Joseph Sold into Egypt

The brothers were glad as soon as they saw their brother coming toward them — not, indeed, as at the coming of a near relative, or of someone sent by their father, but as at the coming of an enemy whom divine providence had delivered into their hands. They resolved to kill him at once and not let slip the opportunity in front of them. But when Reuben, the eldest of them, saw what they meant to do, and that they had agreed together to carry it out, he tried to hold them back. He showed them the monstrous thing they were about to do, and how horrible it was. Such an act, he said, would look wicked in the sight of God and impious before men even if they killed someone not related to them; but it would look far more criminal and detestable to be seen to have murdered their own brother. By that act their father would be wronged in the slaughter of his son, and the mother too would be thrown into distress as she grieved that her son had been taken from her — and not by a natural death either. [a]

He begged them to let these very things shame them, to weigh up what they would suffer once so good and so young a boy was dead, and to hold back from the deed. They should also fear God, who was already watching and witnessing what they were planning against their brother. God would love them if they held back from this act and turned to repentance and amendment; but if they went ahead and did the deed, every kind of punishment would overtake them from God for the murder of their brother, since they would be defiling his providence, which is present everywhere and does not overlook what is done, whether in deserts or in cities — for wherever a person is, there he ought to suppose that God is also. He told them further that their consciences would be their enemies if they attempted so wicked an act, and that they could never escape them, whether it was a good conscience or the kind they would carry within them once they had killed their brother.

On top of all he had already said, he added that it was not right to kill a brother even if he had wronged them, and that it is a good thing to forget the actions of such close kin, even where they seem to have done wrong. But they were about to kill Joseph, who had done them no harm at all, and whose tender age ought rather to win him mercy and move them to unite in caring for his safety. The reason for killing him made the act itself much worse, since they had resolved to do away with him out of envy at his future prosperity — a prosperity they would naturally share while he enjoyed it, since they were not strangers to him but his nearest relatives, and could count what God gave to Joseph as their own. And they ought to believe that God’s anger would fall on them all the more severely for this reason: they would be killing the one God had judged worthy of the prosperity that was to be hoped for, and by murdering him they would make it impossible for God to give it to him.

Reuben said these and many other things, and pleaded with them, trying to turn them away from murdering their brother. But when he saw that his words had not softened them at all, and that they were hurrying to do the deed, he advised them at least to lessen the wickedness they were about to commit by the way they did away with Joseph. It would have been better, he said, if they had taken his first advice; but since the decision to kill their brother had won out, they would not be so grossly guilty if they would be persuaded to follow his present advice. It would give them what they were so eager for, but in a way not so very bad — lighter, given the strait they were in. So he begged them not to kill their brother with their own hands, but to throw him into the pit close by and let him die there. They would gain this much: they would not stain their own hands with his blood. The young men readily agreed. So Reuben took the boy, tied him to a rope, and let him down gently into the pit, for it had no water in it at all. When he had done this, he went off to look for pasture fit for feeding his flocks. [d] But Judah, another of Jacob’s sons, saw some Arab merchants, descendants of Ishmael, carrying spices and Syrian goods out of the land of Gilead to the Egyptians. After Reuben had gone, he advised his brothers to draw Joseph out of the pit and sell him to the Arabs; for if he died among strangers a long way off, they would be free of the pollution of his blood. They agreed to it. So they drew Joseph up out of the pit and sold him to the merchants for twenty minas. He was then seventeen years old. But Reuben came to the pit at night, meaning to save Joseph without his brothers knowing. When he called to him and got no answer, he was afraid they had killed him after he left, and he reproached his brothers for it. But when they told him what they had done, Reuben stopped his mourning. [e]

After Joseph’s brothers had done this to him, they considered how to escape their father’s suspicions. They had taken from Joseph the coat he was wearing when he came to them, at the time they let him down into the pit. So they decided to tear the coat to pieces, dip it in goat’s blood, and carry it to show their father, so that he would believe wild beasts had killed him. When they had done this they came to the old man — but not before news of what had happened to his son had already reached him. They said that they had not seen Joseph and did not know what misfortune had befallen him, but that they had found his coat bloody and torn to pieces; from this they suspected that he had fallen among wild beasts and perished, if this was indeed the coat he wore when he left home.

Jacob had before held some better hope that his son had only been taken captive. But now he gave up that idea and took the coat as clear proof that he was dead, for he remembered well that this was the coat Joseph had on when he sent him to his brothers. From then on he mourned the boy as dead, as though he had been the father of no one else, and took no comfort in the rest. He had been struck by this loss even before he met Joseph’s brothers, for he too had guessed that wild beasts had killed Joseph. He sat clothed in sackcloth and in heavy grief, so that he found no relief when his sons comforted him, nor did his pain ease with the passing of time.