JOSEPH SOLD TO THE ISHMAELITES.
We have just seen that Joseph’s brethren, moved by envy, sold him to
some Ishmaelite merchants, by whom he was carried into Egypt, and there
sold as a slave. Regardless of their brother’s cries, and deaf to all
that affection might whisper, the future patriarchs would make him the
victim of their hatred; and it is deeply instructive to notice how many
sins are contained in this one transaction.
1. There was a sin committed by brothers against a brother. The ties of
nature were outraged. Affection was trampled in the dust,—it was in
truth cast into the pit beside Joseph,—it had no power in the hearts of
those hating and hateful men. Surely such a case occurring in the Bible
so soon after the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, was designed by
God to show us the terrible ravages wrought by sin in the soul. Just as
war, with its bloody work, has often deflowered the fairest regions of
the earth, does fierce passion waste the soul of man.
2. There was sin committed against their father. What although the
patriarch should suffer uttermost woe when bereft of his favourite son!
or what although his heart should break when the tidings reached him
that Joseph had been cruelly devoured by a wild beast! It was not to
such things that those men would listen: it was to their own malicious
hearts; and, cost what it might to their father, their brother must
either die or become a slave. You may assure the sinner that the wages
of sin is death,—you may tell him that agony for ever is attached to
guilt by God’s decree; but all that will not turn the wicked from his
way. God must turn us, or we rush unchecked upon ruin.
3. In the sin of Joseph’s brethren there was falsehood, and that to a
parent. Those men deliberately plotted to deceive Jacob, by showing him
the coat of Joseph dipped in the blood of a kid. They utterly forgot
that God saw them; they listened only to their own hearts; and sin was
added to sin, that their passion might be indulged. To the crime of
murder—the murder of a brother—which some of them were willing to
perpetrate, they added that of deception, deep in itself and sad in all
its results. Now in all this they were just showing us more and more
clearly what iniquity lurks or reigns in the heart of man, till the
Almighty Spirit make all things new.
4. In that sin there was spite, and that against a brother. We have
seen that there is reason to believe (Gen. xxxvii. 2) that Joseph had
formerly blamed some of the practices in which his brethren indulged
while they were from under their parent’s eye, and that had provoked
their antipathy: “They hated him” when they saw that his father loved
him. And here again we see one reason why men have always ranked envy
among the vilest and the meanest of the sins.
5. It need scarcely be added that there was cruelty in that crime.
Those brothers were deaf to the cries of the stripling; the majority of
them were not unwilling to put him to death amid lingering
agonies,—that is, to leave him to die of hunger in a pit, unheeded and
unrelieved. When we see fools making a mock at sin, and multitudes
seeking in it the only pleasure or the only gratification which they
know, surely that is because they do not know the dark depths into
which it sinks them!
6. And, to name no more, there was in that sin the love of money, which
is the root of all evil. Those unnatural brothers, blinded by hatred,
and eager to get the offender out of the way, actually sold him for a
slave. They valued gold or silver more than their brother’s life, his
happiness, or his affection. He might have to wear chains, or carry
burdens heavier than he could bear; but what of all that, if their
hatred was indulged, and Joseph put out of their sight! Till then they
could not be at ease. His deportment was a rebuke to them. He seemed
holier than they, and because of that he must suffer; they must
contract guilt upon guilt. Now, is not this, in spirit, the very same
kind of sin as that which led Satan to tempt and ruin man?
Such are some of the views suggested by this sad transaction—the
selling of Joseph. But little did his brothers know that these sins
would find them out. Little did they expect that even upon earth they
would see in Joseph all that his dreams had predicted,—themselves at
his feet, and doing him obeisance with all their heart. And little did
they know that God was to be with their brother of a truth, to bless
him and make him a blessing. But so it was; and Joseph became a type of
Jesus, persecuted by his brothers, but exalted by his God; buried out
of sight, yet raised to a throne; the victim of malignity at man’s
hand, but beloved of God, and therefore set on high.