We left Joseph having his first taste of stick; exposed, this sheltered boy, to a rough, crude, unscrupulous bunch of men, and it shocked him.
"Joseph brought an ill report of them to his father."
We are not told why. Was it because they did more roistering (with village girls?) than shepherding ... falsified their report of the lambs born, and sold some ... killed some for meat or skins? Whatever it was, it troubled Joseph. He had to work with these men. If he remained silent, he would be party to their wrongdoing. It lay heavy on his conscience. Did he do right to split on them?
It is unlikely that he did it out of spite; that does not match the character later years reveal (though our motives are always mixed). Maybe Jacob pressed him to tell why he appeared so troubled, so he blurted it out before he was sure if he ought ... though the text does not suggest it. We cannot be sure what his motives were.
But it is a moral problem many a young man has to face. You discover that some of your workmates are cheating the firm - have a racket rigged between them. What do you do? You do not want to be a prig. You do not want to turn your workmates against you. You do not want to interfere. But silence can mean consent.
When is it right to tell? There may be differing opinions about that. Let me at least suggest some guiding moral principles.
It depends on the degree of responsibility we bear. If we have the oversight of those in the racket then we have a responsibility to management. But if we do not ...? Then if silence would implicate us, personally, we have a right to speak up. Our own integrity in that case is compromised. But I think we have an obligation first to protest direct to the men we have to work with, before we just 'split on them' behind their back.
We may be victimised, of course. They may rough us up. When I was serving my apprenticeship as a factory chaplain in the U.K. one of our seminar directors was a well known and highly respected Trades Union official, Tom Chapman. His face was split almost from ear to ear with a scar, received when in his youth he did just what I have suggested, and was chain-whipped across the face for it. He bought his integrity at a price.
We may be manoeuvred unscrupulously out of our job.
One of the reasons the story of Joseph is written is to strengthen our hand in the face of just that sort of dilemma. Joseph got nowhere fast for a long time, because he would not compromise to save his own skin; but God honoured his faithfulness. I was personally acquainted with a situation like this which deeply affected a young man in one of my congregations. He came very near to having his entire career ended, and it was no easy matter for him "to trust in God and do the right," as the hymn puts it. To his honour he stuck it out, and God did vindicate him.
The problem which comes first, principle or personal advantage, will be with us all our lives. We cannot be cushioned from it long. Peter's counsel is relevant: "Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is right? But even if you do suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord ... keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God's will, than for doing wrong." (I Peter 3:13-17) (See Note 1 below)
"It is better to suffer for doing right ..." That is the stark, uncompromising challenge of Christianity.
We will be hated. Jesus warned us: "Everyone who does evil hates the light."
Jacob's reaction was simply dreadful. He did not discipline the brothers - he just took Joseph out of it.
Jacob may have intended that the favourite son whom he planned should take over the family business should 'start at the bottom.' But he did not go through with it. He wrapped the boy in cotton wool - which did nothing to improve relations with his brothers ... and nothing either to put iron into Joseph's soul.
That coat of many colours was not a patchwork quilt, but a long robe with sleeves and coloured trim. A labouring man's tunic was sleeveless: he needed freedom of arm movement. If you wore a garment with sleeves you were not expected to be doing manual work. What it means is that Jacob conferred on Joseph executive status. He was taken off the factory floor and put in the office upstairs. No more common toil for the blue-eyed boy: he was being groomed for management.
Imagine how the brothers felt about that! He was the youngest but one! "They could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him!"
It is no easy situation for a teenage lad to be in, that ... when nobody, but nobody, speaks kindly to you ... when the only talk you get is sneering and mickey-taking.
Jacob was to blame for that. He doted on the boy.
Parents beware! When we treat our child as though the sun, moon and stars shine out of him, we do him a mischief. We are to prepare our children for life and reality, not for some cloud cuckoo-land. I have never met a 'mother's darling' whose personality was not in some way crippled by it. If they come to manhood or womanhood it is never without a struggle, a crisis in which they have to meet the criticism of ingratitude. Over-indulgence puts a child in a mental and emotional prison which suffocates the life out of him.
Old Jacob served his son badly at this point. As the story unfolds, you realise that the Heavenly Father took Joseph's nurture out of his earthly father's hands into His own hands ... saw to it that Joseph was removed from his doting father's crippling indulgence, and exposed to life in the raw.
God did that.
All young people dream ... and dream of greatness; there is nothing wrong in that. Do not mock youth's dreams. How else can they shape up to the future? Life will trim their dreams to shape soon enough. But without them, they lack direction. Like the stars, it is because they are so high above our heads that they are fit to guide our feet.
What was galling in Joseph's dreams was that they included not only Joseph's advancement, but his brother's humiliation.
One cannot read this paragraph without wondering what motivated Joseph ... in a household like Jacob's ... to tell his dream! Was he woefully insensitive ... brash? What sort of a lad was he to do this? We might forgive him for telling his dream the first time. But after the reaction he got, to do it again ...? For all his fine qualities, I am inclined to think there must have been an air of arrogance in Joseph that most would have found insufferable - his mother and father were to bow down to him too, if you please!
And yet ... there was an element of divine necessity in it. For this whole family has been chosen by God to bear the burden of knowledge of the truth. They must learn that God is the Power to be reckoned with in life. And if the dream had not been told when Joseph dreamed it, there is no way later events would have convinced them that God had had a hand in the way their family life worked out. The intimation from God conveyed through Joseph's dreams was something to be reckoned with later.
They were not a very impressive bunch, these twelve men who were to be the Fathers of Israel. They qualified for the kind of scorn unbelievers are all too ready to pour on professing Christians: "What, them ... God's chosen people?!" But indeed they were. God has to work with whatever material lies to hand; He cannot afford to be too picky if He is to get the job done. If He had to wait for worthy men and women to call, He would wait for ever. We are all of us men and women under reconstruction. There is not a Christian living you cannot fault.
But when we fault God on account of them, we are shutting our eyes to His Grace. "The only fitness God requireth is to feel our need of Him." Blessed be God, it is unworthy folk He calls, the ungodly whom He justifies. Scorn Him for doing that, and all we do is condemn ourself to miss the call.
And it was necessary that these men understand that it was God they had to reckon with in life - not Joseph. We should not let the lesson be lost on us.
Notice, though, that the brother's reaction was jealousy, not contempt. There must already have been something about Joseph that commanded respect. The promise of greatness was in him. He could not be written off as a moron, a mere foolish dreamer. They did not guffaw - they squirmed.
Even Jacob was offended, his pride hurt. But his reaction was different, and wiser. Like Mary he "pondered these things in his heart." We do well to do the same ... to allow for God in things.
Notice Joseph's response in the next episode.
1. v. 13 "Here am I"
- that took courage.
2. v. 17 "... Joseph went after his brothers." No excuses; that was
fidelity. He must have known the risk.
One victory - the stand he took on principle when he brought his father a report on his brothers - has strengthened him to win another. As the hymn says of temptation, "Each victory will you some other to win."
Here is a young man buying trouble by his faithfulness. "You'll never get on in this world that way, young fella!" Neither we will. But we will get on in God's world. And this world turns out, at the end of the day, to be God's world.
Let Joseph be a challenge to us.
Note 1: Even Plato knew that it is better to suffer evil than do it.
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