Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
20^th of August 2023

Genesis 45:1-15

Normally when today’s readings appear in the Revised Common Lectionary, I preach on the gospel. How could I not focus on the story of the incredibly brave Canaanite woman who approached Jesus on behalf of her daughter, ‘tormented by a demon’ which I read as being mentally ill, and argued him into a wider appreciation of his mission? But last year I discovered something new about what I thought was the very well-known story of Joseph and his brothers, and decided that I must share it with you.

We only have two readings from the story of Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, in the lectionary, the story we heard last week of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers, and the reading we hear today. Let me try and summarise seven chapters of Genesis (and a two-hour musical) in a few minutes.

Joseph is the elder son of Rachel, Jacob’s favourite wife. He has a younger brother, Benjamin, also Rachel’s son, and another ten brothers, the sons of Rachel’s sister, Leah, and his father’s other wives, Bilhah and Zilpah, all older than him. Joseph is both first-born and younger; his name means ‘YHWH will add’ and he is a late addition to the family. Jacob ‘loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves’. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint, turned that ‘long robe with sleeves’ into a ‘coat of many colours.’ Joseph has dreams which seem to indicate that he will rule over his family, and this together with Jacob’s favouritism, angers his brothers so much that they sell him as a slave. They then take Joseph’s robe, dip it in blood, and tell Jacob that a wild beast has killed Joseph.

In Egypt Joseph becomes the slave of Potiphar, captain of the guard. Because God is with Joseph everything goes well for him, and Potiphar makes him overseer. But because Joseph is handsome Potiphar’s wife wants to have sex with him. Joseph refuses, and in retaliation she tells Potiphar that he tried to rape her. The enraged Potiphar has Joseph imprisoned, where again, because God is with him, ‘whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper’.

While Joseph is in jail he interprets the dreams of two of the Pharoah’s officers, his chief cupbearer and chief baker, telling the former that he will soon be restored to favour and the latter that he will be killed. When Pharoah starts having dreams about ‘seven sleek and fat cows,’ and ‘seven other cows, ugly and thin,’ and ‘seven ears of grain, plump and good,’ and seven other ears, ‘thin and blighted by the east wind,’ the cupbearer suggests that Pharaoh ask Joseph to interpret them. Joseph does, telling Pharaoh that ‘seven years of great plenty’ will be followed by ‘seven years of famine [that] will consume the land.’ He advises Pharoah to have produce stored up during the good years to cover the bad, and Pharaoh replies, ‘Since God has shown you all this, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command; only with regard to the throne will I be greater than you.’

During the widespread famine Jacob, in Canaan, learns that there is grain in Egypt. He sends all his sons, except young Benjamin, to buy some. Joseph is the official selling the grain and his brothers bow down before him; his earlier dreams realised. Joseph recognises his brothers but treats them as strangers, demanding that they bring their youngest brother to him to verify their identity. He sends them away with their grain, keeping Simeon as a hostage. Jacob does not want to send Benjamin to Egypt, lamenting to his sons, ‘I am the one you have bereaved of children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin. All this has happened to me!’ But the famine continues; Jacob’s sons go to buy grain again, and this time they take Benjamin with them knowing that otherwise they will get no grain.

While Joseph again tells his steward to give them grain, he also tells him to put his silver cup in the top of Bejamin’s sack. The steward does, and then after the brothers leave he chases after them and demands to search their sacks, finding the cup where he had hidden it. They all return to Joseph, who says that he is going to keep Benjamin as a slave since the cup was found in his possession. But Judah pleads, ‘Please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord in place of the boy; and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the suffering that would come upon my father.’ The brothers who were willing to kill or enslave Jacob’s favourite son Joseph, despite the anguish that would cause their father, are now willing to be enslaved themselves rather than cause their father more pain.

Today’s story begins with Joseph revealing himself to his brothers. He tells them not to be distressed, or angry with themselves because they sold him into slavery. It was God who sent Joseph before them ‘to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors’. Three times in his speech Joseph reassures his brothers that it was God who sent him to Egypt, not them, and that God did this to preserve their lives. The message is that God is sovereign, able to work out God’s purposes even when human actions seem to be working against God’s good purposes. A few weeks ago I mentioned a different translation of Romans 8:28, ‘we have knowledge that God is working for the good of all who love him, and for the good of all whom he has made known.’. In the story of Joseph we are shown God working for good in circumstances that are profoundly bad. We are not meant to believe that God forced Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery; they still had the freedom to respond to their annoying little brother with his irritating dreams in another way. We are meant to believe that had Joseph not been sold as a slave God would have used another way to preserve Jacob’s family. Walter Brueggemann says that in this story there is no conflict between human freedom and God’s sovereignty: ‘God will make use of all human action, but is domesticated or limited by no human action’.[1]

So far, so traditional. What I learned for the first time last year was the best translation of כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים ketonet passim, usually translated as ‘coat of many colours’ or as a ‘long robe with sleeves’. No one truly knows how to translate this phrase because it is only used twice in the Bible, here and in the Second Book of Samuel. When David’s son Amnon rapes his sister Tamar we are told that before the rape she had been wearing ‘a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times,’ which she tears to indicate her desolation at what has happened to her. (2 Samuel 13:18) That is the only other place the phrase is used, and in that book we get more detail. What Jacob gave Joseph was the sort of dress that David gave his virgin daughters.

From Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber, illustrated by Quentin Blake (1982).

If Jacob gave Joseph an elaborate, long-sleeved, royal robe more appropriate for daughters than for sons we are given another reason for his brothers’ hatred and jealousy. Not only was Joseph his father’s favourite, but he was also effeminate, the sort of pretty boy that manly farmhands who pastured their father’s flock would of course despise. Maybe Jacob saw something of himself in Joseph, while his twin ‘Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the field,’ ‘Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents’. (Genesis 25:27-8) Ancient Jewish rabbis described Joseph as the image of his beautiful mother; they also said that he painted his eyelids and walked with mincing steps.[2] No wonder Joseph was able to make his way in Egypt, when he could not survive on the land in Canaan.

But Bible scholar and actor Peterson Toscano can say all this much better than I can. Let us watch Esau’s telling of Joseph’s story: Joseph and the Amazing Gender Non-Conforming Bible Story – YouTube.

We know that God always makes use of the last and least for God’s purposes. That the nation of Israel came from the younger brother, Jacob, rather than elder brother Esau, is one example of that. What the story of Joseph tells us is that these ‘last and least’ have included someone whose gender could be described, in twenty-first-century terms, as non-binary, maybe someone like the drag queens who mobs are now protesting against here in Melbourne. Among its other messages,

Joseph’s story reminds us that is room for everyone, of every gender, and in every style of dress, in the community that Archbishop Desmond Tutu described as ‘the rainbow people of God’. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] Walter Bruggemann, Genesis (1982), p. 347.

[2] Alicia Ostriker, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (1994), p. 111.