37:12–17 Joseph’s brothers go to pasture the flock near their former home of Shechem, some 50 miles (80 km) from Hebron, where Jacob is staying at this time (vv. 12–14). The family still owns property in the region (33:19), which may give them added incentive to travel to the area. After the earlier incident in which Joseph brought a bad report about his brothers (37:2), he is no longer working with them. Apparently he is exempt from the arduous task of shepherding, remaining comfortably at home in his fashionable robe, which would further inflame the other brothers’ jealousy.

The location of the brothers at Shechem, near the site of their earlier slaughter of its inhabitants, might have given Jacob pause, but he seems to be oblivious to any potential danger. Instead he sends Joseph after them to inquire into their shalom (“See if it is well with your brothers”; v. 14), even though the brothers had been unwilling to give Joseph a shalom while they were at home (v. 4). As a dutiful son, Joseph readily agrees to his father’s request (“Here I am”; v. 13) and journeys alone to find them.

When Joseph arrives in Shechem, however, the brothers are nowhere to be found (v. 15). This could easily be the end of Joseph’s journey, forcing him to return home with no news. Coincidentally (providentially!), however, Joseph just happens to meet a man while wandering around in the fields, and that man just happens to know where the brothers have gone—to Dothan (v. 17), 13 miles (21 km) farther from home and from anyone who might know Jacob.512 Significantly (and again providentially) Dothan is on a major caravan route to Egypt, unlike Shechem—another crucial step in the unfolding of God’s plan. Dothan later becomes known as the place where God opens the eyes of Elisha’s servant to see the invisible chariots and horsemen protecting Israel from the surrounding enemy army (2 Kings 6:13–17). God is no less present with Joseph at Dothan to protect him from danger, even though his eyes are never opened to see that reality.513

37:18–24 Joseph may find his brothers in Dothan (Gen. 37:17), but it is his brothers who see him coming from afar off and, recognizing him, cold-bloodedly decide to do away with him (v. 18). This is no crime of passion but premeditated murder. Their mocking comment could be rendered “Behold, here comes this master of dreams [baʿal hakhalomot]” (v. 19); if they kill him, they believe they will prevent his dreams of leadership over the family from coming to pass. The brothers’ initial plan is to kill Joseph and dispose of the body by throwing it into one of the pits used for water storage, with which the area is dotted (v. 20). A person traveling through the open country on his own might easily encounter and be killed by a wild animal, though, and if his remains are never found, there would be little need for the brothers to account for his disappearance. In this way the brothers seek to forestall Joseph’s dreams by disposing of their subject (v. 20): If Joseph is dead, how could they be forced to prostrate themselves before him?

Joseph’s silence after he meets his brothers is unexpected.514 In the earlier part of the chapter Joseph was full of words: he brought a report to his father (v. 2), he recounted his dreams (vv. 5–10), he responded “Here I am” when his father sent him to his brothers (v. 13), and he explained his mission to the man in the field at Shechem (v. 16). But at the crucial point when his brothers seize him this man of many words falls silent in a manner that foreshadows another servant who will suffer: “Like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7).

At this point Reuben, the oldest brother, intervenes, seeking to rescue Joseph (Gen. 37:21). His motivation is clear, as it is repeated in the text—he desires to rescue Joseph and restore him to his father (vv. 21–22)—but his reason for that desire is not given. Since he has been out of his father’s favor since sleeping with his father’s concubine Bilhah (35:22), it may be that he thinks to ingratiate himself with Jacob by preserving the life of his favorite son. He does not try to dissuade his brothers from disposing of Joseph at this point; he merely seeks to keep them from killing Joseph directly. That would constitute “shedding of blood” (37:22), which might leave them liable to judgment, whether by God (cf. 9:5–6) or by some form of cosmic justice. Instead they should simply cast Joseph into a pit alive, where they could let thirst and hunger do their dirty work for them.

Since these pits are used as cisterns to hold water, Joseph could potentially drown, but the particular pit the brothers choose is dry (37:24). We are not told whether they take any effort to check that fact ahead of time; Reuben might have, considering his plan to rescue Joseph later, or it may be a time of year when such pits are typically dry; the narrator simply records it as a bare fact. Joseph has been wearing his fancy coat with long sleeves (v. 23; cf. v. 3), and the brothers take him and strip off his garment before throwing him in a pit (vv. 23–24).515 If his father’s investiture of Joseph with the robe marked him out as the heir of the promise and the family favorite, then his robe’s removal by his brothers marks the destruction of such hopes and his lowering of status to that of a common slave.

37:25–28 Having disposed of Joseph, at least temporarily, the brothers sit down to their lunch, as if it were a normal day like any other (v. 25). Meanwhile, a caravan of traders comes along, taking spices down from Gilead to sell in Egypt. These traders are variously described as “Midianites” or “Ishmaelites” at different points in the story (Ishmaelites: 37:25, 27, 28; 39:1; Midianites: 37:28, 36). The terms seem to be interchangeable, with “Ishmaelite” perhaps serving as a functional description of camel-riding spice traders, while “Midianite” serves more as an ethnic description.516 It is certainly ironic that all those involved in selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt are part of the Abrahamic family—his brothers and cousins.517

The Ishmaelites’ cargo is described as “[aromatic] gum, balm, and myrrh” (v. 25). These are precisely the kinds of cargo one would expect such traders to carry; however, they also find an ironic echo in the list of gifts that the brothers will later take down to Egypt to appease the unrecognized Joseph in 43:11, with “gum” and “myrrh” occurring in only these two places in the OT.518 The Ishmaelites are not slave-traders by occupation, but they are apparently not averse to diversifying their merchandise on request.

Having earlier listened to Reuben’s argument for keeping Joseph alive, the brothers now follow the lead of Judah in a signal of the impending power shift from firstborn brother to the ultimate leader of the family. However, at this point Judah’s leadership is far from sanctified; he suggests selling Joseph rather than killing him, though he does recognize that “he is our brother, our own flesh” (37:27).519 It is profit rather than compassion that motivates the brothers to change their mind; they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver, the average price of a young male slave in antiquity.520 Most slaves in Egypt would have been prisoners of war, but the commercial trading of people from the Near East to Egypt is well attested in this era.

37:29–36 The implication of the story is that, in order to enjoy their lunch in peace, the brothers have moved a little distance from the pit into which Joseph was unceremoniously dumped. After going back to the pit to extricate Joseph and sell him to the Ishmaelites, they then return to their encampment, leaving Reuben—who has been away on some unspecified errand—to discover Joseph’s absence from the pit. Distraught, and perhaps imagining that the brothers have killed Joseph in his absence, Reuben tears his clothing as a sign of grief (v. 29).

Meanwhile the brothers take Joseph’s special coat and dip it in the blood of a young goat, using it to deceive their father (v. 32). The irony is profound: since Jacob used a young goat and his brother’s clothing to deceive his own father (cf. 27:9, 15, 16), the same deception is perpetrated upon him. However, whereas Jacob told his father an outright lie (27:19), his sons merely produce the garment and let him draw his own conclusions, saying, “This we have found; please identify whether it is your son’s robe or not” (37:32). They do not speak Joseph’s name nor call him their “brother”; he is “your son,” reflecting the family favoritism as clearly as in chapter 27, where Esau was Isaac’s son (27:1, 5, 18, 20, 21, 24, 26, 27) and Jacob was Rebekah’s (27:6, 8, 17, 43). But, whereas Isaac was unable to identify Jacob (27:23), Jacob has no difficulty identifying Joseph’s robe (37:33). The layers of irony continue to unfold later, when Joseph recognizes his brothers but they fail to recognize him (42:7–8).

Jacob’s response to Joseph’s presumed death is dramatic and enduring. He not only tears his clothing, as Reuben had earlier (37:34; cf. v. 29), but he also puts on sackcloth—the first recorded use of that mourning habit in the Bible. He mourns for “many days,” in contrast to the more limited time of mourning over Jacob’s own death at a good old age (50:3, 10), and refuses the comfort offered by his children (37:35).521 On the contrary, he declares, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (v. 35). The righteous are never said to go to Sheol in the OT; it is the home of the unrighteous dead and of the souls of those who are not at rest (cf. Ezekiel 31–32).522 Jacob’s assumption that Joseph is in Sheol may be connected with his supposed violent death, and his death means the loss not only of an earthly future for Jacob but of his own future in the afterlife as well. It is not just Joseph’s dreams that have been shattered by the events that have transpired; Jacob’s dreams are destroyed as well.

Why though, is Jacob’s world so completely overturned, so that he mourns for Joseph as though he were his only son? One answer is the fact that Joseph was his favorite son, the “son of his old age” (Gen. 37:3). This connection with Abraham’s love for Isaac as the son of his old age (21:2, 7) suggests a deeper reason, however. Jacob saw Joseph as the child through whom the Lord’s promise of a messianic seed would be fulfilled. With Joseph’s apparent death, how would that promise be fulfilled? The dream that Jacob has stored up in his heart—Joseph’s dream of the sun, moon, and stars’ coming and bowing down to him (37:9–11), an image far too big simply to point to leadership in a small nomadic family—is a dream that now cannot be fulfilled. Jacob interprets the death of Joseph as the end not merely of his own hope but of all hope for the world.

Yet the narrator strikingly juxtaposes Jacob’s intense grief with the announcement of Joseph’s safe arrival in Egypt, where he is sold into Potiphar’s house (v. 36). Joseph’s story is not yet over; he was not in Sheol but merely down in Egypt, which is precisely where God’s providential plan has brought him. God will continue to be with Joseph there, and in due season Jacob will see his son again.

Potiphar is described in Hebrew as a saris (v. 36), a word that can denote either a eunuch or a member of the royal bureaucracy (many of whose members would have been eunuchs, either so they could work around the women of the royal family or to prevent the danger of their leading any kind of coup). Eunuchs were often married in antiquity, so Potiphar’s married status does not argue against his being one.523 If he is a eunuch, that might add an additional dimension to the events of Genesis 39, though it should be noted that Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and baker are also termed sarisim in 40:2. The title given to Potiphar, “captain of the guard” (v. 36), means “chief of the slaughterers” (sar hattabbakhim); it may indicate some kind of military policeman, such as the position held by Nebuzaradan in 2 Kings 25:8 or Arioch in Daniel 2:14. On the other hand, it is possible that the “slaughtering” refers to killing animals for food and that therefore Potiphar is more of a chief cook or butler.524