Not in God’s Name 8 Joseph

Genesis 45:1-15

The story of Joseph is one of the longest and most widely known stories in the Hebrew scriptures.  It has certainly stood the test of time from its origins in ancient, prehistoric Israel to its presentation on Broadway several thousand years later.  If you have never read it in its entirety, take some time during this pandemic pause to do so.  (Genesis 37-50) It is the end that has always puzzled me.  Why were Joseph’s actions so meanspirited when in the end he so freely forgave his brothers?  

Why did Joseph force the brothers to bring Benjamin down to Egypt when that would obviously distress his father?  Why set up Benjamin as a thief and threaten to keep him as a slave? (Genesis 42-44) 

Jonathan Sacks interprets the whole scheme and a lesson in repentance.  The biblical concept involves a recognition of one’s errors, a confession of the harm done and a commitment to act differently in the future.  It was Judah who first suggested selling Joseph into slavery (Genesis 37:12-36).  It was Judah who offered to become a slave in Benjamin’s place.  Was the whole convoluted story a demonstration that Judah (and by extension the other brothers) had repented, turned their lives around, left behind them their jealousy and hatred and replaced them with love even to the point of self-sacrifice?  These stories of sibling rivalry end with reconciliation and mutual respect. 

(True to its nature, however, the Bible with its brutal honesty goes on to show that Joseph’s new found sense of grace did not extend to the Egyptian peasants. Chapter47:13-26 describes how Joseph used the famine as an excuse to seize their money, livestock and land forcing them into slavery.  There is good and bad in all of us.  These thousands of years later the Egyptians are the ones negotiating a peace between the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael.)  

I think is it time that we changed our perspective on some of these ancient stories and looked in them for evidence of God’s justice and mercy, not God’s preference and judgment.  Human love will always need to be balanced by justice and human justice will always need to be tempered by love.  Can we expand our minds enough so that we can truly ‘walk in another’s shoe’ and treat others, both those within our group and those without, with justice and even love?     

I acknowledge the ideas of Jonathan Sacks in his book “Not in God’s Name”