There is a world of contempt, rage, and fear in the questions, 'Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?' The conviction that Joseph was marked out by God for a high position seems to have entered these rough souls, and to have been fuel to fire. Hatred and envy make a perilous mixture. Any sin can come from a heart drenched with these. Jacob seems to have been wise enough to make light of the dreams to the lad, though much of them in his heart. Youthful visions of coming greatness are often best discouraged. The surest way to secure their fulfilment is to fill the present with strenuous, humble work. 'Do the duty that is nearest thee.' 'The true apprenticeship for a ruler is to serve.' 'Act, act, in the living present.' The sheaves may come to bow down some day, but 'my sheaf' has to be cut and bound first, and the sooner the sickle is among the corn, the better.
But yet, on the other hand, let young hearts be true to their early visions, whether they say much about them or not. Probably it will be wisest to keep silence. But there shine out to many young men and women, at their start in life, bright possibilities of no ignoble sort, and rising higher than personal ambition, which it is the misery and sin of many to see 'fade away into the light of common day,' or into the darkness of night. Be not 'disobedient to the heavenly vision'; for the dreams of youth are often the prophecies of what God means and makes it possible for the dreamer to be, if he wakes to work towards that fair thing which shone on him from afar.
MAN'S PASSIONS AND GOD'S PURPOSE
'And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his
brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his
coat of many colours that was on him; And they took him,
and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there
was no water in it. And they sat down to eat bread: and
they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a
company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their
camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to
carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren,
What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal
his blood! Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites,
and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother
and our flesh. And his brethren were content. Then there
passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and
lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the
Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought
Joseph into Egypt. And Reuben returned unto the pit; and,
behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his
clothes. And he returned unto his brethren, and said,
The child is not; and I, whither shall I go? And they
took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and
dipped the coat in the blood; And they sent the coat of
many colours, and they brought it to their father; and
said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy
son's coat or no. And he knew it, and said, It is my
son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is
without doubt rent in pieces. And Jacob rent his clothes,
and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his
son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters
rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted;
and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my
son mourning. Thus his father wept for him. And the
Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer
of Pharaoh's and captain of the guard.'—GENESIS xxxvii. 23-36.
We have left the serene and lofty atmosphere of communion and saintship far above us. This narrative takes us down into foul depths. It is a hideous story of vulgar hatred and cruelty. God's name is never mentioned in it; and he is as far from the actors' thoughts as from the writer's words. The crime of the brothers is the subject, and the picture is painted in dark tones to teach large truths about sin.
1. The broad teaching of the whole story, which is ever being reiterated in Old Testament incidents, is that God works out His great purposes through even the crimes of unconscious men. There is an irony, if we may so say, in making the hatred of these men the very means of their brother's advancement, and the occasion of blessing to themselves. As coral insects work, not knowing the plan of their reef, still less the fair vegetation and smiling homes which it will one day carry, but blindly building from the material supplied by the ocean a barrier against it; so even evil-doers are carrying on God's plan, and sin is made to counterwork itself, and be the black channel through which the flashing water of life pours. Joseph's words (Gen. 1. 20) give the point of view for the whole story: 'Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good … to save much people alive.' We can scarcely forget the still more wonderful example of the same thing, in the crime of crimes, when his brethren slew the Son of God—like Joseph, the victim of envy—and, by their crime, God's counsel of mercy for them and for all was fulfilled.
2. Following the narrative, verses 23, 24, and 25 show us the poisonous fruit of brotherly hatred. The family, not the nation, is the social unit in Genesis. From the beginning, we find the field on which sin works is the family relation. Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, and now the other children of Jacob and Joseph, attest the power of sin when it enters there, and illustrate the principle that the corruption of the best is the worst. The children of Rachel could not but be hated by the children of other mothers. Jacob's undisguised partiality for Joseph was a fault too, which wrought like yeast on the passions of his wild sons. The long-sleeved garment which he gave to the lad probably meant to indicate his purpose to bestow on him the right of the first-born forfeited by Reuben, and so the violent rage which it excited was not altogether baseless. The whole miserable household strife teaches the rottenness of the polygamous relation on which it rested, and the folly of paternal favouritism. So it carries teaching especially needed then, but not out of date now.
The swift passage of the purely inward sin of jealous envy into the murderous act, as soon as opportunity offered, teaches the short path which connects the inmost passions with the grossest outward deeds. Like Jonah's gourd, the smallest seed of hate needs but an hour or two of favouring weather to become a great tree, with all obscene and blood-seeking birds croaking in its branches. 'Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,' Therefore the solemn need for guarding the heart from the beginnings of envy, and for walking in love.
The clumsy contrivance for murder without criminality, which Reuben suggested, is an instance of the shallow pretexts with which the sophistry of sin fools men before they have done the wrong thing. Sin's mask is generally dropped very soon after. The bait is useless when the hook is well in the fish's gills. 'Don't let us kill him. Let us put him into a cistern. He cannot climb up its bottle-shaped, smooth sides. But that is not our fault. Nobody will ever hear his muffled cries from its depths. But there will be no blood on our hands.' It was not the first time, nor is it the last, that men have tried to blink their responsibility for the consequences which they hoped would come of their crimes. Such excuses seem sound when we are being tempted; but, as soon as the rush of passion is past, they are found to be worthless. Like some cheap castings, they are only meant to be seen in front, where they are rounded and burnished. Get behind them, and you find them hollow.
'They sat down to eat bread,' Thomas Fuller pithily says: 'With what heart could they say grace, either before or after meat?' What a grim meal! And what an indication of their rude natures, seared consciences, and deadened affections!