JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN

The story of Joseph is one of the best written sections in the Pentateuch, and most men have delighted in it as children. Its obvious charm lies in its rapid change of surroundings, its rush of incident, its vivid portrayal of character, its power to show men through what they do and say. But later than childhood men learn to acknowledge its singular power. On the surface it is a charming rendering of the tale of the younger brother who is driven from home by the jealousy of his elders, but who makes for himself and his whole nation a new home and security. It pictures this in a country where strong passions are at home, where men drink when they are thirsty and stab when they are angry. Yet throughout it, not obtruded and never forgotten, runs the larger purpose. It appears much as it appears in human life, not thrusting itself on the attention, but quietly offering itself to the observant heart. Because of its presence, what might otherwise appear trivial becomes significant, what might be interesting becomes negligible. It forms the thread, on which the incidents are strung.

1. The Larger Purpose.

The larger purpose is the way in which a people came to be, and to be conscious of itself as possessing a peculiar heritage. Hitherto Scripture has told about men and their fortunes, about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and how they lived in Palestine. Now, one begins to feel the wider horizons, and to foresee the larger movements of Sinai and the conquest. Soon the story will deal with a law which is to govern a nation, and with a nation which is set in a country of its own and which has its own institutions. Soon the great figures will stand out leading the tramp of a people. But before that comes into view, the story tells of the common ideals which made Israel a nation at all. It relates how they went down into Egypt; but what interests the historian is how they were capable of remaining themselves there, and why they were capable of following any one who would lead them out again to a country, where they could be free to develop their peculiar culture and their distinctive faith. They went into Egypt, but Egypt could not keep them, for Egypt could not assimilate them and could not content them. They remained Israelites under that alien sky and in that strange land, waiting till God gave them a land in which they could be altogether themselves. Famine drove them down, and the land of the Nile fed them and gave them hospitable shelter; but they had another famine which Egypt could not satisfy. So they remained Israel, aliens in a strange though hospitable land.

They were Israel, because of what God had been to their fathers. He had given them something which marked them off as His own. The historian believed that God had given them that distinctive character in order to make the record of the nation of Israel the story of God's widening purpose of redemption. To remain true to the best of all their past was a greater thing than the ordinary patriotic duty of loyalty to national traditions, it was to remain true to God and to His will with and for them. So he told the story of Joseph and his brethren, not merely because it was a charming story in itself, nor because it had gathered round the names of some of Israel's forefathers, but because it could make clear how God had a purpose for mankind through this little people, and how it was the character which came from serving that purpose that preserved them from extinction. They went down into Egypt, but they could not remain there, and their unwillingness to remain was due in part to the fact that God summoned them out, in part it was due to the fact that they were able to hear His summons. A later historian was to tell how God gave them a law and a leader: this historian tells how there was given them the temper which submits to a law and accepts a leader. A law and a leader are so useless without a prepared people.

To-day we read this account of the beginning of the national life out of the Bible, and the Bible is to us something quite apart from all other writings, alike in its origin and in its outlook. What it writes about is sacred history, and that is thought of as wholly distinct in character from any other kind of history. There is a certain gain in recognising that, when this story was written, it took up the tales which were told in Israel about their national past and wove them together into the unity which we have. It is possible here and there to detect how the writer has owed his material to different sources. He took the stories which men related about the deeds of their great men, and he showed their ideal elements and their higher side. Probably his account in its new shape became the source from which the maidens and young men of Israel learned all that they knew of their great national past. They read in this story of how Israel began, and, even as they read, they learned unconsciously how without its faith Israel would never have begun and could never have continued. They could not think about the great past of the nation without thinking of the faith which had made it great. They could not read about the heroes who had built up Israel without learning what were the qualities which had made them lit to lead Israel. And, as they found how faith in God kept their people through some of its hardest experiences, they looked for more from Him.

2. The Quarrel.

There are many dark and dreadful things in human nature, but the darkest and the most dreadful is envy; and what makes envy so dark and so dreadful is that it is in human nature. It is not the vice of a few men, it is the vice of all men.

It leads to ugly results, such as the crime of which the ten brethren made themselves guilty, when they caught their younger brother and having lowered him into a cistern, went away for their dinner as though nothing had happened. They could not bear the idea that he might some day prove himself fit to be the chief over them. His dream and his naive report of the dream were not the cause of their conduct to him. No man ever comes to be the chief over his brethren, because he has had a dream in which he saw the other sheaves bowing down to his sheaf; nor were they so childish as to believe it. A man comes to be chief, because he is better fitted to control and guide the destinies of the family. The brethren sold Joseph into Egypt, not because he had had some boyish dreams which with a youth's self-conceit he had told abroad, but because they were anxious to get rid of the sight of his intolerable capacity. Envy hates capacity, because it sees in such a quality nothing except the certainty of being put into the shade by it. And at the prompting of envy all ties of kindly humanity and brotherhood are forgotten.

The ugliest result of the vice, however, is its unseen effect. It darkens the whole house of life to the men who cherish it. Let a man once admit it into his heart and keep it there, and it will banish all sweet wholesomeness from his nature and make much good impossible to him. Love and pity become alien to his soul, contentment with his own lot and a just pride in his own work disappear from his thoughts, justice begins to be twisted in its meaning, and all fair dealing grows difficult towards the man who is envied. When these things and such as these are occupying the house of life, God has not much place there, nor have his fellow-men a great consideration.

The brethren were men, when they did this thing, for envy is the peculiar vice of our prime. While boys are still at school, they are comparatively free from it. They can be proud then of the lad who makes the school team count for something, though his prowess at games puts the others into the shade. They can be gratified at the glory which comes to the school through sending out a fine scholar, though he left the others nothing except second prizes. They are greatly pleased to be seen in their hero's society. But when a man steps out beyond his contemporaries, he has to find out sadly enough that he rarely stands on the old footing with them. Let a man outstrip in the race those who began life with him, let him have a larger house or a little more success, and they do not meet him with the old ease of manner. They say that they are waiting to see whether he has not changed in his attitude to them, or will show himself the same as he once was. And even while they say such a thing to themselves, they betray how they expect to find him different, and so help to make him different.

It makes no real difference whether another man's promotion is at the cost of others: it does not even matter, though through his success he may have become better able to give help and encouragement. In every case men do well to be on their guard against the dreadful power of envy. There is no reason for it; there is no reason in it. It is both the basest and the most unreasonable passion which torments the lives of men, but that does not make it any less universal. It is the vice which makes one most sure that there is a radical twist in the soul of man.

The other vices can offer plausible reasons for coming to haunt the spirit and turn it from its high way. The sins of the flesh can offer some excuse for turning men to pursue base ends. In many such cases the devil can come and does come, robed as an angel of light, promising a great deal and really having something to give. But envy is a sin of the soul, which offers nothing, no personal advantage, no help, no promise. It relies on its own naked power, and it needs no more.

It creeps into many places. Men band themselves together for a good cause; and envy, which broke up this family and set the ten brothers against the one, will break up a goodly company of apostles. It is often wise that a man should remind himself how every power, which his fellow-worker is developing in connection with a cause, in which both of them believe, is being used to further the cause they love and is a means to its swifter victory. He does well to remind himself, since otherwise he might find himself envious of a power for good which has been denied to himself. There are few things darker than the intrigues and jealousies which spring up inside the fellowship of those who have banded themselves together to help forward the world.

The ten brothers envied Joseph, and being primitive men, they dropped him into a cistern, and afterwards, when the opportunity was offered, sold him into slavery. If they had been more civilised, they would have found some more delicate means of effecting their end. But one thing which Scripture does is to take the naked and primitive vices, and show these bringing about results which modern conditions of life make impossible. It suggests how, if the man be left unchanged, his means may alter, but his aims will remain the same. Envy makes men want to prove themselves superior to the envied man, though it were only after the clumsy fashion of the bludgeon.

There Scripture leaves the ten brothers for a time, and turns to follow the fate of Joseph. It does that, not merely because the story begins to reveal wider horizons and to deal with the future of the race, nor merely because Joseph, through his contact with Egypt, has a large and fruitful future both for himself and for his people. It does this, because there is a good reason why Joseph has a large and fruitful future. He is a wholesome man. The ten brothers have suffered the rank weed of envy to govern and possess their souls: out of natures, which are so possessed, no large or wholesome thing can spring. It is only possible to win a generous and gracious future out of something which in itself is more clean and rich. What the ten men need, in order to make Israel a name by which the world shall bless, is more than the land of Palestine or a supply of corn for the time of drought; it is a new spirit, which shall weld them together, not in a mutual conspiracy, but in a brotherhood. Had they been made sure of Palestine in their present temper and preserved from the coming famine, they would only have given the world what it has already. The narrator follows Joseph into Egypt, because from there he brought back or sent back more than corn. He asserted there the faith, which knows what to do with corn, and the brotherhood, which can master envy and revenge. He gave the spirit which could make Israel a nation and a blessing to the world in which God made its work possible.