BibleProject - Joseph the Exile – Genesis E7

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Joseph is one of the Bible’s most famous characters, and in the Genesis scroll, his story is a climactic moment in the theme of exile that spans the whole book. In this episode, Tim and Jon dive into the fourth and final movement of Genesis, a narrative rich with patterns, repeated words, and the presence of God even in the pit.  View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (00:00-11:30)Part two (11:30-24:45)Part three (24:45-41:51)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience the literary themes and movements we’re tracing on the podcast in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Directions” by Blue Wednesday X ShopanShow produced by Cooper Peltz. Edited by Dan Gummel and Zach McKinley. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

In the Skrull of Genesis, we meet a young man named Joseph. He's a mere boy, and he's got 10 older brothers, and he tells his brothers a dream. Joseph just had a dream about being exalted up high over his brothers over the sun when it stars. Now his brothers, they don't like this. In fact, they kind of hate Joseph for it. And they scheme up a plan to kill him. And while they scheme, they throw their brother Joseph in a pit. Down into the pit below the ground. You think you're meant to be a ruler of the sky? Well now you're a dweller of the pit from the heavens to the grave. He goes from one end of the cosmos to the other, so to speak.

Today, we begin the fourth movement of Genesis. It's all about Joseph, and we're tracing the theme of exile. It's an important theme in these stories. Joseph's descent to the pit is descent to Egypt as a slave, are all gonna be accumulating as images of his exile from his family, exile from his royal, special status, exiled from the love of his father and from the promised land, going down. You probably know what it feels like to be separated

or left out, to be set aside, or to be banished from relationships. Exile is a form of death. And in these stories, we're going to explore exile in one of the most extreme forms. This is about someone who's kidnapped, separated from their family family in a very vulnerable state, sold to traders who take them to a place where they have no identity, no money, no

family. This is about human trafficking. I'm John Collins and this is Bible Project Podcast and today I talk with Tim McE about the fourth movement of the Genesis Scroll, the stories of Joseph. And as we read them, we trace the theme of exile. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hello Tim. Hey, John, hello there. We are here again in the Bible together. Yeah.

As we do. And in the Genesis scroll in particular, which you think, man, are these guys ever going to move on with their lives? Hey, but we are making some progress. Yeah, we are moving on. We're going through some stories that you and I have never talked about before. We're gonna, yeah, be actually finishing out in today's episode and the next one, our journey through the

Genesis Scroll. And maybe just as a quick note, somebody might notice that is just John and I here is we're going through Genesis. Karissa has been a part really amazing to have a part of the conversations about the paradigm that released last year and then the early parts of the Genesis scroll. Karissa has refocused her attention on some other projects here, a Bible project, and so it's just gonna be John and I finishing out the Genesis scroll here. And yeah, we've never talked about the Joseph story, sorry, Joseph and his brothers, but dude, oh my goodness, there's so much awesomeness going on here.

So we, maybe let's quick set the table, big picture. We're going through the Genesis scroll because early in 2022, we released the Bible Project app, and one of the features is about these guided, interactive reading experiences where we're taking people through the Torah in 2022, just five books of the Hebrew Bible in the year. Yeah, so manageable. So manageable, but it's these five books that if you are bringing through the Bible,

they're the hardest. They're really hard and you probably aren't going to get through them. But if we could do it together with our friends, I think it's going to be a more rich experience. Yes, let's do it together. So just real quick, the original organization of the biblical scrolls was not done through chapters and verses. Even those, that's how we now encounter biblical books in the Bible. They were originally designed as scrolls and not with chapter and verse numbers,

but the biblical authors used repetition of words, patterning of stories, the cycling of themes to indicate the flow and the design of the content of the scrolls. So we are trying our best to follow the cues of the authors, and in the Genesis scroll, if you pay attention, has been organized into four large movements about the cycle of generations of God's Eden blessing and his covenant promises kind of passing on from generation to end generation. And we are now in this conversation

and the next focusing on the fourth literary movement of Genesis, which is the story of Jacob Sutton's. The fourth and last literary movement. Yeah, fourth and final. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the first one tells the story from Adam to Abraham, cycling through the story. It's three kind of cycles of generations from Adam to Noah, and then from Noah to guy named Tarach,

whose Abraham's dad. Those three cycles kind of work together as one literary movement. Those three cycles are the first literary movement. Yep, three cycles of 10 generations, each time resulting in the birth of three sons, one of whom is chosen out of the three to carry on the promise of blessing.

The second movement is Abraham, who gives birth to a bunch of sons, but first and primarily two. And again, it's one of the sons, the second born, who's chosen to be the vehicle of God's promise and blessing. The third literary movement is the story of Isaac and Jacob, which is Abraham's son and grandson. And again, Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau,

and once again, it's the second born who is chosen as the vehicle of God's promise and blessing, who will give birth to that long, awaited snake crushing seed of the woman promised all the way back in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. And so we just spent a couple episodes talking through the theme of blessing and curse in the Jacob story, and that leads us to where we are now, talking about the story of Jacob's sons, which make up what we call chapters 37 through 50 of Genesis. Jacob's sons, there's 12 of them. Yeah.

The beginning of the 12 tribes of Israel, because what we learned in the last story of Jacob is that he wrestles with God and God names him Israel. That's right. Which means struggles with L. Yisra is from struggles with or wrestles with and then L is short for Elohim, which is God. Struggles with God. Struggler.

What if that was your name? Struggler. Struggler. It's just Strugglin. That's not a great nickname. No. I get Struggler over there. Strugguggling. When we were in college, that was a term people used. Like, hey, how's it going? In a real common way, if you weren't having a great day, was just big man. I'm struggling. Struggling. Now with little kids, I say snuggling.

There you go. I ain't struggling. I'm snuggling. I ain't struggling, I'm snuggling. So that's the name of the father of these 12 sons. And so much of the Genesis scroll is these meditations and stories about the children replaying and intensifying the failures of their parents, especially with the first set of parents, Adam and Eve, because every generation has stories where people are not just replaying the failure of Adam and Eve, but the actual vocabulary as we see in, of the stories is patterned after the failure at the tree. And so that it's not just cool literary art, it's making a real profound statement about the human condition that as much as each generation wants to think

that we're different from our parents. In a way, we are a more elaborate and more developed, never identical, but just variations of the same struggle that our parents had. And so the story of these 12 sons is going to in every way replay and intensify key stories in the life of Jacob. In actual vocabulary, the stories of the struggles of the sons is going to be retold in ways that are patterned after the struggles that Jacob had with his father and with his brother. And Jacob is just an intensified version of his grandfather, Abraham. Yes. And Abraham is an intensified version of Noah, who's an intensified version of Adam and so on. And so you have all this cycling of God chooses a human and just out of his generosity gives this human a promise of abundance and

asks the human to be his representative to bring blessing to all of creation. Yeah, to become partners with God's divine purpose to spread the Eden restore the Eden blessing that was lost But restore it to all of the nations. That's the end game here. Adam and Eve first had this is the representative humans, and their failure is very, is the classic failure. And as a result, they are exiled from the heaven on earth place. From God's presence. Yep, from God's presence at the center of the garden, their exiled from the garden out into the land of Eden. And then once their son, Cain, does his own replay and intensification by murdering his brother. This is all going to be important for the Joseph story.

Sorry Joseph and his brothers. Adam and Eve's older son looks upon the favor that God shows to his younger brother. God's elevating the younger one. This is Cain and Abel, yeah. Yep, Cain and Abel. And it makes Cain so angry that God says, Hey, buddy, you've got a animal called sin, crouching at the door of Eden here. It wants to sneak out of Eden and leap on you

just like it deceived your parents. He's struggling. Yes, he's struggling. That's exactly right. And Cain gives into the beast. He lets the snake rule him. And so he murders the chosen brother, and then God exiles him.

He was already outside the garden, but now he's exiled from Eden, even the land of Eden, and out into the desolate wilderness where he builds the first city. Further east. And all these patterns are going to be developed in the literary movement we're looking at. At the end, other end of the Genesis scroll of Joseph and his brothers. Oh, I don't think we said what we're focusing on and what the reading journey and the app will be focused on is the repeating theme of exile and homecoming

in the story of Joseph and his brothers. But that's introduced in the story of Adam and Eve and Cain. So it's actually a whole theme through the whole Genesis scroll. We're just going to pick up with it in the story of Jacob's son. There's going to be deception. There's going to be attempted murder. There's going to be exile. There's going to be division among the siblings. But there is also going to be immense good because God is going to raise up a seed, chosen seed from among the brothers, to come to a place of rule and authority as an image of God and he's going to be like a Noah who rescues everybody from a de-creation that's coming. So the Joseph story has it all, man. It's just like the whole scroll comes together. Genesis chapter 37 through 15 is this final movement. It begins in chapter 37 verse 2. But

the reason you know why that's the beginning of this movement is actually there's a key repeated phrase. Opening says, these are the birth generations of Jacob. And that's actually been a key structuring phrase throughout the whole Genesis scroll, walking you through each generation of characters. And so this is the final appearance of that phrase. It appears 10 times in the book, and this is the final one. And so you wondered, okay, this is the story of what will issue,

the generations of what will come out of Jacob. And the first son you're introduced to is not the 12 as a whole, but it's the youngest son at the time. And that is the son Joseph, or Joseph in Hebrew. And he's a teenager. He's a teen. Yeah. When you're a teenager, you feel like you know everything, but your brain isn't even fully developed.

I don't know. What a dangerous combination. Man, it was for me. Oh, gosh. I'm glad I made it. Glad I made it. Sound like you just went through a car accident. No, and I had a pretty, I had a really stable upbringing, but even so, you know, just a teenage

brain does some stupid life-threatening things without even knowing it. Insurance companies do know this. They price it in. Totally. So what you're told about Yosef is that he was a shepherd. In fact, all of his brothers were shepherds. It's interesting.

Why is that interesting? Well, it's interesting for due reasons one, the crisis moment between Joseph and his brothers is going to take place out as they're shepherding the flock out in the field. But it's a hyperlink setting you up for a dear reader. Who else was a shepherd? Jacob turns out was a shepherd and he had a division with his brother Abraham was a shepherd and in fact his division with his brother. Abraham was a shepherd, and in fact his division from his nephew, his family rivalry, was with his nephew Lot, and why did they divide? Oh, because of their flocks, we're multiplying. And then back to Cain and Abel, Cain was a shepherd, and it was actually that situation

that led to his division from his brothers. So that's the first thing you're told. So already you're being set up for, here's the new generation and their shepherds. You're like, oh no. Actually, it's a good example of the meditation literature. It's only after multiple rereadings that you might notice that every generation in Genesis has divided siblings or divided families, and that often it's the moment you're introduced to the fact that they are

shepherds that the conflict begins. You know, it's not something you would notice like in a movie, maybe, on the first viewing, but after multiple viewings, you might be like, aw, they tell you that, or they show you like that piece of clothing right before the character always has this thing happen to them something, you know Yeah, it's the gun on the mantle. Yeah, so he was a shepherd with his brothers then what you're told is he was a young man You know 17 and he was with the sons of Bill Ha and with the sons sons of Zilpa the wives of his father So you reminded many of these guys are half brothers. And so here's Joseph.

And the first thing you're told of what he does is he brings a bad report about his brothers back to their father. Now let's talk about Joseph's relationship to his father. Yes, Rael, the guy named Struggles with God, he loved Joseph more than all of his sons. He was a favorite son. A favorite, yeah.

Because he was a son of his old age. Those are both glowing hyperlinks back to earlier moments in the story. Who else loved one son more than the others? Well, Abraham, you know, his second son, Isaac, was born of his wife, Sarah, where his first son was born of a concubine, so he favored the second son Isaac was born of his wife Sarah, where his first son was born of a concubine. So he favored the second son. Yeah, actually, that little phrase, a son of his old age is verbatim,

what was said about Isaac in relationship to Abraham. So what Isaac was to Abraham, Joseph is to Jacob the son of his old age. And the loving is about the love that Isaac had for Issa and that Rebecca had for Jacob. So the favoritism of parents for certain children were now replaying the failure of the father and the mother. And then with a son of the old age being the favorite one,

we're replaying the favoritism and failure of grandma and grandpa. So that's another good example where you're just being set up to expect what's gonna happen next. But you are told is something new this time that what was the tangible sign of that favoritism and extra love that was the the technical dream coat, the coat or the robe of many patterns or many colors. Yeah.

So Joseph got to kind of peacock a little bit with his brothers. Totally. Yeah, peacock. I like that. I've never heard that as a verb. So this robe is super important because the robe is going to be stripped off of him later in the story. And then he's going to go without his robe for a long time. But then he's going to get a robe put back on him again. And that's going to be kind of the framing images around this first part of the Joseph story here.

So that's the setup. He's more favored, he's got a robe that we're going to see as the indication of favor, but also his royal aspirations. And when his brothers see, it's his brother saw that their father loved him. More than all of his brothers, they hated him and could not speak to him in peace. Yeah, sibling rivalry. Totally. So what happens next is Joseph has two dreams.

And the dreams are about how he was in a field. They were gathering wheat and his little bundle of wheat stood up in the field and all of his brothers, bundles of wheat came and they bowed down to his bundle of wheat. And he's like, hey guys, I just had this dream you had the night thought you'd want to it. What do you think it could mean? I think that's actually kind of it. It's like he's depicted as a teenager.

And so his brothers say, actually, what does brother say? It's important. He says, are you going to reign as a king over us? You think you're going to rule us? You're going to be a ruler? Come on, you're the kid. I mean, dad gave you the coat, but you're still a kid. Joseph dreamed another dream, and he said to his brothers, guys, it was so weird, like the whole universe was bowing down to me. What he says is, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me. Ah, that's a significant. The last time that that phrase, the only other time that phrase was used in the Genesis scroll

was in the creation narrative. The phrase the sun and moon and stars. The sun moon and stars and also ruling. Yeah, because sun moon and stars were the hosts of heaven to rule over the sky and the calendar, the time, day and night. Yeah, it seems like a hyperlink to like, not only am I gonna rule over the land,

I'm not gonna rule over the sky. Yeah, this is so potent, man. I mean, the significance of this won't strike until you reach Genesis 49 and 50, but this is all part of the larger strategy of the Joseph story within Genesis and the Torah and the Hebrew Bible as a whole. And so the last literary movement of Genesis picks up this theme of a human

exalted to rule over the nations and over the cosmos. And we're harking back to the image of God in Genesis 1. Except that we're even more because the image of God was called the rule the land, right? In Genesis 1. Yeah. Mirroring as a mirror to the rulers above over the sky. But now, the guy has a dream about becoming the ruler over the land and over this guy. Yeah. Oh, that's intense. So this ticks off his brothers and his dad. His dad's like, this is just inappropriate, son. Like, yeah. Yeah. This is not okay. You really think like, we is just inappropriate, son. Like, yeah.

Yeah. This is not okay. You really think like, we're all gonna come bow down to you? That's what Jacob says to Joseph. So you're told his brothers were jealous, but his father kept the matter, kept the matter in mind. So that's the opening of the story. So we'll just paraphrase here, but Joseph's brothers are out in a field, right? Just like Cain and Abel went out into a field. Joseph's brothers are out in a field, and Joseph is sent out to them. And what they say is, look, here comes the dreamer. And what their first plan is what they say is, let's murder him. And the word for murder, Harag, it's the same word used as for what Cain does to

Abel out in the field. And now here's the younger son, murder, Harag gets the same word used as for what Cain does to able out in the field. And now here's the younger son, favored, coming to his older brothers, and what they say out in the field is, let's, let's pull a cane, let's murder him. But you know, here's what we could do, who we could murder him, and then spin a deception, spin the lie about how a wild animal of the field ate him. These are Genesis 3 echoes coming in here. Oh, the animal crouching, sin crouching like an animal.

Yep, to devour. And also, which in the cane story in Genesis 4 is the corresponding image of the wild animal, the snake of the field, telling a lie to the human. Now what they're saying is we will tell a lie about a wild animal eating our brother. But one brother, the first born, Rubin. Rubin steps up and he says, no, no, no, no, don't,

don't kill him, don't spill blood. And that's what happened to Abel, is the blood spilled on the ground. And that's important, blood spilling on the ground. I don't fully understand the significance of that image. Yeah, okay. So because the ground is supposed to be the place, the material out of which God's Ruach can breathe life and summon life. But when humans return life back into the ground in the form of blood-soaked soil, that becomes an outcry. What God says to Kayan is, the outcry of your brother's blood has reached my ears. And so when the land is soaked

with the blood of the innocent, God becomes obligated to bring a de-creation of water that will purify the land. And that is what the imagery of the flood is. But now we're now you know many cycles into the story and so spilling blood on the ground, murdering someone out in the field so that they don't receive an honorable burial is like the ultimate sacrilege. And we will call down gods justice upon us. So don't do that. Don't spill his blood. Instead, let's just throw him into pit. All right. Which in Rubens' mind, you're told he said this in order to save his brother and return him to his father. So big brother, step it up here. Okay, he's trying to figure out a way to save him. Yep. Yep. So, but the idea is to make him go down into a pit. And this here, we're not to exile

explicitly, but we're beginning the symbolism of Joseph just had a dream about being exalted up high over his brothers over the sun moon and stars. And what they do is one, instead, take him down into the pit below the ground. He goes from one end of the cosmos to the other, so to speak. And so what happens when Joseph comes up to his brothers first, they take off that robe. They're over that robe. So they strip them with the robe and they throw them in a pit. And then they sit down and have a meal.

They sit down to eat bread. So it's over a meal. So weird detail. It is. It's the Adam and Eve story and the Cain and Abel story that have been merged together because they're patterned after one another. And the brothers are replaying an image of both stories. Deception over a meal, they're gonna deceive with a lie about an animal and you know and this is all about murdering the brother or

making him you know go away. This is an example of how every detail is important in this type of literature. Yeah. And so for the story just be like and then they sat down to eat bread. Yeah, totally. And then all of a sudden you're thinking about the significance of food as it relates to deception. Yes, a little hint about eating bread as a part of a deception plan that's connected

to the murder of the brother and the spilling of blood. Like none, all these words and sentences have been very carefully checked. So what happens then is they're sitting having this meal and they look up and what they see is a caravan of Yishmailites coming down and that's... Yishmail is Abraham's first son. Yes, totally. So they see descendants from their great uncle coming. And they are camel riding merchants and traders.

And where you're told, in verse 25, chapter 37, they were going down to Egypt. This is the first appearance of a major motif that's one of the key giveaways for the exile theme in the section of the book, going down to Egypt. The image of going down to Egypt is an idea of going into exile. Going into exile. So yeah, let's pause here for a moment. So it just so happens that the way we orient our maps today,

is if you see a picture of anywhere on your bone or on a paper map, up is always oriented towards the North Pole of the globe. North is up. It could have been otherwise. It could have been that the south was what in the first maps that were made, you know? Why north? Yeah. So interesting to think about.

So if you look at a map today of like the Mediterranean, you'll notice the Egypt is in a down relationship to Israel, Israel Palestine, down into the West. So that's more kind of a just a quincidence of history that our maps are similar. Yeah, that we say like, oh yeah, you go down to Egypt. Yeah. So similarly for the biblical authors, Egypt is down from the land promised Abraham, but more likely the down language is actually like vertical because the main chunk of the land promised Abraham was up in a hilly high country and the road to Egypt was just one long downhill into the flatlands down to the Suniponens Peninsula, another one down when you get down to Egypt. So this imagery of going down to Egypt is, and they're going to sell him, he's going to be sold

to these traders as a slave, and he's going to be taken down to Egypt in the section of the story. And so the fact that he just went from up in his dreams from above the sky down to a pit and then down to Egypt, these are all coordinated elements in Genesis chapter 37. And they're meaningful because they're setting all these images alongside each other kind of like the way parallel lines do in biblical poetry. So Joseph's descent to the pit is descent to Egypt as a slave

are all going to be accumulating as images of his exile from his family, exile from his royal special status, exiled from the love of his father and from the Promised Land. Going down, to go down is to go into exile just like Adam and Eve went down from the high Land, going down. To go down is to go into exile, just like Adam and Eve, went down from the high Eden mountain garden into exile just like Cain went out of Eden into exile. It's the core images, got it.

So what I'm trying to do here is just notice in the narrative, we're kind of stacking up associated images that describe Joseph moving away or out away from his family, his father, the camps or the home. So the first was he went out into the field. He was sent out into the field to meet his brothers. Okay. So it's away from the camp. So he goes out into the field, then in the field he goes down into a pit.

Then from in the pit he's taken down to Egypt. That's the verb, he's going down. The narrative is marking the series of D cents. And in Hebrew, the pit is a synonym for death, right? Yes, which is about to be named in the story. That's what Jacob's about to say. Oh, cool. But I'm just noticing he goes from up to down, but he's also going from inside to the outside. When he goes from his home in the camp to go out into the field, that's a more horizontal orientation. And that's the Eden framework of, in the middle is the tree of the life.

And in the middle of the land of Eden is the garden, and Eden is in the middle of the land. So to the garden, and Eden is in the middle of the land, so to speak, it's like concentric circles, and exile is going from the inside being out, yeah. Okay. So you can take, now you have the two creation narratives, so you can go from high to low, that's a form of descent.

That's this form of exile. Or you can go from the inside to the outside. That's the Eden framework. And this story's combining both. He goes from high to low, and he goes from the inside to the outside. That's the Eden framework. And this story is combining both. He goes from high to low, and he goes from the inside to the outside. And that is what is going to be named at the climax of the story of the division of the brothers. The brothers bring a robe. They bring a deceptive robe that is covered with the blood of a goat. They

bring it to this dad. And this is all replaying what Jacob did to his dad when he dressed up with the skin of a hairy goat as his robe, as his robe. Ha ha ha. The old classic hairy robe deception. Totally, totally. The blood in the side is covered with animal blood.

It's time it's stepped up a bit. And Jacob falls for the deception. He says, a wild animal has eaten my son. Yeah. And so he begins to grieve and to mourn and his sons come and they try to bring comfort to him. And what he says is he refuses to be comforted and he says, surely I will go down to my son to the grave, namely Shaol, by my grieving. Yeah, my grief is going to take me down into the grave. So that's the same word as pit. No, different, but there's related images.

So the Hebrew word Shaol, grave is. Yeah, Hebrew word Shaol. And we need to talk about that word at some point. Yeah, we do. It's so interesting. But so notice in the narrative, Joseph went from high to low, from the inside to the outside, and all the words describing exile are now the field, the pit down to Egypt, and now his

father thinks it is down into death and down into the grave. So death is a type of exile? Yes, that's right. Yeah, exile unto death. That's right. The Eden story taught us that, right? In the day you eat of the fruit, you will die. And then in the narrative, the day that the eat of it,

they are exiled. Yeah. Yeah, so not only is exile kind of death, but death is a type of exile. Yeah, from the land of the living. That's right. And that's the image of going into the ground being varied and... Yeah, under the ground.

She all under the trail. Yep. So the point is that the narrative has now filled your imagination with a variety of terms. The feel of it I've repeated it many times now. But as all those images are now combined, and man, go check out some lament Psalms in the book of Psalms. And you'll just watch all this vocabulary. Like, when the poet will describe having a really bad day, or they're really sick. Yeah, he'll say like, I'm in the pit. Yeah, Psalm 69. It's a great example. So I've been betrayed by my friends, and he describes it as a flood waters coming over his head. He describes it as being in the pit and as being cut off from life. And you're like, well, which is it?

You're in a pit or you drown in in a flood. Yeah, totally. And the fact that the poet's writing a poem means they're alive, but they're describing themselves as being dead in a flood in a pit because they've been betrayed by their brothers or their friends. And so what are they getting after here? Well, a poem like that is using all the images that have been developed in the Torah that are associated with forms of exile. Separation from God, cut off from God, cut off from my neighbor, are the anti-blitz, the curse. It's anti-blessing, anti-life, death.

You can be in a state of death and be physically alive in the biblical story. If Genesis 3 taught us anything, that's right. The day you eat the fruit, you will die. That's right. And they're just, and they're banished. Yes.

They don't physically die. Yeah, but they're cut off from God, they're cut off from the good land, they're cut off from unity and harmony within the family. And so in these biblical narratives, division in the family, hostility, away from home, these are all different ways of talking about the opposite of God's dream for the human family. And so Joseph's going to be taken into exile. And so in the next episode we'll just kind of, we'll fly more quickly, but this opening story, Genesis 37, kind of stacks all the vocabulary and images together. And what we're going to see is the rest of the Joseph story is going

to be about the reversal of every single one of these images of exile. He's going to be, he's going to be taken up out of the pit. He's gonna descend actually. So in the next story, Genesis 39, he goes down to Egypt and he's a slave in the household of this guy named Potaphar. And Potaphar elevates him to a place of authority over the whole house. And you're like, sweet. Yeah, here we go. But then he's deceived, where he's tricked by Potaphar's wife and Potaphar's wife deceives a whole house bowl, even deceives Potaphar, because she wants Joseph to sleep with him. He won't, and she's so offended by this, she conspires against Joseph.

So she tells Potaphar that, you know, this Hebrew slave that you brought into our house, he tried to rape me, and Potaphar believes his wife,, so he takes Joseph and commits him to a prison and then Joseph is put into prison. And later in the story, he's going to call that prison, my pit. So he went from one pit right out in the field in his land to go down to Egypt and then down into prison, which is he calls a pit. And you can't get much lower than being out of the land in Egypt, in prison. That's just the pit of pits. That's right.

So here, let's real quick, let's just flag this, because this may not be how the story strikes many modern readers. This is about human trafficking. This is about someone who's kidnapped, separated from their family, in a very vulnerable state, sold to traders who take them to a place where they have no identity, no money, no family, very vulnerable, and they're just suffering and surviving on their own, and it goes

horribly for him. This is not an ancient reality. This is a reality that has been the lived experience of millions of humans up till right now. It's happening right now. This is the lived experience a lot of people. It's so horrifying to really think about what this kind of experience would be like. I can't imagine it. Yeah, man.

You just kind of changed the mood a little bit. Well, I just... These stories are meant to take our minds there, you know? Hmm. This is what humans do to each other. Yeah, it's interesting in the same way that the story of Abraham and Hagar, you pointed out that Hagar, she's an Egyptian woman. A slave.

So she's an Egyptian slave and her name Hagar, literally in Hebrew, means what, immigrant? The immigrant, yes. The immigrant. It's a story of how Abraham treats an Egyptian immigrant, wife. And he banishes her to death. Yeah, that's right. That's your dad.

And the story. And when you think of it, you know, as a story of her, that's sad. But then when you realize, too, that it's talking about something that's happening on repeat and civilization after civilization just gets a little more intense. And then here we have Joseph. It's a reverse. Now he's the immigrant in Egypt being treated poorly, being sent into the pit. Yeah, biblical stories. If we can learn how their language works, they're offering the most realistic

and raw portrait of human patterns of behavior. Yeah, certainly more raw than most literature ivory. So is this at a low point in our conversation, in terms of the mood. You notice, but that's what this theme is about. It's about all the way back to the first exile. So when Adam and Eve go from their high mountain garden, the place of God's abundant generous love, and when their exiled God informs them of the sad consequences of their behavior, and he talks about how the seed of the snake will be at odds with the seed of the woman. There'll be people who are aligned with my purposes and people hostile my purposes.

And it's going to be an endless battle. And that's what this story is. And the irony is that Jacob thinks that a wild animal has eaten his son. And in a way, that's true. It's just that the animals are his children. Oh wow, yeah. So, I mean, of course, there's good news. Like, this Joseph in the pit in Egypt is the lowest it's gonna get, but it's, yeah, just a raw portrait of real human behavior. And I guess the one thing I didn't know is that the narrative highlights that they're in the pit down in Egypt We're told at the end of Genesis 39 that Yahweh was with Joseph in the pit. He was with him It doesn't prevent it from happening, but that doesn't mean that Yahweh isn't there

That's something in the story. I think we all have to sit and ponder what that means So next what we're gonna do is trace an episode where the mood will shift significantly because it's going to be all about Joseph's ascent. He went through many desense down, down, down, down, down, down, and then he's going to begin a series of ascents back up, up, up, up, up to a place of royal authority. And that's what we'll talk about, but not just that his brothers are going to come down to meet him in Egypt, in exile, and there he's going to test them thoroughly to see if they've changed their ways over the 13 years they were apart and um. So we're going to kind of dip into

the theme of the test as well. Yeah, at least in our conversation. Yeah. But the whole of the Joseph story, you can map it as a series of exile and homecomings because by the end of the story as well. Yeah, at least in our conversation. Out of our conversation. But the whole of the Joseph story, you can map it as a series of exile and homecomings. Because by the end of the story, he's gonna get to go back to the land, just briefly, to bury his father. The first story is about him being exiled from his homeland, the last story in the Genesis scrolls about him going back.

And then in between is his decent and usent, and then his brothers, a series of decents and ascents, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down, until they all go down to live in Egypt, and what does God do? He makes Egypt into a little Eden, a temporary Eden, to protect his people during a great famine. But that's the next story. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week we finish the Joseph stories.

Joseph is brought up out of the pits. He meets the King of Egypt who can see that Joseph has the spirit of wisdom in him, the ruach of Elohim. He says, you are going to rule over my house only in the throne will I be greater than you. He will become an image of Pharaoh. Second, like the vice-roy or the deputy. This is all Genesis 1 and 2 imagery here.

The Bible project is a nonprofit. We exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus, all the videos that we make this podcast, our app, and the classes that we have. They're all free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you, so thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hi, this is Erica Brodin and I'm from Sweden. I first heard about Bible projects through one of Jefferson Beth's kids' videos on YouTube.

This was in the very beginning when the first video on the Torah was launching and I couldn't wait for the next one. I use Bible project in my own studies of the Bible and this material in my home group at church. My favorite thing about Bible project is that it makes me want to read this complicated and amazing book. It gives me the tools and inspiration to do so. We believe the Bible is a som är lids till Jesus.

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