The parent’s point of view
Norah Summers
July 27, 2017
Add to Favourites
Genesis 37: 1-4, 19-24, 29-36
1 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan.
2 This is the account of Jacob’s family line.
Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. 4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
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 wilderness, 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 ornate robe he was wearing – 24 and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
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 ornate robe back to their father and said, ‘We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.’
33 He recognised it and said, ‘It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.’
34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. 35 All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.’ So his father wept for him.
36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.
Well, what goes around comes around, as they say. Jacob, his mother’s favourite, now has a favourite son. He doesn’t conceal his favour, and his other sons are provoked to murderous jealousy.
Time and again we are told of the importance of family ties – ancestors and descendants and relationships are listed in detail. Not much mention of the females, usually, except in the tale, told almost as an aside, in which Jacob’s sons avenge a sister in a gruesome orgy of yet more deception and murder. Is there no end to it? Well, no, now they are plotting to kill Joseph, and break their father’s heart.
The twists of this everyday story of generations of a family could make a blockbuster TV series. They could call it Happy Families.
The deep emotional tensions produced within close groups, kin or not, are explored in much literature and drama, but real life can still be stranger than fiction. Favouritism, jealousy, deception, - all play out in countless lives, often under the guise of love. Human nature, we may say – but in truth we have a parent God who loves us all in a way we can scarcely comprehend.
God of love,
real love,
love without fear or favour,
love without measure,
love that accepts,
love that is slow to anger and full of mercy,
love that knows us with all our failings and still loves,
love that forgives and renews,
help us to love one another as you have loved us.
Login to comment.