The Favorite Son and Despised Brother
Genesis 37
Today we come to the last major division in the book of Genesis. Those of you who have been with us on our journey through Genesis know that the book is divided into sections by the heading, “These are the generations of …” using the Hebrew word תּוֹלְדוֹת tôlḏôṯ (Gen. 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 10:32; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 36:9; 37:2). Each of these sections narrates the history of the descendants of the person for whom the genealogy is named. In this chapter that phrase is translated as “This is the history of Jacob” (Gen. 37:2). Thus, these last 14 chapters will feature the sons of Jacob, especially one son, Joseph. He becomes the main human character of Genesis beginning here in chapter 37.
Our last study in Genesis covered Genesis 35 and the journeys of Jacob in Canaan down through the death of his father Isaac. I have chosen to pass over the details of Genesis 36 because the primary purpose of this chapter has already been realized.[1] Genesis 36 is the genealogy of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother. Moses initially wrote Genesis for the instruction of the Israelites who were about to possess the land of Canaan and destroy Amorites who lived there (Deut. 1:8; 20:16-18). But Moses instructed them not to attack the Edomites:
You are about to pass through the territory of your brethren, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. Therefore watch yourselves carefully. Do not meddle with them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as one footstep, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. (Deut. 2:4-5).
Moses emphasizes five times in Genesis 36 that Esau is Edom (Gen. 36:1, 8, 9, 19, 43). It was essential that the Israelites know who the Edomites were therefore he gave them a documented record of the generations of Esau.
A second reason for Genesis 36 is that the generations of Esau serve as a contrast to the generations of Jacob. Esau’s history is filled with wealth, success, and power. While “Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan” (Gen. 37:1) Esau was out conquering Mt. Seir and the land of Edom, founding a nation, fathering kings, and making a great worldly success of himself. Esau was great in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of God. His story reminds us that: 1) material prosperity does not equal spiritual prosperity—he was materially rich but spiritually poor; 2) political power does not equal power with God—Edom had kings reigning over vast areas while Israel was still in slavery in Egypt (Gen. 36:31); 3) temporal fame does not equal eternal recognition by God—in their day Esau was more famous than Jacob. Esau teaches us that if we succeed by worldly standards, but fail with God, we have failed where it really matters.[2]
Now let’s move on to Genesis 37:
1 Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. 2 This is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a tunic of many colors. 4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
5 Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more. 6 So he said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: 7 There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8 And his brothers said to him, “Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. 9 Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, and said, “Look, I have dreamed another dream. And this time, the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me.” 10 So he told it to his father and his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you?” 11 And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
12 Then his brothers went to feed their father’s flock in Shechem. 13 And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” So he said to him, “Here I am.” 14 Then he said to him, “Please go and see if it is well with your brothers and well with the flocks, and bring back word to me.” So he sent him out of the Valley of Hebron, and he went to Shechem. 15 Now a certain man found him, and there he was, wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, “What are you seeking?” 16 So he said, “I am seeking my brothers. Please tell me where they are feeding their flocks.” 17 And the man said, “They have departed from here, for I heard them say, “Let us go to Dothan.”‘ So Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. 18 Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. 19 Then they said to one another, “Look, this dreamer is coming! 20 Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, “Some wild beast has devoured him.’ We shall see what will become of his dreams!” 21 But Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands, and said, “Let us not kill him.” 22 And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him”–that he might deliver him out of their hands, and bring him back to his father.
23 So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. 24 Then they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it. 25 And they sat down to eat a meal. Then they lifted their eyes and looked, and there was a company of Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing spices, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry them down to Egypt. 26 So Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27 Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh.” And his brothers listened. 28 Then Midianite traders passed by; so the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt. 29 Then Reuben returned to the pit, and indeed Joseph was not in the pit; and he tore his clothes. 30 And he returned to his brothers and said, “The lad is no more; and I, where shall I go?”
31 So they took Joseph’s tunic, killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the tunic in the blood. 32 Then they sent the tunic of many colors, and they brought it to their father and said, “We have found this. Do you know whether it is your son’s tunic or not?” 33 And he recognized it and said, “It is my son’s tunic. A wild beast has devoured him. Without doubt Joseph is torn to pieces.” 34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days. 35 And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, “For I shall go down into the grave to my son in mourning.” Thus his father wept for him. 36 Now the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard.
The story of Joseph is one of the great dramas of the Bible. This young man is favored by his father and is consequently hated by his brothers. They conspire initially to kill Joseph, then agree to sell him as a slave to a caravan of Ishmaelites, headed for Egypt. Faithfully serving his Egyptian master Potiphar, Joseph earns him a place of great responsibility and authority. When Joseph rejects his master’s wife’s advances, and she falsely accuses him and he is thrown in prison. Joseph again faithfully serves his jailers and is elevated to greater responsibility in prison where he helps two officials of the Pharoah by interpreting their dreams. Although Joseph appears forgotten and forsaken in prison, he eventually is brought before Pharoah and given the second-highest position in the land due to his wisdom and faithfulness to God. God then uses a famine to bring Joseph’s brothers to Egypt giving him the perfect opportunity to get revenge, but he does not do so—instead, he saves them from famine and forgives their sin against him. Joseph’s dealings with his brothers will eventually bring them to be reconciled as a family and to them all dwelling with him in Egypt. Joseph plays a very key role in the history of the nation Israel, and his example has much to teach us as well.[3]
The story of Abraham illustrated for us the life of faith. In Jacob’s life, we especially saw God’s grace. Now in the story of Joseph, the overarching theme is God’s providence. John Piper defines God’s providence as “His purposeful sovereignty by which He will be completely successful in the achievement of His ultimate goal for the universe.”[4] “It is God’s seeing to everything. Absolutely everything that needs to be done to bring about His purposes, God sees to it that it happens.”[5] Providence is the unseen hand of God steering the course of history by His love and for His glory.
It is interesting that God is not mentioned in Genesis 37. We see the circumstances of Jacob’s family, the evil actions of his sons, and the painful ordeal of Joseph. And the thing it causes us to ask is: Where is God when all these things are taking place?
God is seeing to it that all things work according to His plan. The basis for seeing God’s providence in Genesis 37 is found earlier in Genesis 15 when God told Abraham:
Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. … But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. (Gen. 15:13-14, 16).
God had this whole thing planned years before! God was sovereignly orchestrating all these events according to His eternal plan—that is God’s providence. God’s providence is on display through the events of this chapter.
We see God’s providence first in,
1. Jacob’s favoritism and the brother’s hatred (Gen. 37:1-11)
This story begins as “Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers.” George Bush, author of the classic commentary on the book of Genesis, interprets this literally as Joseph “was tending, or acting the shepherd over, his brethren in the flock.”[6] If Jacob had put Joseph in charge of his older brothers, this would explain why Joseph reported their bad actions to his father and why they hated him for it.
Jacob himself contributed to the sibling rivalry by showing favoritism to Joseph. Moses flat out tells us that “Israel loved Joseph more than all his children” (Gen. 37:3). And what’s worse, he didn’t hide it. Jacob gave Joseph that “tunic of many colors” (Gen. 37:3). This is the same terminology is used in 2 Samuel for royal robes (2 Sam. 13:18). The result was predictable. The brothers “hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.”
A third reason for his brothers’ hatred of Joseph was his dreams: “Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more.” (Gen. 37:5). Joseph had two dreams. The obvious point in both of them was that he would be elevated above his brothers (Gen. 37:8). I assume that God gave Joseph these dreams since they were prophetically true. Just as Joseph dream that his brothers’ sheaves of grain bowing to him, so his brothers would come bowing to Joseph in Egypt, asking him for grain so they would not starve.
Notice the progression of his brothers’ hatred for him: Genesis 37:4, “they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him”; Genesis 37:5, “they hated him even more”; Genesis 37:8, “So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words”; Genesis 37:11, “And his brothers envied him”; and finally their hatred builds until in Genesis 37:18 “they conspired against him to kill him.”
So far, our story just appears to be a dysfunctional family: a father foolishly showing favoritism, Joseph naively saying and doing things that provoke his brothers, and the brothers who sinfully hate Joseph enough to kill him. But remember, behind all of this sin and disfunction God is providentially at work to bring about His good purpose to save this family.
In the second part of the story, we see God’s providence in,
2. The conspiracy to harm Joseph (Gen. 37:12-30)
Notice that just we saw three reasons why Joseph’s brothers hated him, we see three stages in their plan to harm him.
First, they simply conspired to kill him. We read the story. The brothers were a long way from home, out of their father’s sight and supervision, tending to the flocks. He sends Joseph to Shechem to check on them (Gen. 37:14). Shechem reminds us of the awful thing that the sons of Jacob did there when they slaughtered the men of that village over what was done to their sister Dinah (Gen. 34). The sons of Jacob are violent men.
When Joseph finally finds them in Dothan (Gen. 37:17) Moses writes, “Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. Then they said to one another, “Look, this dreamer is coming! Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, ‘Some wild beast has devoured him.’ We shall see what will become of his dreams!”” (Genesis 37:18-20).
They thought they could kill the dreams of Joseph by killing him. But those dreams were given to him by God and God’s plans cannot be killed.
The second stage of their plan to harm Joseph was Rueben’s idea. Probably because he did not want to have to answer to his father, Rueben the oldest, determined to rescue Joseph later. He suggested they not shed his blood directly, but instead cast him into one of the pits and leave him for dead. So they stripped Joseph of his multi-colored tunic (Gen. 37:23) and cast him into a pit (Gen. 37:24). Their crassness is on full display as they sit down to eat while their brother is pleading for his life (Gen. 42:21). There is no loss of appetite, no sense of guilt or remorse.
The third stage of their conspiracy to do Joseph harm came when, Judah, wishing to profit from doing away with his brother, suggested that they sell him to the Ishmaelite traders who were passing by (Gen. 37:27). This they did for twenty shekels of silver (Gen. 37:28). The Ishmaelites took Joseph to Egypt (Gen. 37:28). Rueben returns to find Joseph is gone (Gen. 37:29).
Nothing the brothers did could stop Joseph from his destiny to rule over them. Nothing Rueben did could save Joseph from his destiny to be a slave in Egypt. Nothing Judah did could stop the plan of God to save Jacob’s family through Joseph. God’s sovereign plan and purpose will be realized despite the scheming of men. That is God’s providence.
The third and final section of our text is,
3. The deception of Jacob and his grief (Gen. 37:31-36)
Not only did these evil men sell their own brother into slavery, they even lied to their father, and allowed him to mourn deeply, thinking that Joseph was dead. “Not only were Joseph’s brothers completely aloof to his suffering, but also they almost seemed to delight in the suffering that their report would bring to Jacob. There is no gentle approach, no careful preparation for the tragic news, only the crude act of sending the bloody coat to him and letting him draw the desired conclusion. It was a heartless deed, but one that accurately depicted their spiritual condition at the time.”[7]
It is worth noticing the irony that just as Jacob used the tunic of his brother Esau and the skin of a goat to deceive his father Isaac in his old age, now his sons deceive him with a tunic and the blood of a goat.
The chapter ends with Joseph being sold to an Egyptian officer in charge of Pharoah’s guard.
The story of Joseph will answer some of our deepest questions regarding the relationship between sin and the sovereignty of God, about suffering and God’s purposes. We are beginning to see that God is able to use even that which is evil to bring about His good purposes. God’s providence was orchestrating all the events in Joseph’s life to save his family from famine, to preserve them as a distinct people, and to make them into a great nation just as God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of God’s providential hand in these events is the remarkable parallel between Joseph’s story and that of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Joseph was loved by his father and sent to seek the welfare of his brethren, so Jesus was loved and sent by the Father to meet us in our sinful condition. Just as Joseph’s brothers hated him because he spoke the truth about their sin and he convicted them of sin by his righteous life, so with Jesus. Just as Judah sold him for a few pieces of silver, so Judas betrayed Jesus for the same. Joseph’s brothers sought to get rid of him so that he would not reign over them, but their rejection of him resulted in his later becoming their savior and ruler. Even so, the Jewish leaders did not want Jesus to reign over them. But their killing Him resulted in His becoming the Savior of all men, exalted in His resurrection as Lord of all at the right hand of the Father, just as Joseph was second under Pharaoh.[8]
Like Joseph, God has promised us a glorious ending where we will reign with our Lord Jesus Christ. But like Joseph and like Jesus, before the glory comes the suffering. We may not always understand it or see God’s good intention in it—may not until eternity. But like Joseph, you can trust in God’s providence because His purposes are for your ultimate good and His plan cannot be stopped.
You can trust a loving God like that. Have you?
[1] Deffinbaugh, Robert, 37. Jacob, Joseph, Jealousy, and a Journey to Egypt (Genesis 36:1-37:36), https://bible.org/seriespage/37-jacob-joseph-jealousy-and-journey-egypt-genesis-361-3736
[2] I summarized these lessons from Cole, Steven, Lesson 63: A Successful Man Who Failed With God (Genesis 36:1-43), https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-63-successful-man-who-failed-god-genesis-361-43
[3] I adapted this paragraph from the summary given by Deffinbaugh, Robert, Joseph (Genesis 37:1-50:26), https://bible.org/seriespage/joseph
[4] Piper, John, Providence, https://www.desiringgod.org/books/providence
[5] Piper, John, Are God’s Providence and God’s Sovereignty the Same?, https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/are-gods-providence-and-gods-sovereignty-the-same
[6] George Bush, Notes on Genesis (Minneapolis: James Family Christian Publishers, 1979 (reprint)), II, p. 220. Quoted in Deffinbaugh, https://bible.org/seriespage/37-jacob-joseph-jealousy-and-journey-egypt-genesis-361-3736
[7] Deffinbaugh, Robert, 37. Jacob, Joseph, Jealousy, and a Journey to Egypt (Genesis 36:1-37:36), https://bible.org/seriespage/37-jacob-joseph-jealousy-and-journey-egypt-genesis-361-3736
[8] Cole, Steven, Lesson 64: If God is Sovereign, Why Am I in the Pits? (Genesis 37:1-36), https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-64-if-god-sovereign-why-am-i-pits-genesis-371-36
