so … who sold Joseph?
Have you ever noticed all the questions that emerge when you read the Bible closely ... or even, when you just read not all that closely?
Most of the time, the stuff that makes you pause aren’t questions of great theological significance. It's more generally, things like consistency in storytelling.
Here's an example from the Joseph story.
After Joseph’s brothers throw him into a cistern and plan to leave him for dead, they sat down for a nice lunch (which I find absolutely insane!). As Dan passes the dates to Levi (jokes), they "saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt."
If anyone is interested, there is very little evidence of camel domestication in Israel at this time. Most scholars think their appearance in Genesis is anachronistic (like Abe Lincoln with a cell phone). So earlier when Abraham is riding a camel … most scholars think this is a later edit.
Super interesting. But not my point.
I want you to take note of who the brothers see in the distance. A caravan of …
The story continues, "Then Judah said to his brothers, 'What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.' And his brothers agreed."
There it is again.
Everybody on board?
The Ishmaelites.
On camels. (Just go with it.)
Heading down to Egypt to sell some stuff.
And Joseph's brothers decide to sell Joseph to them.
It's their idea.
And then, in the next verse, we get this: "When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt."
Ok, ok. Flags on the field!
What now?
Who are the Midianite traders? Where did they come from? And are they selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites? Or are the brothers selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites when the Midianite traders are passing by?
To add to our already pretty strong sense of confusion as to what is going on, the chapter concludes with the following note to sum up the story and leave readers on the cliff. Everyone thinks Joseph is dead, but "the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard."
On the surface that's not too bad ... we at least have heard of the Midianites … except (brace yourselves), our English translations are hiding the fact that it's not the Midianites who are selling him in this verse. In the Hebrew, it's the Medanites.
Are these different people?!
I’m so confused.
For those keeping score at home, here's what we have so far:
Joseph’s brothers decide to sell him to the Ishmaelites.
But then the story reads like it's the Midianites who sell Joseph … to the Ishmaelites? Or is it Joseph's brothers selling him to the Ishmaelites when the Midianite traders were passing by?
Finally, at the end of the story, it's the Medanites (no Ishmaelites to speak of) selling him to Potiphar in Egypt.
Why all the name confusion?!
Clearly, this is the sort of stuff commentators (and I) live for.
Johann Friedrich Overbeck, “Joseph Sold Into Slavery” (1816)
John Goldingay writes, "The way the story is told conveys something of the bumbling nature of wrongdoers and the self-defeating nature of wrongdoing." (Genesis, 579). I take that as, the text’s confusion is an artful representation of sinfulness. They are selling their kid brother into slavery, of course it’ll be a bit frenetic and messy. That certainly works on a literary/theological level. And as we just saw, the text is a confused mess. As such, it is representative of "the bumbling nature of wrongdoers."
That preaches well, but it doesn't really answer our questions about the text. (To be fair, he wasn’t trying to.)
On the textual issues, other commentators have proposed that Joseph is actually sold a few times (to the Ishmaelites, then to the Midianites, then into Potiphar's house).
Or, much more frequently, they appeal to Judges 8:24 and argue, the Ishmaelites are the Midianites — with "Ishmaelites" being a more general term (like, say, "Arab") and "Midianite" a more specific ethnic term. As a result, one group of traders could be identified as both Ishmaelite and Midianite.
For other commentators, the easiest solution is that these verses demonstrate the conflation of separate sources or traditions — one reflects the sale of Joseph to the Ishmaelites and the other to the Midianites.
Get it? Two separate stories mashed together.
A longstanding view in critical scholarship is that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) is the result of the "stitching together" of separate sources by a skilled editor (or editors). The difficulties in this passage are not the only ones present in the Pentateuch. We regularly have conflicting details, different literary styles from one chapter to the next, the same stories told numerous times, other repetition and conflict in storytelling or in law codes or elsewhere in the text. The proposition of different sources often smoothes out the tensions that are present in the text. Why? Well, these two texts are written by different authors for different communities.
In this passage, the proposed use of sources has less to do with the two names used for the traders and much more to do with the narrative awkwardness resulting from Judah's plan to sell Joseph in 37:27 and then what appears to be the Midianites (who were not mentioned previously in the story) showing up and pulling Joseph out of the cistern and selling him to the ... Ishmaelites in 37:28 (which, is also weird, since they might be referring to the same people?).
Robert Alter summarizes the view, the Midianites selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites "looks like a strained attempt to blend two versions that respectively used the two different terms [Midianites and Ishmaelites]" (The Five Books of Moses, 143).
Fun, right?
I bring this up to provide an example of the kind of stuff we usually read over, because let's face it ... who cares ... it's not the point of the Joseph story. Either way, he gets sold into slavery. So even if we did furrow our brow for a second when we first read the story, I doubt we would lose much sleep over it.
But more importantly, I bring it up to provide something of a gut check when you aren't allowed to quickly move beyond the oddity.
Now that you’ve read all this … how is it sitting?
As I peruse my commentaries on Genesis, there seem to be some folks who are troubled by the idea that our sacred text is sometimes a bumbling mess. (I say that with all deference to (1) the Bible, (2) the God behind it, and (3) conservative scholars trying their best to treat the Bible with respect.) For them, the goal is to iron out the difficulties so that the Bible "behaves." (I’d imagine a similar phenomenon happens in the notes of your study Bible.)
As you can imagine, ironing out the difficulties isn't necessarily my goal. And I'd argue, it isn't always possible.
Regardless, I believe what we have is what we were intended to have, and I believe that God is (clearly) ok with its oddities and tensions and interpretive difficulties.
So. Who sold Joseph into slavery? Based on the above text, I'm not sure.
Could we have, in this passage, the remnants of two traditions or source texts spliced together a bit haphazardly? Sure! (With Alter, I'm actually inclined to think so.) And if that's the case, that would be AOK.
We can wrestle with the who and the what and the when of Genesis 37. We could even propose some ideas (good ones) as to why the text feels so awkward.
But for now, ask the bigger question — is my view of the Bible one that allows for these sorts of oddities to be entertained? Or do I quickly iron out the wrinkles? And if the latter, why?
In the next post, we'll talk about some more weird stuff in Genesis, that is, the ole "Important Guy Tells His Pretty Wife to Pretend She's His Sister So He Doesn't Get Murdered When Foreigners Inevitably Fall in Love With Her" Motif.
