Genesis Notes: Joseph Sold By His Brothers

GENESIS 37
Joseph's story is of the best known in the Bible and yet there is so much to learn that I had never considered. I like the "big picture" personal message that is there about cooperating with God's plan as He brings good out of what we see as bad things.

Joseph and His Brethren Welcomed by Pharaoh, James Tissot

It is one of the great ironies and wonders of the way God works that the very thing Evil hopes will derail His plans, turns out to usher those plans in. The rest of this story will show that what the brothers meant for ill—throwing Joseph into a pit and selling him into slavery—is the thing that God uses to accomplish what they hoped to make impossible, his reigning over them. This should remind us of the way God took the very Satan could do to Jesus and turned it into the door to eternal life, the door that Satan was trying to slam forever. In this way God uses even evil people and intentions as instruments of good. “So too,” says the Great, “when one wants to avoid the divine will, then is when it is fulfilled” (Moralia, 6,18,20).

All quotes from Genesis, Part II: God and His Family. This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.