Genesis 37 – Study
For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.
Passage: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-14, 23,24,28-35
1 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan.
2 This is the account of Jacob’s family line.
Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. 4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
12 Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem, 13 and Israel said to Joseph, ‘As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.’
‘Very well,’ he replied.
14 So he said to him, ‘Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.’ Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron.
23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe – the ornate robe he was wearing 24 and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
28 So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
29 When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. 30 He went back to his brothers and said, ‘The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?’
31 Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. 32 They took the ornate robe back to their father and said, ‘We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.’
33 He recognized it and said, ‘It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.’
34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. 35 All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.’ So his father wept for him.
36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.
A. Find Out:
- What did Israel feel about Joseph? v.3
- What effect did this have on his other sons? v.4
- What did Israel get Joseph to do? v.13,14
- What did the brothers do with Joseph? v.24 & 28
- What did they say to Israel? v.31,32
- What was his response? v.33-35
B. Think:
- What was the real cause of all of the troubles that befell Joseph?
- How could Jacob have made the whole thing different?
- How does this all reflect back to the way Jacob’s own parents had behaved?
C. Comment:
We are now moving in into the time when Jacob (Israel) is getting quite old. Fairly understandably (but not right!) he has a special place in his heart for Joseph, the first son of Rachel, his beloved. However to love him to the detriment of the other brothers was foolish, and it simply stirred up jealousy in them which eventually erupted in their disposing of him to slave traders (for Joseph’s story, see the next in this series).
You may remember that part of the trouble in Jacob’s earlier life stemmed from the fact that Isaac and Rebekah had favourites. Perhaps we may have hoped that Jacob might have understood something of that and sought to avoid it with his own children. Someone has said. “The one thing that history teaches us is that history teaches us nothing”, and Jacob doesn’t seem to have learned from his own history. Jacob has learnt many things but he is still vulnerable in this area. Various other fathers in Scripture also failed with their children (1 Samuel 2:12,29 / 1 Samuel 8:1-3)
D. Application?
- Do we learn from the things that have happened to us, or do we carry on making the same mistakes?
- Do we have favorites to the detriment of our relationship with others?