“Down In the Pit”

Genesis 37:29-36

 

Things aren’t looking so good for Joseph. His brothers didn’t kill him but they did manage to drop him in a pit. Then they sat down and had lunch while they decided what to do with him. Just so happened some relatives came by. A caravan of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt were passing by so brother Judah came up with the great idea to sell Joseph to them as a slave. 

Done deal! 

20 shekels later and the brothers were finally free from their meddling younger brother. 

 

Today’s Scripture picks up the story with Reuben, the eldest brother returning to the pit with some noble intentions to save Joseph, only to discover he was not there. Reuben’s response was to tear his clothes, return to his brothers and state, verse 30, 

“The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”

This is a strange response. You’d think he would ask, “What am I to do?” 

But this end scene bookends the beginning scene where Joseph was in a field and he couldn’t find his brothers and wondered, “Where did they go?” Now, after the betrayal scene, we have the single brother looking for his brother following up with the same question, “And where do I go?”

This brings us to the last part of this section. We began this section with Jacob, Joseph and the brothers. The center portion was about Joseph and his brothers. And this last part will be about the brothers and Jacob. We are exploring all the different relationships in this family triangle. 

The narrative continues with the brothers taking Joseph’s robe, slaughtering a hairy goat, and dipping the robe in the blood. Then they take the robe back to their father. They tell him they found it and ask him to inspect it to identify if it was indeed Joseph’s robe. 

Jacob recognizes the robe and states, verse 33,

“It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”

At that, Jacob then rips his clothes, just like Rueben had done. He placed sackcloth on his knees and grieved for his son for many days. All of his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. Instead he declared, 

“I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” 

Meanwhile, we are told, the Midianites, the third name for the group of travelers, were on their way to Egypt. 

The Midianite name actually means “hostility” so the author has appropriately placed this name in this section to remind the reader of the hostility between the brothers. The Midianites managed to sell Joseph to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard. Again, here is where knowing ancient Hebrew would be helpful. The Hebrew word for “captain of the guard” or “bodyguard” is “tabbakh” and it means, “butcher.” The word in Aramaic has a similar meaning such as “bodyguard” or “executioners.” 

Check out this robe scene. 

The first thing the brothers do is slaughter a hairy goat. They use the blood from the goat to cover the robe so that it looks like Joseph had been butchered by an animal. When in reality, Joseph had actually been sold as a slave to the captain of butchers. 

More Hebrew word hyperlinks, the word “slaughter” in verse 31, is one of the standard Hebrew words in Leviticus used for the ritual slaughter of an animal for sacrificial purposes. And the word “dipping” is the exact same used for what the priest or the father does with hyssop in the Passover. The hyssop would be dipped in the blood and the blood would be painted over the door. The narrator is using sacrificial imagery and language in the description of what the brothers are doing with the coat and the blood. It’s like Joseph’s sale into slavery is his sacrifice.

Let’s explore this hyperlink. Let’s go back to the first sacrifice of an animal, done in order to clothe Adam and Eve. In that instance, the clothing represents a covering of their shame, once they had chosen to take the knowledge of good and bad for themselves, because of the deception of an animal. God then clothes them with the skin of an animal. 

They were deceived by an animal,                                    instead of ruling the animal,                                                and now they began to look like an animal by taking on animal skins.                                                                         When you think about it, initially when Adam and Eve realize they were naked they decide to dress up like a tree. They put fig leaves on themselves and dress up like the tree that they took from.                                               But, God dresses them up like an animal creating this motif. 

Next we have the first story of the loss of a beloved son, with Cain and Abel. Abel’s blood is a big feature of this story and at the end of the story Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, whose name means “for God appointed me another seed in the place of.” It’s the word, “takhat” meaning “substitute.” The third son becomes a substitute for the chosen one who was murdered by his brother. 

You have the motif of brothers standing in for other brothers beginning here. 

The hyperlink continues with the story of Abraham. God promised Abraham and Sarah that He would give them a son. They don’t have a son, so they take things into their own hands and produce a son by sleeping with Sarah’s slave Hagar. 

This scene is loaded with failure at the tree vocabulary: “she sees,” “she takes,” “she does what’s good in her eyes.” Only the tree was Hagar and the offspring was Ishmael. By the time Isaac was born, in fact the moment he was born, rivalry was activated. Sarah banished Hagar and Ishmael, to the east, the same direction God exiled Cain to. The story is full of weird imagery of Adam and Eve’s failure, and Cain and Abel’s conflict. So when God asks for the life of Isaac back, it’s certainly in response to their history of abuse. 

God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son. So Abraham and Isaac make their way to offer a sacrifice and along the way Isaac realizes they have everything except the ram, to which Abraham replies, “God will provide.” They arrive at the spot and Abraham builds the altar, arranges the wood, binds Isaac as the sacrifice, all of which is verbatim from what is written as instructions in Leviticus with Abraham playing the role of the priest. Abraham sends out his hand, just like Eve sent out her hand to take, but then Abraham hears God call his name, “Abraham, Abraham.” Abraham answers, “Oh, I am here.” Then God instructs Abraham not to stretch out his hand, to do nothing.” 

At that point, God knew that Abraham feared Elohim. Unfortunately Adam and Eve were too late, they feared Elohim after their failure. Abraham raised his eyes and found a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. A “takhat,”  a substitute, in the place of his son. 

Same theme, human evil leads to the death of the beloved one. But God provides a “takhat” , one who will stand in the place of.” A theme that gets repeated here in the Joseph story and continually throughout the narrative until the final sacrifice of God’s only Son. 

Now, what about the slaughtering of the hairy goat. This too hyperlinks back. This time, not so far back, we only have to go back as far as Jacob, his brother Esau and their father. Remember, Jacob kills a hairy goat and then uses the meat and the skins to deceive his father. So it’s like Jacob was being deceived by the same mechanism that he himself used on his father when he was younger.             It’s the old hairy goat deception, a classic trick.       Ironically, Esau’s name is spelled with the same letters of the word hairy, because he arrived in this world as a hairy baby. 

It doesn’t stop there. The more you ponder these stories and research the meaning of the words, and how often the same words and phrases are used from story to story you begin to see the links the authors have established. 

Now let’s look at how the story is progressing. We began with Joseph having dreams of exaltation. He saw himself exalted above the heavens, above the sun, moon and stars. The narrator made a point to emphasize this three times over. However, not only did Joseph not go up to the heavens. He went down to the pit, down to the pit below the ground. Notice the network of images used to describe Joseph’s fate. We are told Joseph was thrown down into a pit five times in the story. He was of course abused by his brothers but it keeps getting worse. 

He is substituted for a slaughtered animal. 

He is sold into slavery.

When his father Jacob hears about it, he assumes that his son has been torn up, eaten and is now descended into the grave. 

Notice all the images of descent into Egyptian slavery, into the pit, being equated with death and animal devouring. It’s like all the bad things that can happen in the biblical world are happening to this guy, whether imagined or real. 

The narrator is stockpiling us with vocabulary for ways that terrible things can happen to you in the biblical story. 

You could die.

You can fall into a pit. 

You can be lost in the underworld of the grave. 

You can be eaten by wild animals, which means you are vulnerable out in the wilderness. 

You can be sold into slavery.

When you think about it, many of these images repeat themselves throughout Scripture, specifically within the Psalms. Let’s take Psalm 69, which is connected to David at the beginning. Check out these images:

“Save me, O God,
    for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in the miry depths,
    where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
    the floods engulf me.

I am worn out calling for help;
    my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
    looking for my God.

Those who hate me without reason
    outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
    those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
    what I did not steal.

You, God, know my folly;
    my guilt is not hidden from you.

Lord, the Lord Almighty,
    may those who hope in you
    not be disgraced because of me;
God of Israel,
    may those who seek you
    not be put to shame because of me.

For I endure scorn for your sake,
    and shame covers my face.

I am a foreigner to my own family,
    a stranger to my own mother’s children;

for zeal for your house consumes me,
    and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
When I weep and fast,
    I must endure scorn;

when I put on sackcloth,
    people make sport of me.

Those who sit at the gate mock me,
    and I am the song of the drunkards.

But I pray to you, Lord,
    in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God,
    answer me with your sure salvation.

Rescue me from the mire,
    do not let me sink;
deliver me from those who hate me,
    from the deep waters.

Do not let the floodwaters engulf me
    or the depths swallow me up
    or the pit close its mouth over me.”

He is definitely describing a really bad day. Upon first reading you might think, “Oh, this is poetry, right?”

Yet in reality, when you read through the Torah often enough you begin to realize every single one of these images is taken from the book of Genesis, in one way or another. They are all de-creation moments. 

It doesn’t stop there, Jesus' disciples quote verse 9 of this Psalm, immediately after Jesus stands in judgment of the temple rituals and clears the merchants and money-changers from the temple, in John 2:17. Jesus was overturning the center of Israel’s view. In the biblical imagination the center of creation was the temple. It was where the author of all life was taken up his dwelling. Jesus was declaring that the way they were treating this was a sham and that He was the real thing.  

It’s not just about one line. It’s about when God elevates a chosen one.   

Check in time. 

Every book, every story, we read in the Bible, from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation is layered with connections, hyperlinks and words that lead to Jesus Christ. 

It’s the same idea, human evil leads to death. God provides a substitute, one who stands in the place of all the evil we can muster. That substitute is Himself, the perfect sacrifice, offered for each of us, and all we have to do is recognize our need for a savior, seek forgiveness, accept Jesus as our substitute and He saves us from all our sins and more importantly from the punishment of our sins. It is my hope that each of us in this room has indeed accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. If not, I would love to discuss the reasons with you at some point.

Let’s pray.