Day 10 tot 12 out of 312, from the Blended Bible Experience reading plan: page 51 to 64 of the Books of the Bible.
Today's reading is about yet another dysfunctional family: the story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob loves Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of his beloved Rachel, much more than all his other sons and once again it causes a lot of trouble. Joseph doesn't help matters by bragging about his dreams of future success and telling his father "a bad report" about his brothers. Nobody like a tattletale!
Joseph is clearly one of the heroes of Genesis. But I never quite warmed to him. Sure, I felt for him, being almost killed by his own brothers and then being sold to foreigners as a slave. And Joseph sure is a capable manager, he's successful in whatever he is asked to do. Working in Potifar's service, managing things in prison, handling the food shortage in Egypt, Joseph is doing a great job everywhere! And with a little help from God he even is great at explaining dreams.
So why don't I like him? I don't like how he treats the Egyptians. When there's plenty of grain he collects most of their food, probably without paying the farmers for it. When the famine comes he proceeds to sell their own food back to them. Joseph may be a shrewd businessman, but I don't feel this is entirely fair.
As for everything he puts his brothers through, well, they've only got themselves to blame for that. But he's also punishing his father when he demands that his younger brother Benjamin be brought to him. Seems to me he didn't think this through.
What I love about the story of Joseph is that those brother of Joseph, all scoundrels, become the founding fathers of God's people. Those First Testament heroes were all very human, doing all kinds of terrible - but very human stuff. It's not exactly God-like to be so jealous of you sibling that you want to kill him or sell him into slavery. But it seems that the God of the First Testament is content to work with people as flawed as that. And that gives me hope!
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