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How to handle hatred

Genesis 37 : 1-11 (Part 1 of 3)

Have you ever been the object of jealousy? Has anybody ever been envious of you, or has anybody ever disliked you, have you ever been the object of hate? I suppose everybody goes through that to some degree, children can go through the most intense sibling rivalries sometimes. Sadly, teenagers sometimes go through it, bullying is still a common thing for many young people. What often starts out as teasing can turn into cruel bullying. I am sure you’ve heard the stories as I have, of how who are driven to suicide because of the treatment they experience at school. 

Sometimes adults can also go through the most intense of hostilities by other in work or in social environments. Maybe we should not be surprised that this should happen, especially if we are Christians, as a matter of fact, Jesus said that if they hated me, they would hate you.  The consequences of such hostility can be devastating, so, what happens when your life totally falls apart, because of jealousy or envy? What are the consequences of somebody hating you or being jealous of just downright cruel? I mean, when you’re feeling at rock bottom and it as if the whole world is against you and it’s just one thing after another. How should we respond? 

Well, all those things and all of those emotions must have been felt by a man who will figure a lot in the closing chapter of the Book of Genesis, a man called Joseph. What I want us to do is begin his story. It’s rather lengthy story, the narrative of which drops in and out of the remaining chapters of Genesis. Today we’re going to look at the beginnings of his story in Genesis chapter 37 where we will see hoe the jealousy of others leads to the most dramatic of situations. But the question is, how did he handle it? How should you handle it when such things happen to you? Well, join me in Genesis Chapter 37 and let’s see if we can answer those questions…….

“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”.

(Genesis 37: 2)

Let’s pause for a second. If you’ve been with me as we've been going through the Book of Genesis episode by episode, you will know that last time I spent a great deal of time talking about that little phrase. “This is the account of Jacob’s family line/This is the history of”, appears repeated many times in the Book of Genesis. This is the 11th and last time it appears and as I explained last time, it is referring to what happened to the person named and even beyond that, what happened to the descendants of that person. 

Up to this point we’ve been talking about Jacob from all the way back to Chapter 25. It all been about the up and downs of this character Jacob. Here now it tells us this is the history of Jacob, meaning, of course, that now it going to tell us what became of him and what became of his descendants. In a sense, the rest of Genesis, all the way to the end at chapter 50 will be about Jacob and his children, but in the main the spotlight will fall on one of his sons named Joseph. He will fill the narrative for nearly 10 of the remaining 13 chapters. 

At this point the passage opens by telling us, this is the history of Jacob”, and then immediately turns its attention to Joseph - look at verse two again. This is the history of Jacob begins when Joseph is 17 years old and he is found feeding the flock with his brothers. So immediately we have our attention turned to Joseph. Notice it mentions his brothers, you will remember that Jacob had several wives, not just one wife and he had multiple children with these various wives. So, these were technically Joseph’s brothers and half-brothers and at this point he is the next youngest at 17 years old. He’s a teenager and we are told that he brings a bad report of them to his father. Here’s what’s going on, Joseph, is one of the youngest children of the 12 and they’re out tending the flock and apparently not behaving themselves properly. What they did, we don’t know, and we have no way of knowing except it was bad enough for Joseph to go back and tell his father about it. He feels his father needs to know what his brothers are up to, so it must have been serious. But we can’t help but feel he is being a bit of a telltale by going back and telling his father and I am sure that what his brother will feel as well. The story continues…

“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. 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”.

(Genesis 37: 3-4)

Israel, that the new name for Jacob, remember his name was changed to Israel by the Lord a few chapters ago. Joseph is his favorite, and they tell us you’re not supposed to have favorites when we have children. But Jacob/Israel had a favorite and it was Joseph, and he gave him ornate expensive coat of many colors which clearly would have demonstrated his preference of him. This coat would have been something more like an overcoat rather than a jacket. At that time such coats came down to about the waist, and some even came all the way to the ankles. Many colors indicates that this was a special kind of garment, and when he wore it, he stood out. All the other brothers would have known they didn’t get one of these coats, only Joseph got one. This is further evidence to them that Joseph was his father’s favorite. Verse four says the brothers saw that their father loved him but more than that they hated him because of it and could not speak well of him.

Alright, a plot is beginning here. They realize he’s the favorite and they hate him. The hatred is so apparent that they couldn't speak peacefully to him. Have you ever been in a situation where people couldn’t talk civilly to each other? Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t talk civilly to another person? Bitterness and sarcasm were the noises coming out of his brothers’ mouths. There is a real tension in the relationship here, that’s the picture being clearly painted for us. Joseph is now the object of their hatred. The plot thickens.

“Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream I had:  we were binding sheaves of corn out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered round mine and bowed down to it.’ His brothers said to him, ‘Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?’ And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.’

(Genesis 37: 5-9) 

Now he tells them this dream and that of course just makes the matter worse. Can you imagine him telling this to his brothers, who already hate him, that? Now they hate him even more? They hated him because he was their father’s favourite, and now they also hate him because of his dreams. What are you telling us, they say, you’re going to rule over us? Is that what you’re telling us in this dream? Delusions of grandeur is how people would describe it today. Needless to say, they’re not happy campers. Then he dreamed another dream and this one gets even more interesting. So, he tells his brothers he has had another dream. Maybe he should have kept this one to himself. In this dream he says, “the sun, the moon and the stars bowed down before me”. Wow, subtle or what. The narrative continues.

“When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, ‘What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?’ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind”.

(Genesis 37: 10-11)

They’re all bowing down now, all the heavenly bodies are bowing down to him. Interestingly, some say the sun and the moon probably represent his mother and father and all the stars are representing his brothers, everybody is bowing down to him now.

I want you to pick out of this passage is that several times it says they hated him.  They hated him, verse four, they hated him even more, verse five. They hated him even more for his dreams, verse eight. They hated him again and it says they were envious of him. Here is this fellow that is the object of all these emotions. I mentioned at the beginning about the destructive power of jealousy, envy, and hatred well it all is swirling up here. Before we go on, we need to probably ask the question, what’s going on here? Is this kid just arrogant, is he just a spoiled brat that’s rubbing his brothers up the wrong way? At some level you might say, it’s understandable they felt that way about Joseph, or is something else going on? If this is all we had to go on is this story, I don't think we have any way of knowing for sure, but as we dig deeper into the book of Genesis and find out what happens to this guy and how he responds to what happens to him.

I’m going to suggest that this is not arrogance on his part. As a matter of fact, the first word we have is he’s “reporting” bad behavior back to his father, that seems to indicate that he was dealing with a unrighteous situation and he wasn’t just gossiping on them. It suggests to me he was telling his father the truth of what was going on in a particular situation. I don’t think he himself did anything to try and ingratiate himself with his father, as matter of fact, the text says he was the favourite of Jacob because he was the son of his old age. It wasn’t his fault that his father made him his favorite, and these dreams weren’t his fault either. I read this situation more to mean he was just naively relating what he had dreamed about. While some commentators tend to criticize him, I take the position of the commentators who are more favorable towards him based on the fuller knowledge of his character as reveled later in the book. I would say that this is just a young of integrity and faith, guilty of no more that naivety and maybe a little immaturity. I think he becomes the object of this treatment by his brothers that he really didn't deserve. The text says they hated him because of the fact his father loved him the most and they despised him because of his dreams, but one thing we will find out later is that these dreams will turn out to be significant? 

These dreams will become literally fulfilled later in his life when there’s a famine in the land, and his brothers are starving to death, and he will be in a position to provide food for them. The sheaves bowing down before him at that point may seem strange to them like he’s dominating them or trying to master them or enslave them rather than an image of them being thankful to him. It will be fulfilled later by their bowing down and he’s giving them food. The dream of the sun of the moon and the stars indicates he will be in a power position in the future. He ends up second in command in all of Egypt, so he will be in a position of authority when they need to head down to Egypt when the famine hit the land, and in that sense, he is over them, though none of them know this at this point, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. We find out soon enough as we are reading the rest of the story.