Bible Study Follow Up: Joseph and his brothers

Jeff did a great job teaching the lesson Tuesday night about the powerful life of Joseph, as told in Genesis 37 and 39-45.

The thing that hit me as I was thinking about the lesson again last night was the brutality of the brothers, especially this passage from verses 24 and 25 of chapter 37: “Then 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 a meal…” They hated their brother so much that they were willing to consider killing him or leaving him for dead in a pit, and ultimately ended up selling him into captivity. In our last lesson, we discussed these SAME brothers rising up in anger and avenging the honor of their sister, Dinah. They could be very protective but they could also be very cruel. People can be so complex; I think that’s one of the key lessons we’ve learned as we’ve gone through Genesis. We all have a capacity to do good and obey God, but we also have the capacity to be wicked and disobedient (an in the case of the brothers cruel and violent). As the poet Walt Whitman famously wrote:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

But we see over and over again, the blessings of sticking with God and the troubles that arise as a result of turning away from him.

Finally, consider this: Joseph was sent by his father to see about his brothers, but his brethren hated him because he said he would rule over them. He was sold out for some silver and sent to Egypt. They assumed he’d be dead and gone, “…then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” But they ultimately found themselves bowing down to him when the time of famine came. And instead of returning their cruelty toward him with cruelty of his own, he instead he loves them and extends mercy and invites them to live with him in the abundance of the palace.
Does that sound kinda sorta maybe like anyone else you might have heard of?

This was the last session in our study on Genesis and a great way to go out. Anybody have thoughts/comments to share about anything we read/learned/discussed from the creation to Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel to Noah and the flood, to the Tower of Babel, to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Esau, Dinah, and Joseph?
I’m just constantly amazed at how recognizable so much of the behavior and attitudes are from thousands of years ago thousands of miles away to our lives today.