The Joseph Story Ep. 4

This week we take a close look at Joseph’s scheme (dissembling) that he puts his brothers through. The scheme serves the purpose of forcing the brothers to experience the suffering they caused Joseph in an “eye-for-an-eye” type justice. But it also forces them to relive their original crime, which unearths their feelings of guilt.

In other words, Joseph scheme causes his brothers to come to an intimate knowledge of the truth of what they did to him, but then it also opens up the possibility for forgiveness, reconciliation, and even communion.

Joseph’s Scheme

In Genesis 42 the brothers are forced to go down to Egypt to buy grain because of the famine. When they arrive Joseph immediately recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. After asking them where they are from, Joseph accuses them of being spies who have come to see the “nakedness” of the land. He then throws them into prison.

This is an obvious doubling and reversal of what the brothers did to Joseph at the beginning of the story. Joseph’s scheme or plot echoes the brothers murderous conspiring—an eye for an eye.

The brothers threw Joseph down into a pit. That pit led to Joseph being brought down to Egypt where he eventually is thrown into prison, which he associates with being in the pit. Now, the brothers are in the same place they put Joseph. And, what’s more, they have been thrown into prison after being falsely accused of a crime (with sexual overtones: i.e. “nakedness” in Scripture consistently refers to sexual misconduct). This is precisely what happened to Joseph in Potiphar’s house. He was thrown into prison after being falsely accused of sexual misconduct with Potiphar’s wife.

The brothers are figuratively suffering an eye-for-an-eye punishment for what they did to Joseph. But this initiates another doubling in the story. Joseph’s next move causes the brothers to relive their original crime.

Joseph says that in order for the brothers to prove they are not spies they must travel back to Canaan and bring their youngest brother Benjamin back with them. This will show him that they were telling the truth about who they are. But, of course, this is causing the brothers to relive the sins of their past: They must now bring the other son of Rachel down to Egypt, just as they did with Joseph.

The narrative gives many signs of the doubling of the story, but this is the most striking: When they set off to travel back to Egypt with Benjamin we are told that they carry with them gifts of balm, honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds (Gen. 43:11). These are the very goods that Ishmaelite traders had with them when they took Joseph down to Egypt twenty years earlier (Gen. 37:25).

Finally, Joseph’s plot has one last test in it. Not only are the brothers forced to experience Joseph’s suffering and relive their past sins, they are also given an opportunity to perpetrate a new crime. Joseph has his silver goblet hidden in Benjamin’s sack of grain. When it is discovered Joseph says that Benjamin must become his slave in Egypt. Will the brothers do to Benjamin what they did to Joseph all those years earlier? Will they try to be rid of another favored son?

God’s (Hellish) Judgment

Joseph’s scheme, has put the brothers through an eye-for-an-eye judgment. Yet, there is an obvious way that we cannot read this. Jesus says in Matt. 5:38-39 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

Both Exodus and Leviticus spell out laws like this:

* Exodus 21:23-25 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

* Leviticus 24:19-20 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.

Jesus is not overruling the laws given in the Torah, rather he is spelling out the spirit of these laws. So, Joseph’s scheme cannot be read as a how-to manual for getting even with your family.

In Matthew 5 Jesus is not saying that Christians should let people take advantage of them, rather the point is that Christians must trust God to be the one to make things right. Paul says in Romans 12 that we are not to repay anyone evil for evil. Live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath for it is written: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

God is the only one who can make eye-for-an-eye judgments. But we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. The result of Joseph’s scheme is the beginning of a process of reconciliation between brothers. Can we imagine that God’s eye-for-an-eye judgments might be up to the same thing? It hardly needs to be pointed out that justice is not served simply by repaying evil for evil. If you gouge my eye out in a fight, it does not actually repair or heal me to then have your eye gouged out.

So, what’s the wisdom in eye-for-an-eye justice? It is not merely that it is punitive or retributive justice—which is not really justice at all. The glimmer of truth in this kind of justice is that it can bring some of the truth of what you have done to me to bear on you so that you reckon with the harm you’ve inflicted.

So, why is the Joseph story given to us? Perhaps to gain an insight, a foretaste into how God’s judgment might work.

George MacDonald captures the true spirit of God’s justice:

“Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.”

Simply annihilating evil does not overcome it. Annihilation is an evil act. So to annihilate evil is to overcome evil with evil. Evil is victorious in that case. God is much better than that. He does not repay evil for evil. God overcomes evil by replacing it with his goodness. The true overcoming of evil is only with the good.

This story bears a faint witness to this truth. By Joseph’s scheme the brothers live with their evil long enough that they finally choose to do good. They—figuratively—replace the evil they did to Joseph with what they do for Benjamin. This is the slaying of evil.

I think that can even help us envision how God’s judgment might work. Of course I’m not claiming that this is the method by which God will put everything right, but it does help free up our imaginations to envision how a perfectly good God might bring his restorative justice to bear on the evils that have taken place in his world.

Hebrews says that it is appointed unto man once to die and then comes judgment. Perhaps Joseph’s scheme gives us a foretaste of what God’s (hellish) judgment might be like.

In George MacDonald’s fairytale Lilith (a story about the queen of hell!), people who have died are given the opportunity to confront what they’ve done in their lives and come to acknowledge the truth of their sins and the evils they’ve done to others. It is judgment. In fact, it’s hell. It’s terrifying. But the point is that this is a healing and restoring judgment. It is surgery. Each person has to come to see their own wrongs for themselves. They have to lay down on the operating table.

This is where C.S. Lewis got his famous idea of hell: That the doors of hell are locked for the inside.

This is Lewis’s idea of hell, too. The gates of hell are locked from the inside. Lewis has made a very appealing case that God does not send people to hell, but rather people choose hell for themselves. The doors are locked, but they are locked from the inside.

While Lewis got his take on hell from MacDonald, they ultimately disagree. Both Lewis and MacDonald agree that God’s desire is that none should perish. Where they disagree is not in God’s desire but in God’s capacity. Lewis believed that some people will never come around. Even if hell is a never-ending repeating cycle of eye-for-an-eye justice in which sinners are being shown the truth of their sins and given the opportunity to make right what was wrong, Lewis believed that some people will choose to stay locked in that loop. As Lewis himself says, in the end love loses. God does not get what he wants.

What God desire he cannot bring about because many human beings will not cooperate with what God wants.

MacDonald had issues with that. For one, it makes it so that evil is actually undefeatable. It makes evil out to be an equal opposite power to God that in the end God cannot do anything about.

But, of course, we have many passages in Scripture that seem to suggest that God will annihilate all evil rather than purge it.

Whether you go with Lewis or MacDonald on the final issue, I think the Joseph story can at least bear a faint witness to how ultimately good the (even hellish) justice of God really is.

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