Joseph Part 4: Down into the Pit

Down Into the Pit

The scene that we were just in was about how Joseph is betrayed by all the brothers, including Abraham's other sons, but especially Judah, that snake, and his really self-oriented betrayal of his brother. He's after a quick 20 shekels. 

We're gonna pick up in verse 29 and shift back to Judah's older brother, Reuven, who had it seemed noble intentions to save Yoseph. 

Genesis 37:29–36 CSB

29 When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. 30 He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy is gone! What am I going to do?” 31 So they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a male goat, and dipped the robe in its blood. 32 They sent the long-sleeved robe to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it. Is it your son’s robe or not?” 33 His father recognized it. “It is my son’s robe,” he said. “A vicious animal has devoured him. Joseph has been torn to pieces!” 34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth around his waist, and mourned for his son many days. 35 All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said. “I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” And his father wept for him. 36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards.

Verse 29, "And Reuven, he returned to the pit.

And look, Yoseph, he was not in the pit, and he tore his clothes. And he returned to his brothers, and he said, 'The child, he is no more. And as for me, where am I to go?'"

You get it on a basic level. It's kind of a, "Where am I to go?" Kinda a weird, you would think you would say, "What am I to do?" But that little ender matches the coming and going and the can't find my brothers scene back up here. So it was about Yoseph who cannot find, and he wonders where did they go?

And then the double, betrayal scene.

And then it ends with Reuven looking for his brother. "And where am I to go?"

It began with Jacob, Joseph, and the brothers. The middle scene was all about Joseph and the brothers. Now it's gonna be about the brothers and Jacob. 

So we're kind of exploring all of the different relationships in this triangle.

The Deceptive Animal (Garment)

Verse 31, "They," that is the brothers, "took the robe of Yoseph, and they slaughtered a hairy goat, and they dipped the robe in the blood, and they sent the robe of many colors and they brought it to their father.

the slaughtering the hairy goat makes me think of the Jacob and Esau deception where he kills the hairy goat and then uses the meat and the skins to deceive, to deceive his father. So this is like Jacob being deceived by, sort of the same mechanism that he himself used when he was younger.

And they said, 'We found this. Recognize it, please. Is it the robe of your son or not?' And he recognized it and he said, 'The robe of my son, an evil animal.'"

It’s the word Ra’ah or Ra, animal has eaten him. Yoseph, he's certainly been torn apart.' And Yaaqov tore his clothes."

That's what Reuven did. Now the father imitates the son.

"And he placed sackcloth on his thighs and he grieved over his son for many days, all of his sons and his daughters, they got up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, 'Surely I will go down to my son grieving down to Sheol,'" which is the Hebrew word for grave, the underworld, the land under the land.

"And his father wept for him.

But as for the Medanim," this is the third title for these extended relatives. 

And the word "medan" is the same Hebrew letters as the word "hostility," which is for sure why that word was saved for this line because it reminds you of the hostility between the brothers. 

"But as for the hostile ones, Medanim, they sold him to Egypt to Potiphar, official of Pharaoh.

That is Potiphar, the captain of the butchers."

In Genesis 37:36

Genesis 37:36 CSB

36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards.

All of our English translations are gonna call Potiphar captain of the guard, or something like that. 

If you look at the word guard. its Tabbak.

Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament) 3184 טַבָּח

3184 טַבָּח (ṭǎb·bāḥ): n.masc.; ≡ Str 2876; TWOT 786c—1. LN 46 cook, i.e., one who butchers and cooks meat for consumption, apparently as a special role or function (

It means butcher.

Some people think that it possibly could mean bodyguards or executioners. Why, because of a related meaning in Aramaic. 

Now why is that significant?

What does, in the opening of paragraph here, since this is kind of divided into thirds, the first thing is what they do with the goat.  The robe scene. And what do they do with the goat? They slaughter it. They slaughter the goat, and then they take the blood of the goat and they put it on the robe so that it looks as if Yoseph has been butchered by an animal. But then it turns out that Yoseph is actually sold to the captain of the butchers as a slave.

So the word "slaughter" up here in verse 31, it's one of the standard words in Leviticus used for like the ritual slaughter of an animal.

Like in the sacrificial rituals described in Leviticus, the "dipping" is the exact same word used with what the priest or the father does with a hyssop in the Passover. 

You dip it in the blood and then you paint the blood on the door. 

There's sacrificial imagery and language being used in this description of what the brothers are doing with the coat and with the blood. 

that's what became this interesting little clue that maybe butchers really means butchers.

'Cause it's as if his sale into slavery is his sacrifice.

The deception and the blood, it's all a part of his, his dad thinks that he's been slaughtered, and in a way he has by being sold as a slave to the captain of the butchers.

Adam and Eve are deceived by a spiritual being who takes up the animal disguise of a snake, and so they end up clothed with the skin of an animal and exiled from Eden (Gen. 3).

Yaaqov put on the skin of a slaughtered goat in order to deceive his father and gain the blessing, only to find himself exiled from Canaan (Gen. 27).

Yoseph loses his royal robe, his brothers smear it with the blood of a slaughtered goat to deceive their father, and Yoseph finds himself exiled from Canaan (Gen. 37).

A Beloved Son and a Slaughtered Goat

Notice how the cloak, bloodied by a slaughtered goat, becomes a twisted image of Yoseph’s status as the beloved son who was supposed to be elevated to a place of rule and honor among the brothers.

The capture and sale of Yoseph is replete with language from the Aqedah in Genesis 22, which is full of ironic inversions and twists.

And so God asked for the life of Isaac back, but then, in Genesis 22, when God calls out, "Abraham, Abraham, here I am." Oh, this is good. When, actually here, sorry. It gets better. Gets better. I know this is not a story about Abraham, but so at the beginning of the story, God says, "Abraham." And Abraham says, "Here I am. Here I am." "Take now your only son, the son whom you love."

The beloved son.

"And go offer him up." So while they're going along the way, Isaac speaks up and says, "Father, father." And he says, "Here I am. Here I am." "Where is the lamb?" It's famous, right? God will provide, God will orchestrate things. God will see to it that there is a lamb. And so he starts building an altar, this whole set of lines here in verse 9, building the altar, arranging the wood, binding the sacrifice, this is all verbatim from the Leviticus instructions.

He's depicted as a priest here. And he sends out his hand. The woman saw, she sends out her hand to take, but then, "Abraham, Abraham." "Oh, here I am." "Don't stretch out your hand, don't do anything. Now I know that you fear Elohim," just like Adam and Eve were afraid of Elohim too late after, after their failure. "Then Abraham raised his eyes and he found a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. 

He went and took the ram and offered him up as a burnt offering, takhat, in the place of, as a substitute for his son." So you can have a son, the last-born son, who can be a substitute for the lost son who was lost because of the murder of his brother. Now here in this story, you have the abuse of the rival that leads to God asking for the life of the beloved son. But then God is the one who provides the substitute to prevent a death. So we're taking the same categories of Cain and Abel and Seth, but now we have, it's more complicated 'cause Abraham and Sarah are much more complicated characters. But it's the same idea, that human evil leads to the death of the beloved one. 

But God provides a takhat, one who stands in the place of, and so there's a little seed being planted here in the Joseph story. And so it's not just right here, it's, well, where's this theme gonna go? 

And every time we start hitting this scene of the beloved loss of Yoseph, we're just gonna pay attention to the vocabulary used. And when I start to see the repetition of vocabulary at just the right moments, it's echoing all of these previous substitution scenes. 

The affinities of the Yoseph story with the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 are striking, though the relationship is one of inversion in some important respects.

Abraham intends to slay Isaac, who is spared in the nick of time. // Yaaqov intends to send and receive his son back soon but finds that he has been “slain.”

Abraham offers the sacrificial ram in place of his son. // For Yaaqov, the goat and its blood take the place of the son, because he has (so Yaaqov thinks) been mauled to death. The slain goat symbolizes the loss of the beloved son.

Abraham intends to lose his son and receives him back. // Yaaqov intends to receive back his son and loses him.

But alongside these inversions, there are also profound continuities.

For Yaaqov’s beloved son, his death is only symbolized; in reality he has been “spared” from literal death. The goat dies and the son lives to be later restored to his father.

The son who undergoes symbolic death is the firstborn of his father’s preferred wife (just as Isaac is to Sarah).

Yoseph’s words to Yaaqov “here I am”echo Abraham’s response to Godas well as Esau’s response to Isaac in (Gen. 37:13)  (Gen. 22:1, 11),  Genesis 27:1.

“In a sense, the two stories of Abraham and Isaac and that of Isaac and Jacob flow together in the story of Jacob and Joseph.”

Levenson, Jon D. (1995). The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. Yale University Press. 149.

Yoseph Assaulted, Slaughtered, Exiled, Enslaved, and Thrown in the Grave

Genesis 37 creates a network of images and vocabulary to describe Yoseph’s fate, some of them real and others imagined. But their association in this opening story connects them in an important way, and we find them repeated and connected even more as the story develops.

Yoseph is thrown into a pit (בור) (Gen. 37:20, 22, 24, 28, 29).

Yoseph is abused by his brothers (Gen. 37:23).

Yoseph is substituted for a slaughtered animal (Gen. 37:31-32).

Yoseph is sold into slavery (Gen. 37:28-29).

Yaaqov assumes that Yoseph is “torn up,” “eaten,” and “in the grave” (Gen. 37:33, 35).

This network of associations provides the most robust portrait of human evil and violence that we’ve encountered thus far in Genesis. 

And so this whole network of images, they're all gonna be drawn upon later in the story where what people think happened to Joseph become these ironic depictions of what actually happens. 

And it's as if we're stocking the cabinet of vocabulary for ways that terrible things can happen to you in the biblical story. You could die, you can fall into a pit, you can be lost in the underworld of the grave. You can be eaten by wild animals, which means you're vulnerable out in the wilderness. You can be sold into slavery instead of a ruler.

Bibliography

Bible Hub. “What is Joseph’s Robe’s Significance?” Bible Hub. Accessed March 17, 2026. https://biblehub.com/q/What_is_Joseph_s_robe_s_significance.htm.

BibleProject. “Joseph.” BibleProject Classroom. Accessed March 17, 2026. https://bibleproject.com/classroom/joseph.

Gilbrant, Thoralf. “שָׁלוֹם.” In The Old Testament Hebrew-English Dictionary. WORDsearch, 1998.

Hamilton, Jeffries M. “Adullam (Place).” Pages 81 in vol. 1 of The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Mandel, David. Who’s Who in the Jewish Bible. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2007.

Mangum, Douglas, Miles Custis, and Wendy Widder. Genesis 12–50. Logos Research Commentaries. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2026.

M’Clintock, John, and James Strong. “Shaving (1).” Pages 623 in vol. 9 of Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. 12 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880.

Shabda History. “Egyptian Seven Cows.” Shabda History. April 15, 2026. https://history.shabda.co/articles/egyptian-seven-cows/.

Silva, Moisés, and Merrill C. Tenney, eds. The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible. Rev. ed. 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

Wilson, Marvin R. “Barbers & Beards.” Pages 139 in vol. 1 of Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical & Post-Biblical Antiquity. Edited by Edwin M. Yamauchi and Marvin R. Wilson. 4 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2014.