Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams. (Gen. 37:20)
Nobody fights like brothers and sisters—family closeness seems to rub salt in the wounds of relationships. Genesis tells of several great brotherly rivalries: Cain and Abel, Isaac and his half-brother Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. In this last story, Joseph's story, eleven brothers lined up against one.
The pace of Genesis slows down when it gets to Joseph, with the book devoting far more attention to his life story than anyone else's. Little wonder—Joseph lived one of the great adventure stories of history. A stowaway, slave, and condemned prisoner, he rose to become the number-two ruler of the greatest empire on earth. The saga all began with the near-tragic event recorded in this chapter.
As his father's acknowledged favorite, Joseph seemed curiously insensitive to the potential of his brothers' jealousy. He may even have been flaunting status by relating two dreams of his family bowing down to him. At the least, he alienated his brothers so strongly that they decided to take revenge.
The brothers' first plan involved murder. As a last-second thought, they sold Joseph instead to traveling merchants on their way to Egypt. Neither the brothers nor Joseph's grieving father, Jacob—he swallowed their story of a wild animal attack—ever expected to see him again.
God, however, had other plans. Joseph's strange dreams, which got him into so much trouble at home, would prove to be his salvation in the faraway land of Egypt.
Life Question: Have you ever experienced God bringing good out of what at first seemed like a disaster?
