Contemplative Bible Reading

Genesis 37:19-32

¹⁹ “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. ²⁰ “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”

²¹ When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. ²² “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the desert, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.

²³ So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the richly ornamented robe he was wearing- ²⁴ and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.

²⁵ As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.

²⁶ Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? ²⁷ Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.

²⁸ So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.

²⁹ When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. ³⁰ He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”

³¹ Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. ³² They took the ornamented robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”

This is the history of how Joseph’s brothers sold him as a slave. That was a terrible thing to do to anyone let alone to your own brother. Then again, Joseph was an arrogant little…be that as it may.

I noticed that even for a group of brothers who were doing terrible things to their little brother, they did have a sense of right and wrong.

Wrong:

• shed your brother’s blood

Right:

• toss your brother into a cistern
• sell your brother as a slave
• lie to your dad about everything

I mean, there was a limit to what the brothers would do to Joseph. It is odd how the brothers talked themselves into a new system of right and wrong. They were going to get back at Joseph; they thought about it a while, and they invented a new system of morals.

I suppose that we do the same today. When there is something that we really want, we invent a new system of morals to use, even if we only use that new system for a little while. Sometimes God’s sense of right and wrong just gets in our way.

God, help me to use your rights and wrongs and not my own.