History of Israel: Joseph and Judah

In this episode of Bible Backdrop, we start the narrative of Joseph and his sale to the Ishmaelites. Then we talk about a side story with Judah and about how that fits into the Joseph narrative. Why was Joseph sold so cheaply? What was Reuben's motive to rescue Joseph? What does the Bible include the story about Judah in the middle of the Joseph narrative? Listen to this episode to find out more.

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Transcript

The merchant looked back at his caravan to make sure nobody was getting left behind. The camels were loaded down with spices like balsam and myrrh; spices that would get very good prices in Egypt. The man eagerly anticipated the money he would make from this trip.

They had started out from Gilead and were making their way down the heavily used road that led them to their destination. They had to be careful, though, as caravans such as this made easy targets for bandits...sometimes hired by the Canaanites who wanted a piece of the action. The man was not worried though; these were not just merchants, but men who understood fighting and all of them were armed. So long as everyone stayed together, there wouldn’t be anything to fear.

Movement ahead caught the man’s eye and he gave the signal to slow down. Two of his men came up next to him to see why and they noticed it too...a group was walking towards them. They didn’t seem to be preparing for an attack, but they were definitely making their way towards the caravan. He counted 10 men and it appeared that one of them had his hands bound. He kept screaming and begging his captors to let him go, but they seemed to ignore him. When they got closer to the caravan, they stopped and one of them stepped forward. He had a strange accent, but spoke the Canaanite language. Would the man be interested in purchasing a slave? He could easily sell the lad in Egypt and make a nice profit. 

The leader raised an eyebrow. The bound young man looked very similar to the other 9 men and he had the same accent; he had to be related. Interesting...a blood feud. He looked the young man over. Looks healthy...strong...tanned from being outside. Yes...he would definitely fetch a good price in Egypt. And if they wanted to be rid of him, he could probably get him for cheap.

The merchant had been bartering for years and knew how to strike a deal in his favor. He offered 10 shekels of silver...slaves cost money to care and feed, plus it was a difficult journey. He may not survive. The man from the group said that would not be enough. Look at him! He is healthy and will fetch a good price. 10 shekels is a pittance, but he may consider 40. After some back and forth, they settled on 20 shekels of silver. The merchant knew he would easily get triple for someone so healthy.

The group gave the merchant the rope that bound the young man. His eye caught a coat that one of them was holding. It was very colorful and had many adornments. Now THAT would fetch a good price. Would they be interested in selling it? Unfortunately, no. They needed it for something else and would not be able to sell. The merchant shrugged. Well, you can’t win them all.

Leading away the slave, the young man kept calling out to the men but they were already walking out of earshot. The young man, Joseph, wept bitterly and the merchant let him without punishing him. This had to be a hard time and he wasn’t sure what the lad could expect when they got to Egypt.

Hello again everyone and welcome to the next episode of Bible Backdrop. Today, we continue our series on the history of Israel by following the story of Joseph. As we know from previous episodes, Joseph was the first born of Rachel and Jacob after years of not being able to conceive. Jacob’s love for Rachel led him to greatly favoring Joseph and this did not sit well with his brothers who were all older than him. The story gets played out in Genesis 37.

First, it mentions that when Joseph was 17, he was tending the flocks with his brothers and brought a bad report back to their father about them. While we immediately think he was tattling on his brothers, we see later that Jacob asks him to provide a report on them so he may have simply been doing his father’s wish. For his brothers, however, this is strike one.

Next, the Bible states that Jacob shows his favor to Joseph by giving him a multi-colored and heavily adorned coat. A tunic like this had multiple meanings. It went all the way to the wrist and ankles...not good for working, but good for managing those doing the work. It also was an outward sign of Jacob’s favoritism. It was a garment of privilege and status, princely standing, and birthright. Jacob was telling the others that Joseph would be the one receiving the birthright which would normally go to the firstborn, in this case Reuben. Recall, however, that Reuben slept with Bilhah, one of his father’s concubines. This will come into play later in the story. In either case, the coat is strike two against Joseph.

Finally, we see Joseph relaying a series of dreams he has to his brothers. While gathering wheat stalks, also called sheaves, Joseph’s appeared to stand upright while the brothers’ sheaves bowed down to his. Later, he has another dream where the sun, moon and 11 stars bow down to him. The meaning is clear to the brothers...that they will one day bow down to him. Needless to say, they aren’t too happy about this and it’s now strike 3 against Joseph. What’s odd about this is why Joseph felt the need to relay these dreams. Knowing he was the favorite may have inflated his ego and boosted his pride. This is a very dangerous place to go when dealing with a dysfunctional family such as Jacob’s.

After these events, Jacob asks Joseph to go check on his brothers who were tending the flocks near Shechem. Two things to note here. First, Joseph wasn’t sent with them in the first place. Jacob may have realized the way they felt about Joseph or he just wanted Joseph nearby. However, it’s been a while which brings us to the next point. He sends the only person he trusts to bring back a report and that is Joseph. So we see here that Joseph reporting on his brothers earlier in the chapter may have been at the urging of Jacob.

Joseph leaves and goes to Shechem but can’t find his brothers. He runs into someone who says they overheard them saying that they were going to Dothan. Joseph makes his way there and that’s when the trouble begins.

The brothers see him coming from a distance and the hatred is so intense that they decide to kill him. Again, Jacob’s family is an absolute mess and their hatred is such that they are willing to murder their own flesh and blood. Of course, Jacob has nobody to blame but himself for this and Joseph hasn’t helped matters either. However, Reuben steps up and tells the others to put him in a cistern instead of murdering him. Reuben’s motives are mixed though. The Bible says he was hoping to rescue him and bring him back to his father. He may have understood, better than the others, how badly Joseph’s murder would affect Jacob and he may have wanted to stop that from happening. It’s also likely that he would be willing to sell out his brothers to get back into Jacob’s good graces. Remember from earlier that Reuben committed a sin against Jacob by sleeping with Bilhah and he may have been ostracized as a result. By rescuing Joseph, his father may forgive him and put him in his place as heir and receive the birthright. Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan.

When Joseph approaches, the brothers grab him and take off the coat that was the gift from his father...the sign of his favoritism. They then throw him in the cistern and decide to have lunch.

Reuben must have left to go do something while the other brothers sat to eat. Joseph had to be pleading with them and if they were considering murdering him, this goes to show how truly callous they were about the whole thing. As they’re eating, they see a caravan of Ishmaelites going to Egypt. Judah gets the idea that instead of killing their brother and spilling his blood that they would just sell him as a slave. They pull Joseph out of the cistern and sell him to the caravan for 20 shekels of silver. This is a very low price for a slave. Judas was paid 30 silver pieces to betray Jesus which, at that time, was the price of a slave. The brothers were just happy to be rid of him.

Well...not all the brothers. When Reuben gets back, he finds out that Joseph is gone and is very upset. His plan to get back in his father’s good graces has now backfired. He would have done better to stand up to this brothers, but there was no value in doing that. He would have been a pariah to them and still in Jacob’s doghouse. Now there’s nothing to do but move ahead with the plan. They take Joseph’s coat, dip it in goats blood, probably tear it up a bit, and then present it to Jacob to confirm that it’s Joseph’s. Jacob is absolutely distraught and believes a wild animal has killed Joseph. The Bible says he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth which is a sign of extreme mourning. He probably feels guilty as he was the one that sent him off to check on his brothers. His favorite son, the first born of his beloved Rachel, is gone. His concubine from Rachel has been defiled by his own son. Now the only one that is left from Rachel is the youngest...Benjamin.

After Genesis 37 we get an interesting aside into a narrative on Judah. After Joseph is gone and Jacob is distraught, Judah decides to strike out on his own. It’s odd because it breaks up the narrative on Joseph. I’ll recap it for you here. After striking out on his own, Judah marries a Canaanite woman. You can already see where this is going. She bears him three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. When Er comes of age, he gets a wife for him and her name is Tamar. The Bible, though, says “But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.” Given some of the things we’ve seen Jacob’s children do, Er must have been pretty bad. In the tradition of the time, the widow of the eldest brother would then marry the next youngest brother and those children would be for the eldest brother so his name would not perish from the earth. We discussed this in the episode on weddings; it’s called levirate marriage. Onan understood this and knew that the children would gain the birthright instead of him. So anytime he slept with Tamar he “spilled his seed upon the ground…” This, too, was wicked in the Lord’s sight and he, too, was struck down.

Judah is now down two sons and probably believes that the problem is Tamar, so he tells her to go live in her father’s house until Shelah is old enough to marry. However, he has no intention to have Tamar marry Shelah as he believes that he will lose his last son. This causes quite a predicament though. He doesn’t want Shelah to marry Tamar, but he can’t marry him to someone else. That would be the equivalent of breaking a covenant and that wouldn’t end well for him or his family. His only hope is that something happens to Tamar, then he could marry Shelah to anyone else. And Tamar cannot marry anyone else. First of all, having already been married twice, nobody would marry her now. Second, she’s is still under the covering of Judah and cannot just marry anyone else.

After all this, Judah’s wife dies. As time goes on, Tamar sees that Shelah has become old enough to marry but she’s still living at her father’s house. She hatches a daring plan. Hearing that her father in law was going to a particular town, she changes clothes to look like one of the cult prostitutes that Canaan was known for. She wears a veil so that she won’t be recognized and waits where she knows he will pass by. Sure enough, Judah comes by and asks to sleep with her. He offers to pay with a young goat but she asks for a pledge since he doesn’t have the goat with him. She asks for his staff, seal and cord. These were very personal items and would not be copied. He agrees and he sleeps with her, apparently not removing the veil. She then leaves and goes back home. When Judah sends his friend with the goat and to retrieve his pledge, he can’t find her and the people have no idea who he’s talking about. 

Three months later, it becomes known to Judah that Tamar is pregnant. He demands that she be burned as a harlot and adulterer, but she says she is pregnant by the man who owns the staff, seal and cord she has in her possession. Oops.

Judah, it seems, is humbled by the experience. It appears that he fulfills the role in levirate marriage by bringing Tamar into his household but he does not sleep with her again. Tamar bears him twins named Perez and Zerah.

So why is this significant and located in the middle of the Joseph narrative? I think it points to two things. First, God is working his redemptive plan and nothing will stop it. The Messiah will come from the line of Judah and if the story had not gone the way it did, the line could have ended with Shelah. Instead, we see in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that Perez is listed in the lineage of Jesus. The story of Joseph is a part of that plan. He must go to Egypt to save his family...especially Judah. Therefore, this story fits into the Joseph narrative when we see it moving toward the birth of the Messiah and God’s redemption of mankind. Second, this episode humbled Judah quite a bit. He even says of Tamar “She is more righteous than I…” He may realize that he has not lived righteously, especially with regards to Joseph and Jacob. It seems that this is the beginning of a change of heart for Judah.

On that one, I think we’ll stop here for now. Next episode, we’ll look at what happens to Joseph while he’s in Egypt. We’re slowly but surely getting there. After that, we’ll look at Egyptian culture to better understand Joseph’s story. If you are enjoying Bible Backdrop, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review. If you would like to get in touch with the show, you can e-mail me at biblebackdrop@gmail.com. Word of mouth is still the best way for this podcast to grow, so please tell a friend and have them subscribe. Thank you again for listening and have a great week!