A Chip Off the Old Block - Reflections on Gen. 37:1-4, 12-28, 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Tuesday, June 16, 2026

         I published my first scholarly article in 1977 on the rich story of Joseph, of which today’s tale is the beginning. As I first read the story, and the many commentaries on it, I was quite surprised to see that what I was seeing in the narrative was not at all what many of the studies I read claimed to see. Those commentaries, from some of the most acclaimed students of the Hebrew Bible, said something like the following concerning the character of Joseph in what was termed the novella of Gen.37-50: “Joseph is the quintessential sage in the Bible;” “Joseph is a model of piety and grace;” “Many of the earlier flawed characters of the book of Genesis are redeemed by this extraordinary character.” I wondered what story they were reading! 

         I was aided in my analysis of the tale by two very different, but in their own ways equally extraordinary works. The first was the vast and astonishing four-part novel by that mid-twentieth-century author, Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers. Yes, it is nearly 1500 pages long (!), but I assure you a reading of this massive work pays many dividends. Having said that, I admit that Mann’s Joseph, in my mind, is not Genesis’ Joseph. Nevertheless, I urge you to have a go at this fabulous book, especially in the 2005 translation (if you do not read German) of John E. Woods. The second work will be difficult to find, but it is well worth the search. Maurice Samuel, a mid-twentieth-century rabbi, wrote in 1955 Certain People of the Book, whose final chapter addresses the story of Joseph in an essay, “A Brilliant Failure.” (I need to say that the “failure” of the title is actually Mann’s construal of Joseph, not any failure of the Bible’s characterization.) But even if you do not read either of these, we can read together just how the Bible has understood Joseph, and that understanding to me is nothing like the warm encomiums suggested above.

         Genesis, as usual, wastes little time making its basic interests known about just who Joseph is. Joseph appears immediately as an assistant to his brothers in the work of tending the large flocks of their father, Jacob, about whom the reader of the earlier parts of Genesis knows a great deal: that Jacob is clever, tricky, always trying to gain the upper hand in every situation. After all, as the stranger at the Jabbok river ultimately said, “ You have wrestled with God (or the gods) and humans, and you have won” (Gen.32:28). Jacob, the grabber, appears to have won at everything he has tried.

         But that winning streak is about to end in unexpected ways. As the brothers tend to the flock, “Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father” (Gen.37:2). This tattle-taling seems to come out of nowhere! Was he sent by the old man as some sort of spy among the siblings, or did he on his own simply turn in his brothers due to what he perceives to be “bad” ( the word is the usual general term for “bad” as opposed to “good”) behavior? The next sentence may reveal a clue. “Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the child of his old age, and he made him an ornamental tunic” (Gen.37:3). Joseph is the youngest boy, born when Jacob was old, and perhaps to mark that reality of favoritism, the old father makes a special garment for his special son. The famous “coat of many colors” is a fiction from the KJV and compounded by a well-known Broadway musical; the only other reference to this garment is to be found at 2 Samuel 13, where we see the robe worn by virginal princesses. We may thus conclude that the robe is a unisex tunic, highly ornamented in some way, and that is all we may conclude.

         Whatever the robe actually looks like, its effects are made clear. “His brothers saw it was he their father loved more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and could not speak shalom to him” (Gen.37:4). If Joseph were such a “wise sage” and “a pious and gracious man,” this would be the time to try to make peace with his brothers, perhaps eschew the grand robe, or downplay the extravagant love Jacob has poured on him, or build the brothers up in some ways. Not Joseph! He dreams two grand dreams, both of which make it clear that he thinks he is in fact far superior to them, as their tiny shocks of wheat bow to his huge shock in the first dream, while in the second the very sun, moon, and stars bow to him, as if he was some sort of divinity! He might have kept these night visions to himself, but he can hardly wait to share them in detail with his seething brothers.  The result is all too obvious; they rage with jealousy while even his doting father is chagrined by the crass arrogance of his beloved son.

         Soon it is time for the pasturing of the flock, and the brothers herd them far from home, and thus far from their detested brother. But the so-called wily Jacob sends Joseph to find out where they are and what they are doing. In short, he asks him to spy on them, as he perhaps did at the beginning of this story. Could not the clever Jacob, always the winner, always in control of every situation, have seen that sending Joseph to his furious brothers is nothing less than a death sentence? And so it appears to be. The brothers see him coming, and they plot to kill him (Gen.37:18). They scheme to throw him into a dry desert pit, perhaps after they have murdered him, to ensure that they have seen the last of him. Also, they will take that cursed tunic, the sign of his fatherly favor, and will tell that old man that a wild beast has devoured his favorite, and the torn and bloody robe will prove it.

         At the last moment Reuben, the eldest brother, urges them not to kill him, but to throw him in the pit alive. Reuben planned to return to the pit to save Joseph in order to restore him to his father. He does not do this out of any love for the wretched boy, but because he needs a way to regain the lost favor of his father. Back in Gen.35:22 we are told that Reuben slept with Bilhah, one of his father’s concubines, and that act was often construed to be a son’s attempt to usurp the place of the father in the family hierarchy. The brothers at first agree to this plan, but after tossing him to the pit, Judah changes his mind and says they ought to sell Joseph to any passing traders; that way they can at least make some cash off the boy. And so they do, imagining that they have at last seen the last of Joseph, their hated brother. Of course, we know it is not the last they will see of this arrogant little jerk. Later in the tale they will see him again, but will not recognize him, since in the succeeding years, he will have astonishingly become the grand vizier of Egypt, and will stand before them in magnificent robes, speaking to them through an interpreter, although he will understand their every Hebrew word. Perhaps then at last he will become that model sage, that wise and beneficent leader. We will see.

         But here in Gen.37, he is the arrogant, favorite son of an old man, who appears to be losing his cleverness, and who unbeknownst to him, has sent his favored son to be murdered by his angry brothers, who will in turn trick the old man into thinking that that son is indeed dead. Like lying Abraham, equally lying Isaac, and tricky, grabbing Jacob, Joseph is a chip off the old block of sordidness and ignominious behavior. Far from the model sage, he is simply another of the characters of Genesis whom we ought not emulate, but should see rather just how we are all too much like him.