Joseph Sold into Slavery and Imprisoned in Egypt

The event

Of all Jacob's sons, Joseph is the one he loves most, "because he was the son of his old age," and he shows it openly with a richly ornamented robe. Joseph's dreams of his brothers' sheaves and even the sun, moon, and stars bowing to him don't help matters, and by the time he's sent to check on his brothers pasturing the flocks near Dothan, their hatred has curdled into a plot. Reuben quietly tries to save him by suggesting they throw him in a pit rather than kill him outright, planning to rescue him later; Judah, seeing a caravan of Ishmaelite traders pass by, proposes selling him instead — profit and murder avoided in one move. Joseph is sold for twenty pieces of silver, and his brothers stage his death with the bloodied robe for Jacob, who mourns as if his son were truly dead.

In Egypt, Joseph is bought by Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, and Genesis repeats a phrase across this whole ordeal like a drumbeat: "the LORD was with Joseph." He rises to run Potiphar's entire household — until Potiphar's wife, repeatedly rebuffed in her advances, falsely accuses him of assault, and Joseph lands in prison. Even there, the same pattern holds: the LORD is with him, and the jailer puts him in charge of the other prisoners.

It's in prison that Joseph correctly interprets dreams for two of Pharaoh's officials, a cupbearer and a baker, accurately predicting the cupbearer's restoration and the baker's execution — and asks only that the cupbearer remember him once he's free. He doesn't. Joseph waits two more full years, forgotten, at what looks like the bottom of a story that has taken everything from him: family, freedom, and reputation, one after another.

Nothing in this stretch of the story reads as accidental once the whole account is finished. Joseph himself will later name exactly what was happening underneath the injustice: "you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20) — one of Scripture's clearest statements of God's sovereign hand working through, not around, human sin and suffering.

Dating

Joseph was 17 when sold (Genesis 37:2) and 30 when he stood before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46), against a birth year of c. 1915 BC.

Scripture references

• Genesis 37:1-36
• Genesis 39:1-40:23
• Genesis 50:20