Joseph: Sold into Slavery or Sent as a Savior?

The Book of Genesis concludes with an extended narrative – chapters 37 through 50 – which continues the story of the children of Abraham, now the family of Jacob, to their descent into Egypt. We follow Jacob’s seventeen-year-old son, Joseph, from his father’s home in Hebron to his sale into slavery and then to his tenure as viceroy over the land of Egypt. There he presides over the Egyptian economy during seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Jacob, his family on the brink of starvation back in Canaan, sends his sons to Egypt to buy food. There Joseph, who now has his brothers at his mercy, enlists a variety of ploys to harass and manipulate them, culminating, ultimately, in Jacob and his children’s settling in Egypt.¹

God does not openly reveal Himself in these chapters.² Yet the stamp of divine providence on the unfolding of the saga is unmistakable. God’s promise to Abraham in the Covenant of the Pieces, Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years (Gen. 15:13), echoes throughout the twists and turns of the plot. And the reader familiar with the ongoing narrative knows how the enslavement in Egypt leads to the fulfilment of the latter part of the Covenant: . . . but I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve, and in the end they shall go free with great wealth (Gen. 15:14). We see in the Joseph story how events conspire over many years to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. At the same time, we witness the plot being propelled by the initiatives of the heroes, motivated by their personal interests and driven by their intense emotions.

This confluence of human action and providential design is a mark of the biblical narrative throughout. Yehezkel Kaufmann identifies “dual causality” as a pervasive feature of biblical narration: events are described as occurring “through both natural causes and divine guidance which determines a purpose for the events.”³ As a result, questions as to whom or to what to ascribe an event hover in the background of these stories. They are rarely articulated, however. The Joseph story is striking in that Joseph addresses, explicitly, the question of responsibility. He raises it in its most natural context – moral appraisal.

When Joseph reveals himself to his brothers in Egypt he urges them not to be pained or angry with themselves for having sold him into Egypt. Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you . . . God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance (Gen. 45:5-7). So, it was not you who sent me here, he tells them, but God (Gen. 45:8). In relieving his brothers of responsibility for their evil deeds Joseph is evoking an intuitive notion of moral responsibility whereby a person is morally responsible for what he does only if his doing it was not causally determined. A person who is caused to do something did not do it freely and therefore can be neither credited nor blamed for doing it.

Joseph tells his brothers that it is not they who sold him into slavery, but God; they are not responsible. Yet we, the readers, recall ourselves watching in horror as Joseph’s brothers contemplated murdering him and then, thanks to a fortunate happenstance, made do with selling him into slavery. We also heard the brothers bemoaning their guilt and expressing their remorse. To us Joseph’s brothers appear to be villains of a very base sort.⁴

In what follows I shall attempt to provide a reading of the Joseph story which does justice, on the one hand, to Joseph’s inclination to exonerate his brothers, and on the other, to our inability to resist condemning the brothers for their heinous actions. I begin by exploring Joseph’s belief that he was sent to Egypt by God. I will then propose an alternative view of God’s role in Joseph’s descent to Egypt. The view I propose will be shown to be compatible with Joseph’s conviction that his being in Egypt is divinely determined, but allows us to blame Joseph’s brothers nevertheless for selling him.

How Authoritative Is Joseph’s Account of How He Came to Be in Egypt?⁵

Clearly, Joseph is wrong on at least one point. The famine which struck Egypt was not a brute natural phenomenon for which God in his mercy provided a solution via Joseph, but a stratagem enlisted by God to carry out his plan for Abraham’s descendants. Although Joseph may delight in imagining himself to be God’s instrument of salvation, which is consistent with what we know of his character from the beginning of our story, in fact the end Joseph serves is that of securing the descent of the Children of Israel into Egypt.

As to God’s role, however – is Joseph’s belief that God and not his brothers sent him to Egypt, correct? The brothers were obviously the ones who sold him into slavery, but Joseph seems to be implying that God caused the brothers to sell him. Nowhere in the Joseph story do we see God causing the brothers to act in a particular way. There is no sign of God’s forcing their hand at any juncture. There are, moreover, general grounds for questioning whether God actually caused the sale. Although God’s presence is manifest throughout the biblical narrative, the way people behave generally seems to be up to them. We must assume that Cain could have refrained from killing Abel as God punishes him for failing to do so.

A classic exception is God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. On a straightforward rendering of what happened, God directly intervened in Pharaoh’s motivational system and made it impossible for Pharaoh to let the Israelites go free. Note that in that episode God takes pains to spell out the rationale for the unusual step He is about to take – He will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh will resist the impact of the terrible plagues God intends to bring down upon him. God further explains that this is all for the sake of a grand purpose – that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt (Ex. 7:3). Note, also, that when God intervenes directly in Pharaoh’s will Pharaoh behaves in an altogether unnatural way – he does not capitulate, as we would expect, despite the horrors God inflicts on him and his people.

By contrast, the brothers’ selling of Joseph is embedded in a naturalistic psychological matrix. Their intense jealousy and resentment towards Joseph is motivated by Jacob’s favoritism towards him, represented so vividly by the coat of many colors, and it is provoked by Joseph’s dreams of domination, which Joseph shares with them. Moreover, we recognize the bitter family tensions to be rooted in the earlier family history – Laban’s foisting Leah upon Jacob when Jacob was in love with Rachel, setting the stage for an ongoing rivalry between the two sisters, which for Leah was a hopeless contest.

On the other hand, though, even if at the time of the reconciliation Joseph remembers his brothers’ fierce hostility towards him and the circumstances of his abduction, Joseph has good reason to believe that his being in Egypt is part of a divine plan. He recalls his youthful dreams which foretell his ascendancy over his brothers. His stunning rise in Pharaoh’s court and his brothers’ eventual subjugation at his hands further confirm his sense that a heavenly hand is determining his fate. Their selling him was part of the providential chain.

And as for us, the readers, following the account of the sale, from Jacob’s sending Joseph to Shechem onwards, we anticipate that harm will befall him. Although we do not see the brothers being caused to do anything, although we perceive them to be acting freely, on their own, for their own reasons, with the ongoing march of events, it seems more and more likely that the story is moving towards a sorry end. Once the caravan of Ishmaelites heading to Egypt comes into view, we know that the brothers are going to sell Joseph to them – that their selling him to them is inevitable.

The distinction drawn above, between an action’s being caused and its being inevitable, is critical to my reading of the Joseph story. Causing an action is one way of bringing it about so that the performance of the action is inevitable. If Pharaoh was caused to refuse to let the Israelites leave Egypt, then he could not have avoided refusing to let them go. However, causing an action is not the only way of bringing it about that an action is inevitable. Circumstances may bring it about that a person cannot avoid a particular action even though nothing causes that person to perform the action. For example, I may freely choose to exit the middle door of the room, for my own reasons, even though, unbeknownst to me, the other two doors are locked. Given that I was bent on leaving the room it was inevitable that I do so via the middle door, although nothing caused me to do it.

I propose that we blame the brothers for selling Joseph because we take them to be acting freely, on their own. Nevertheless, on my reading, they could not avoid doing what they did. Recall, however, that my reading of the Joseph story is intended to accommodate our moral intuitions that Joseph’s brothers are blameworthy along with our perception that the sale is part of a providential plan. How does the reading I propose serve this purpose, then? If the brothers could not avoid selling Joseph, is not that grounds for relieving them of responsibility? Do we not assume that people are not to blame for actions which they could not have avoided performing?

The Principle of Alternate Possibilities

The assumption that a person is responsible for what he does only if he could have done otherwise has come to be known, following the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, as “The Principle of Alternative Possibilities” (PAP). Frankfurt challenges this assumption. In his seminal article, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,”⁶ Frankfurt argues that inevitability, in and of itself, does not rule out moral responsibility. Indeed, conditions which cause an action preclude the agent’s being morally responsible for that action. However, Frankfurt argues, in the case where conditions render an action unavoidable without having caused them those conditions do not preclude the agent’s moral responsibility for the action. Frankfurt provides the following example:

Suppose someone – Black, let us say – wants Jones to perform a certain action. Black is prepared to go to considerable lengths to get his way, but he prefers to avoid showing his hand unnecessarily. So, he waits until Jones is about to make up his mind what to do, and he does nothing unless it is clear to him (Black is an excellent judge of such things) that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what he wants him to do. Whatever Jones’s initial preferences and inclinations, then, Black will have his way.⁷

Black, who has come to be referred to as “the counter-factual intervener,” wants Jones to perform a certain act, but even though Black has it in his power to get his way, Black does nothing. Rather, he watches and waits for Jones to freely perform the act that he, Black, wants him to perform. If it becomes clear to Black that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what Black wants him to do, then and only then will Black step in to see to it that Jones performs the act he, Black, wants Jones to perform.

No matter what Jones wants to do, then, Black will have his way. Thus, Jones does not have the power to refrain from performing the action Black wants him to perform. Jones’s performing that act is inevitable. Yet, Frankfurt argues, despite the fact that Jones’s performing the act is inevitable, in the event that Black does not make a move and Jones performs the act because he wants to, he is morally responsible for performing it. Black’s waiting in the wings makes no moral difference. Jones could not have acted otherwise, but his not being able to act otherwise has nothing to with his acting as he did.

Frankfurt proposes replacing PAP, the principle that restricts a person’s moral responsibility for what he does to only those instances in which he could have done otherwise, by a principle that further restricts the person’s moral responsibility: If a person performs an action which he could not have avoided performing, his not being able to avoid performing the action frees him of moral responsibility for the action only if his not being able to avoid performing it is the only reason for which he performs it. Jones performs the action Black wants him to perform, not because he could not do otherwise, but because he wanted to. Therefore, Jones is morally responsible.

Frankfurt’s account serves as the basis for my reading of the Joseph story. The narrative leaves no question as to why the brothers sold Joseph. It was because they hated him. What about our perception that their selling Joseph was part of the providential design? On my reading, it is because their selling him was inevitable. God did not cause the brothers to sell Joseph. God does not appear in the story, but He is present as the “counterfactual intervener.” His presence behind the scenes makes it inevitable that the brothers sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites. Had the brothers shown signs of not selling Joseph, He would have stepped in, one way or another, to see to it that they did. This played no role in their selling him, however. Thus, on Frankfurt’s account of moral responsibility, the brothers may be held blameworthy.

Albeit, nowhere in the text does it say that the sale was inevitable. We are not shown God poised in the wings ready to intercede if some untoward event seems to be threatening the sale. I shall try to show, however, that in contrast to many other segments of the story, at least from the point that Joseph leaves his father’s home for Shechem, the sale is inevitable.

The Unfolding of God’s Plan

The Joseph story is an integral part of the larger Genesis narrative. The narrative is moved along by the meshing and clashing of individual purposes and strivings, in response to haphazard circumstance. It is not my view that every twist and turn of events in the narrative is inevitable from the start. God’s plan does not dictate from the outset every particular segment – the particular actions or sequences of actions which will carry out the plan. What is inevitable is the overall trajectory of events.

The interplay between the inevitability of the providential design and the freedom exercised by the heroes is discernible at various stages of the story. The reader may speculate as to which segments of the account are inevitable and from what point in time. Consider some of the early events in the tale preceding the sale. Could Jacob have avoided preferring Joseph, the older son of the wife he loved? Was it inevitable that Joseph reveal his dreams to his family? Would the brothers have hated Joseph even if he had not?

After the sale, one of the last steps along the way towards the fulfilment of the Covenant of the Pieces is Jacob’s descent into Egypt. In this crucial segment of the account God appears to Jacob in Beersheba on the way down: Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation (Gen. 46:3). Jacob, it appears, was hesitating.⁸ Perhaps he had a premonition that he was heading towards danger. Buoyed on by God’s assurances, however, and because he yearns to see Joseph, Jacob resumes his voyage. Could Jacob have avoided going down when he did? God’s appearing to him on his journey to urge him on suggests that Jacob might have stopped in Beersheba. Given that his descent was inevitable, he might have gone down on some other occasion, some other way.

The rabbinic passages below assume that one way or another Jacob would have landed up in Egypt. That was dictated by the divine plan. Both expound on the fact that he went down of his own volition and point out that it could have been otherwise, that within the bounds set by the inevitability of the overall design, things could have happened differently.

Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said that Rav Yoḥanan said: Our father Jacob should have gone down to Egypt in iron chains as would an exile against his will, as decreed by God and related to Abraham. However, his merit caused him to descend [without suffering] . . .⁹

According to this midrash, Jacob received privileged treatment because he deserved it. Commenting on this midrash, Yaakov Filber observes that Joseph was not similarly privileged; he was coerced to go down to Egypt. Presumably then, Joseph deserved to suffer. Filber concludes that both Jacob and Joseph were being judged for actions they had freely performed, that although they could not have avoided going down to Egypt, their freely chosen deeds determined the manner in which each would go down.¹⁰

In the following midrash God’s luring Jacob down to Egypt by the prospect of being reunited with his favorite son is seen as an act of divine compassion:

Rabbi Berekhya said in the name of Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon: This is analogous to a cow that they were pulling to the slaughterhouse, but it would not be pulled. What did they do to it? They pulled its offspring before it, and it was walking after it despite itself, and to its [ultimate] detriment. So, Jacob was supposed to descend to Egypt in chains and neck chains. The Holy One blessed be He said: ’Shall I take My firstborn son down [to Egypt] in disgrace? . . . Rather I will pull his son before him and he will go down after him despite himself and to his [ultimate] detriment . . .¹¹

Note that in the analogy of the cow being led to its slaughter, Jacob, in going down to Egypt to reunite with Joseph, is initiating what in the end would be a dark chapter in his family’s history. God’s not revealing the full story to Jacob at this point, His keeping Jacob in ignorance, was part of the divine strategy for allowing Jacob to go down to Egypt freely. It made it easier for Jacob to overcome his fears.¹²

The Inevitability of the Sale

I propose that, in contrast to other more loosely threaded segments of the Genesis narratives, including the ones which precede and follow upon the story of the sale, the narration of the events in Genesis 37 is a more tightly woven tapestry. Intuitions may vary as to at which point the march of events becomes inevitable. Do Joseph’s dreams set the drama in motion? Does Joseph’s recounting his dreams to his brothers “seal his fate”?¹³ Could not the brothers have contained their resentment?¹⁴

I begin my analysis at verse 15: Joseph sets out to see his brothers in Shechem, but his brothers are not there. A passerby tells Joseph that his brothers have moved on to Dothan.¹⁵ The biblical city of Dothan is thought to have been located on the site of Tel Dothan, a large mound rising above the surrounding plains. From there the brothers have a good view of Joseph making his way from Shechem. They see him from afar and the sight of him ignites their long-standing animus. Watching him approach, they hatch their plan – to kill him and to throw his body into a nearby pit.

The plan to kill Joseph is thwarted by Reuben, who, upon hearing his brothers’ murderous plan, urges the brothers not to shed Joseph’s blood, but to leave him to die in the nearby pit. Reuben harbors his own plan – to go back to the pit later, to retrieve Joseph and to return him to his father. Reuben will return too late to follow through on his plan; he will find the pit empty. Note that Joseph would have been killed by his brothers were it not for Reuben’s initiative, but had Reuben carried out his intention, Joseph would not have been sold into Egypt.

After flinging Joseph into the pit, the brothers sit down to eat. They are positioned, fortuitously, in sight of the Via Maris, or Way of the Sea, the eastern fork of the international trade route which runs from the Fertile Crescent to Egypt and passes through the Dothan Valley. As the brothers eat, they raised their eyes and saw and look, a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from the Gilead, their camels bearing gum and balm and laudanum on their way to take down to Egypt (Gen. 37:25). We do not know why the brothers had left Shechem for Dothan – perhaps for better grazing land for their flocks. Had they remained in Shechem they would not have been on the route of the merchants traveling to Egypt.

Judah takes advantage of the opportunity and convinces his brothers to forego the plan to let Joseph die in the pit and to sell him to the Ishmaelites¹⁶ instead. Joseph is now on his way to Egypt. The chain of events that began with Joseph’s departure to Shechem was almost brought to a halt at several points, but persisted by dint of a series of fortunate quirks of circumstance. The divine plan was repeatedly endangered and then rescued as the brothers carried on with their own evil plans.

God the Counter-Factual Intervener

If God for the most part allows people to act freely, as I assume, how does it turn out that the fulfillment of His plan is inevitable? How is it that the heroes cannot avoid carrying out God’s plans in the ordinary cases when God does not suspend their freedom? How does God’s plan accommodate the contingencies of human choice and freedom of action?

On my reading, in the biblical narrative God, like Black the counter-factual intervener in Frankfurt’s example, refrains on the whole from infringing directly upon a person’s free will. He will do so only in extraordinary circumstances. However, the comparison with Black goes only so far. Black is concerned with one particular act of Jones. He has two options available to him – to stand in the wings passively and simply watch Jones or to step in and cause Jones to perform the action he wants him to perform. In the biblical narrative God is executing a far-reaching plan, evolving over many generations, carried out through the actions of countless people. Moreover, God has many more options than Black. Unlike Black, God does not simply stand in the wings and watch and wait. God is also proactive.

In implementing His long-range and complex designs, God has a variety of tactics at His disposal short of directly intervening in a person’s will. He grants fertility or closes a woman’s womb. He brings rich harvests or decrees famine. God creates circumstances which, although they are not coercive, are conducive to His heroes acting according to His plan. The heroes’ lives are conditioned, for example, by the timing and order of their births, the characters they are born with, the roles they are called upon to fill and the options they are presented with. These circumstances shape the course of their lives, bear upon their desires and beliefs and constrain their choices. Moreover, God follows through on His plan by responding to the free actions of the heroes as they take place, creating additional circumstances which promote His objectives. Sometimes, if He sees his plan being threatened, derailed, He sends his “angels” to give a nudge, to provide a beckoning opportunity.

Elchanan Samet, in discussing double causality in the Joseph story, characterizes the story as a series of stratagems designed to get Jacob to go down to Egypt. Samet cites the following midrash: Prior to Jacob’s coming to Egypt a number of manganaot [contrivances] had to be put into play in order that Joseph’s brothers would perform all those acts which would lead to Joseph’s going down to Egypt and after that Jacob would follow him to Egypt.¹⁷

The midrash extends the chain of inevitability leading to Jacob’s descent into Egypt backwards to include the circumstances which moved the brothers to act as they did. The midrash does not claim that God caused the brothers’ actions. Rather, there were “contrivances” that were put into place. The divinely orchestrated circumstances which I posit in my reading of the story resemble, I suggest, the contrivances that were put into place according to the midrash in that they did not directly bring about Joseph’s going down to Egypt. Rather, they led to Joseph’s brothers’ freely performing acts which would in turn lead to Joseph’s, and ultimately Jacob’s, going down to Egypt.

Conclusion

Joseph must have remembered how his brothers hated him as a boy, how they could not speak a friendly word to him (Gen. 37:4). He must have perceived the connection between their resentment and jealousy and their sale of him to the Ishmaelites. How is it that he is so inclined to exonerate them? To begin with, we should note that Joseph’s initial behavior towards his brothers does not appear to be forgiving. He hides his true identity from them, tricks them, and maneuvers them into agonizing dilemmas. One could certainly describe his behavior towards them as vindictive.¹⁸ Only after causing his brothers a great deal of anguish does Joseph reveal himself and relieve them of blame for selling him into Egypt.

In the end Joseph is very generous towards his brothers, however. Perhaps, because as Joseph sees it at the time, the story has now reached its denouement. Not only is the ending, so far as he knows, a happy one – he has good reason to think it was inevitable. Even if inevitability fails to exonerate, the thought that an action was inevitable may well, I suspect, blunt one’s anger towards its perpetrator. Believing that whatever his brothers would have felt or intended, he would have ended up a slave in Egypt, and that it was all for the good in the end, Joseph is moved towards reconciliation rather than revenge.