Joseph tests his brothers

Reading 13 - Ten brothers go to Egypt
(Click here to read Genesis 42)


First, I must make a BIG apology for the lack of posts over the past few weeks. 'E100' has been on my Task List every week, but somehow I never seemed to allocate any time to it. And that - like Joseph's brothers - has made me feel increasingly guilty: I will try to do better in 2012! I may even try to do some 'retro-posts', but that might be a bit ambitious.


I've also taken the liberty of allocating two weeks to the previous reading: well, it was Christmas...


And so we leapfrog over the story of Joseph's privileged upbringing and untimely 'death' (reading 11), and his managerial success, unfair downfall and miraculous return to power as the second most powerful man in Egypt and - incidentally - the saviour of thousands of people from starvation (reading 12).


Guilt
Even though it's probably around 20 years since Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, they are still living with the guilt of what they did, as this passage reveals. Jacob, convinced (by them) that his favourite son is dead (despite having eleven remaining sons), still mourns his loss and compounds it by treating Benjamin differently, thus repeating the misjudgement that led to Joseph's disappearance in the first place. The brothers feel isolated from their father and are constantly reminded of their culpability for Joseph's apparent death leading to a deep sense of guilt and helplessness. It can't have been a very happy household. Jacob's "Why do you just keep looking at each other?" is perhaps indicative of the febrile state of the family relationships.


Guilt can be terribly corrosive, leading to fear, mistrust, accusations and paranoia. When Joseph accuses the brothers of being spies, their first thought is that this is a retribution for what they did two decades previously, a clear indication that the guilty consequences of the actions are still with them. Reuben even tries to justify his actions.


Testing
What can we make of Joseph's refusal to reveal who he is? At first glance it might be seen as 'payback time', making them sweat for a while before letting them off the hook. But this seems unlikely. A better explanation is that he wanted to see whether they had changed. After softening them up with the threat of a lengthy incarceration while one of them returns for Benjamin, (with no certainty that he would ever return, bearing in mind Jacob's intransigence as far as Benjamin is concerned), Joseph changes his conditions and keeps only one brother, Simeon, with him in Egypt. Are the brothers' characters reformed enough to meet Joseph's demands and return with Benjamin, or will they abandon Simeon as they abandoned him?


God sometimes uses difficult circumstances to test us, not to see if we'll 'break', but to help us to distinguish what is right and proper from what is transient and worthless.


Will the brothers pass Joseph's test? More next week....