law” of it, but we clearly see the fact. Oh the marvellous wisdom of that providence of God which thus, without doing violence to the will of any human being, lays all their actions under tribute for the furtherance of its designs! And what is the use of a man trying to thwart God’s purposes when, whether he will or not, everything he does only helps them forward? Surely it is better far to acquiesce in them, and find our happiness in the doing of His will!

IV. I note from this narrative that WE NO NOT GET RID OF A RESPONSIBILITY BY PUTTING IT OUT OF SIGHT.

V. THERE IS A RETRIBUTIVE ELEMENT IN OUR TROUBLES. Jacob, who deceived his father Isaac, is now deceived by his own children. One of his “chickens” came home “to roost,” and very bitter was the experience. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

Lesson analysis

I. JOSEPH ABUSED.

1. Stripped of his raiment (Genesis 37:23).

2. Taken by force (Genesis 37:24).

3. Cast into a pit (Genesis 37:24).

(1) Separated from the presence of men.

(2) Protected by the presence of God.

II. JOSEPH SOLE.

1. The ready purchasers (Genesis 37:25).

2. The mercenary plea (Genesis 37:26).

3. The paltry price.

III. JOSEPH MOURNED.

1. Cruel deception (Genesis 37:33).

2. Pitiable woe (Genesis 37:34).

3. Inconsolable sorrow (Genesis 37:35). (American Sunday School Times.)

Man’s passions and God’s purpose

I. THE BROAD TEACHING OF THE WHOLE STORY IS, THAT GOD WORKS OUT HIS GREAT PURPOSES THROUGH EVEN THE CRIMES OF UNCONSCIOUS As. As coral insects work, not knowing the plan of their reef, still less the fair vegetation and smiling homes which it will one day carry, but blindly building from the material supplied by the ocean a barrier against it; so even evildoers are carrying on God’s plan, and sin is made to counterwork itself, and be the black channel through which the flashing water of life pours.

II. THE POISONOUS FRUIT OF BROTHERLY HATRED. The swift passage of the purely spiritual sin of jealous envy into the murderous act, as soon as opportunity offered, teaches the short path which connects the inmost passions with the grossest outward deeds. Like Jonah’s gourd, the smallest seed of hate needs bat an hour or two of favouring weather to become a great tree, with all obscene and blood-seeking birds croaking in its branches. “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” Therefore the solemn need for guarding the heart from the beginnings of envy, and for walking in love. The clumsy contrivance for murder without criminality, which Reuben suggested, is an instance of the shallow pretexts with which the sophistry of sin fools men before they have done the wrong thing. The mask generally tumbles off very soon after. The bait is useless when the hook is well in the fish’s gills. “Don’t let us kill him. Let us put him into a cistern. He cannot climb up its bottle-shaped, smooth sides. But that is not our fault. Nobody will ever hear his muffled cries from its depths. But there will be no blood on our hands.” It was not the first time, nor is it the last, that men have tried to blink their responsibility for the consequences which they hoped would come of their crimes. Such excuses seem sound when we are being tempted; but, as soon as the rush of passion is past, they are found to be worthless. Like some cheap castings, they are only meant to be seen in front, where they are rounded and burnished. Get behind them, and you find them hollow. “They sat down to eat bread.” Thomas Fuller pithily says: “With what heart could they say grace, either before or after meat?” What a grim meal! And what an indication of their rude natures, seared consciences, and deadened affections!

III. The ill-omened meal is interrupted by the sudden appearance, so picturesquely described, of THE CARAVAN OF ISHMAELITES WITH THEIR LOANED CAMELS. Dothan was on or near the great trade route to Egypt, where luxury, as well as the custom of embalming, opened a profitable market for spices. The traders would probably not be particular as to the sort of merchandize they picked up on their road, and such an” unconsidered trifle “ as a slave or two would be neither here nor there. This opportune advent of the caravan sets a thought buzzing in Judah’s brain, which brings out a new phase of the crime. Hatred darkening to murder is bad enough; but hatred which has also aa eye to business, and makes a profit out of a brother, is a shade or two blacker, because it means cold-blooded calculation and selfish advantage instead of raging passion.

IV. Leaving Joseph to pursue his sad journey, our narrative introduces for the first time REUBEN, whose counsel, as the verses before our lesson tell us, it had been to cast the poor lad into the cistern. His motive had been altogether good; he wished to save life, and, as soon as the others were out of the way, to bring Joseph up again and get him safely back to Jacob Genesis 42:22). Well meant and kindly motived as his action was--and self-sacrificing too, if, as is probable, Joseph was his destined successor in the forfeited birthright--his scheme breaks down, as attempts to mitigate evil by compliance and to make compromises with sinners usually do. The only one of the whole family who had some virtue in him, was too timid to take up a position of uncompromising condemnation. He thought it more politic to go part of the way, and to trust to being able to prevent the worst. That is always a dangerous experiment. It is often tried still; it never answers. Let a man stand to his guns, and speak out the condemnation that is in his heart; otherwise he will be sure to go farther than he meant, he will lose all right of remonstrance, and will generally find that the more daring sinners have made his well-meant schemes to avert the mischief impossible.

V. THE CRUEL TRICK BY WHICH JACOB WAS DECEIVED is perhaps the most heartless bit of the whole heartless crime. It canto as near an insult as possible. It was maliciously meant. The snarl about the coat, the studied use of “thy son” as if they disowned the brotherhood, the unfeeling harshness of choosing such a way of telling their lie--all were meant to give the maximum of pain, and betray their savage hatred of father and son, and its causes.

VI. AND WHAT OF THE POOR OLD FATHER? His grief is unworthy of God’s wrestler. It is not the part of a devout believer in God’s providence to refuse to be comforted. There was no religious submission in his passionate sorrow. How unlike the quiet resignation which should have marked the recognition that the God who had been his guide was working here too! No doubt the hypocritical condolences of his children were as vinegar upon nitre. No doubt the loss of Joseph had taken away the one gentle and true son on whom his loneliness rested since his Rachel’s death, while he found no solace in the wild, passionate men who called him “father,” and brought him no “ honour.” But still his grief is beyond the measure which a true faith in God would have warranted; and we cannot but see that the dark picture which we have just been looking at gets no lighter or brighter tints from the demeanour of Jacob. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Joseph sold into Egypt

I. A BEAUTIFUL IDEAL OF WHAT A YOUNG CHRISTIAN SHOULD BE.

1. Having no fellowship with that which is evil.

2. As loved of the good.

II. THE SAD EXPERIENCES THROUGH WHICH MANY A CONSISTENT YOUNG CHRISTIAN PASSES.

1. Joseph was hated of his brothers because their father loved him.

2. Joseph was cruelly treated by his brothers.

3. There are lighter and darker shades among the wicked.

III. THE SORROW WHICH CRUEL TREATMENT CAUSES,

IV. THE TENDER PROVIDENCE OF GOD IS SEEN IN THE DISPOSAL OF JOSEPH IN EGYPT.

1. His promotion in Potiphar’s house proves this.

2. That he reached the rulership of Egypt through his experiences in Potiphar’s house, proves it. Lessons: The permissions of God are full of mystery, but also full of grace.

2. The story of Joseph proves the possibility of youthful piety, and that Christian character may glow in adversity. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)

Apparent disaster often real advancement

The chief peril which threatened Joseph was the foolish partiality of his father. Under this unwholesome influence he was likely enough to become vain, insolent, overbearing. So it was best that he should be removed from this mischievous hot-house of favouritism into a more bracing climate; where, under biting winds and nipping frosts, his virtues would be well rooted. Fortune’s frowns serve our well-being, as much--perhaps more--than fortune’s smiles. If friends of God, no harm can ever befall us.

I. WE SEE HERE INNOCENCE PROVOKING MALICE TO VILER DEEDS. Without question, the presence of a righteous man brings to light the baseness of the wicked. Just as the summer sun quickens the growth of noxious weeds, and makes the stench of a foetid sewer still more odious; so the influence of a saintly character exasperates base men to do their worst. The presence of the Son of God on earth provoked Satan to put out prodigious efforts of malice. To a vitiated palate even food will produce vomiting. The beneficent errand of Joseph obtained only opprobrium and ill.nature. “Behold,” said they, “this dreamer cometh.” Then this was the worst thing malice could lay to his charge. In this respect also Joseph was a type of Jesus Christ. The only accusation men could prefer against either was that he had aspired to be a king. Yet this was not merely a prophetic assertion; it was a divinely appointed office; it was a certain destiny. The righteous man must inevitably rule.

II. WE SEE HERE WICKEDNESS RAPIDLY MATURING ITS FRUITS.

1. Sin is a hardening and a blinding process. It treats its victims as the Philistines treated Samson--puts out their eyes. They saw not Joseph as a brother; they saw him only as a dreamer. They saw only the gain of twenty dollars--about a dollar a piece; they were blind to the tremendous loss.

2. Under favourable circumstances sin speedily develops. Hatred soon grew into murderous conspiracy, into rude violence, into lying, deceit, avarice, fraud; into base traffic of a brother’s flesh--the sum of all villainies. In the fields of nature some plants will bear ten thousand seeds; but this plant of sin is yet more prolific in effects.

3. Yet sin is temporarily checked by a sense of responsibility. Reuben alone of the eleven sought the deliverance of Joseph.

4. Sin defeats its own ends. When the innocent lad was led away an abject slave, had they baffled his dreams? They had helped the business forward.

III. WE SEE HERE THAT HARD SERVICE IS THE WAY TO SOVEREIGNTY. There is great truth in the maxim that “he would rule, must first learn to serve.” Napoleon I. rose to sovereignty because he served well in the lowest ranks of the French army. Jesus Christ is enthroned in the hearts of myriads because He has served them so faithfully and so generously. It is a law in mechanics that in proportion as a free body is forced downward, will it rise upward when the force is withdrawn. Nature helps a rebound. (J. Dickerson Davies,M. A.)

Anything better than confinement in the dry pit

To be brought out of a pit wherein there is no water, is in Scripture represented as a great deliverance. Joseph would learn in this pit to bear those other sufferings that were allotted to him. He was sold to foreign merchants. He was carried into a strange land, to be again sold as a slave. He was cast into a prison, where he lay for several years. But the remembrance of the pit wherein was no water, and of his fruitless cries for relief, would make him think that his condition, under all these circumstances of distress, was not so bad as it might have been, and as it once actually was. (G. Lawson, D. D.)

Joseph betrayed and sold for twenty pieces of silver

Joseph, in his betrayal into the hands of the Ishmaelites, was a distinct type of the Redeemer betrayed into the hands of the Gentiles. The name of the betrayer was the same. In the case of Joseph it was a brother who lifted up his heel against him; in the case of Christ, it was His own familiar friend in whom He trusted, which did eat of His bread (Psalms 41:9) that betrayed Him. In both eases it was covetousness which prompted the betrayer to the dark deed of treachery. In both cases the betrayer dissembled, and accomplished his wicked design under the mask of friendship. Do you observe how Judah speaks? How subtle is his argument, and yet how transparently hollow and treacherous and insincere! As hollow and as insincere as the kiss of Judas! Look at his speech. “Come,” said he, “and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh.” Oh what a contemptible vice is covetousness! The rest of his brethren readily consented to this proposal. The proposal itself, and their acquiescing in it, gives us a very painful view of the deceitfulness of the human heart. The proposal was a monstrous one; it was most cruel; and yet they ignorantly imagined that by adopting it they would be washing their hands of bloodguiltiness. They appear to have viewed it as an admirable contrivance, by which they would get rid of Joseph effectually, without loading their consciences with his death, just as though they would not be quite as responsible in the sight of God for the mischief done him by the Ishmaelites, as though their own hands bad wrought it. It is very melancholy to see the conscience of man thus deceiving him. And are there not other practices amongst us in which this same principle of drugging our consciences deceitfully can be traced? Is there no such thing as servants being employed to do what we would be ashamed to do ourselves? But perhaps we may discover something more than a practical lesson in this conduct of the patriarchs. May not their “Let not our hand be upon Him” remind us of the Jews? When Pilate said to them, “Take ye Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him,” what did they say? “Oh no! let not our hand be upon Him; do you crucify Him; yes, crucify Him, by all means; but as for us, it is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” There are two other points in the text in which Joseph was a type of Christ. He was sold as a slave; Jesus was born under the law--a slave to perform all the rigid requirements of a law without mercy. Not one jot, not one tittle of that rigid law was ever relaxed for Him. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver, Jesus was sold for thirty. At what price do you value the Lord Jesus Christ? Is He, in your estimation, the pearl of great price? (E. Dalton.)

Joseph sold to Arabs

The passage of an Arab caravan towards Egypt, and its purchase of Joseph, is equally true to early times, and to the unchanging Eastern life of to-day. Sir Samuel Baker’s boy, Saat, had, in the same way as Joseph, been carried off while he was tending goats, by an Arab caravan; hidden in a gum sack, and finally taken to Cairo and sold as a slave. “All the world may perish, so far as we care,” said an Arab to Niebuhr, “if only Egypt remains.” And it was left to them even more in Joseph’s day than now, from the dislike of Egyptians to leave their country even for purposes of gain. The trade in “spices” was exceptionally great between the valley of the Nile and neighbouring countries; from the quantity used for embalming mummies, for burning as incense, or as disinfectants; for which they were in great repute. Even the names of the first and second of the three spices named--gum tragacanth, from Lebanon and Palestine generally, Armenia and Persia; balsam from the balsam-tree of Gilead; and lauda-num the gum collected still from the leaves of the cistus-rose--from Syria and Arabia, have been found in the list of two hundred drugs named in the temple-laboratory of Edfu; for each temple had its laboratory and apothecary. Even the twenty pieces of silver given for Joseph are exactly the price fixed under Moses as that of a male slave between five and twenty years of age (Leviticus 27:5); so nearly had human beings kept the same value for centuries. (C. Geikie, D. D.)

Sold into slavery

Mr. H. M. Stanley told an awful story of African slavery, in the Manchester Free Trade Hall. He said: “A slave trade was a great blight, which clung to Africa like an aggravated pest, destroying men faster than children could be born. He overtook a party of Arab marauders on the Congo in November, 1883, over 1,200 miles from the sea. They had utterly desolated a number of villages, massacred all the adult males who had not at once fled, and carried off the women and children. He never saw such a sight before. In a small camp 300 fighting men kept in manacles and fetters, 2,300 naked women and children, their poor bodies entrusted with dirt, all emaciated and weary through much misery. Here was the net result of the burning of 118 villages, and the devastation of forty-three districts, to glut the avaricious soul of a man who had constituted himself chief of a district some 200 miles higher up. Though over seventy-five years old, here he was prosecuting his murderous business, having shed as much human blood in three months as, if collected into a tank, might have sufficed to drown him and all his thirty wives and concubines. Those 2,300 slaves would have to be transported over 200 miles in canoes, and such as could not be fed would die, and perhaps 800--perhaps 900--of all the number would ever reach their destination.”

From the pit to slavery

In Joseph’s being lifted out of the pit only to pass into slavery, many a man of Joseph’s years has seen a picture of what has happened to himself. From a position in which they have been as if buried alive, young men not uncommonly emerge into a position preferable certainly to that out of which they have been brought, but in which they are compelled to work beyond their strength, and that for some superior in whom they have no special interest. Grinding toil, and often cruel insult, are their portion; and no necklace heavy with tokens of honour that afterwards may be allotted them can ever quite hide the scars made by the iron collar of the slave. One need not pity them over much, for they are young and have a whole life-time of energy and power of resistance in their spirit. And yet they will often call themselves slaves, and complain that all the fruit of their labour passes over to others and away from themselves, and all prospect of the fulfilment of their former dreams is quite cut off. That which haunts their heart by day and by night, that which they seem destined and fit for, they never get time nor liberty to work out and attain. They are never viewed as proprietors of themselves, who may possibly have interests of their own and hopes of their own. In Joseph’s case there were many aggravations of the soreness of such a condition. He had not one friend in the country. He had no knowledge of the language, no knowledge of any trade that could make him valuable in Egypt--nothing, in short, but his own manhood and his faith in God. His introduction to Egypt was of the most dispiriting kind. What could he expect from strangers, if his own brothers had found him so obnoxious? Now, when a man is thus galled and stung by injury, and has learned how little he can depend upon finding good faith and common justice in the world, his character will show itself in the attitude he assumes towards men and towards life generally. A weak nature, when it finds itself thus deceived and injured, will sullenly surrender all expectation of good, and will vent its spleen on the world by angry denunciations of the heartless and ungrateful ways of men. A proud nature will gather itself up from every blow, and determinedly work its way to an adequate revenge. A mean nature will accept its fate, anal while it indulges in cynical and spiteful observations on human life, will greedily accept the paltriest rewards it can secure. But the supreme healthiness of Joseph’s nature resists all the infectious influences that emanate from the world around him, and preserves him from every kind of morbid attitude towards the world and life. So easily did he throw off all vain regrets and stifle all vindictive and morbid feelings, so readily did he adjust himself to and so heartly enter into life as it presented itself to him, that he speedily rose to be overseer in the house of Potiphar. (M. Dods, D. D.)