May 18, 2005
The Books: "Sold into Egypt: Joseph's Journey Into Human Being" (Madeleine L'Engle)
More from "Red's Bookshelf - An Excerpt a Day".
Next book is Sold into Egypt: Joseph's Journey Into Human Being, by Madeleine L'Engle.
This is the last book in L'Engle's "Genesis trilogy". I think it's my favorite one of the trilogy, although I love each of them. This book is the story of Joseph (you know, of the "amazing technicolor dream coat"). As always, L'Engle uses the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt as the jumping-off place for ruminations into all kinds of subjects: astronomy, grieving the death of her husband of 40 years (Hugh), creationism vs. evolution, how misguided "piety" is, how suffering can be ennobling ... It's just a really good and fulfilling read.
EXCERPT FROM Sold into Egypt: Joseph's Journey Into Human Being, by Madeleine L'Engle.
It is not a pretty story, but we are so over-familiar with it that repetition has blunted the ugliness of what the brothers did. Joseph was a spoiled adolescent; they had cause to be jealous, but not cause to do what they did. And had it not been for Reuben and Judah, they would certainly have had Joseph's blood on their hands. Had they forgotten Cain?
What a rude awakening for young Joseph. Had he suspected the depths of his older brothers' resentment? What a shock to the pampered adolescent, first to be flung into a pit, then to be sold into the hand of strangers. Who kept the money?
Sometimes terrible things are redeemed in unexpected ways. This sudden and violent separation from everything known and loved and familiar was the beginning of Joseph's growing-up. This beginning of the breaking of the pampered pet was essential to his development into a mature human being. Likely the Ishmaelites were rough with him. He was, after all, a purchase, a commercial property, and that made him a slave. At least his life was spared.
But to Jacob, to the women, Joseph was dead. Now a new and terrible grief was added to Jacob's grief over Rachel. In my journal I wrote, "Grief is different from unhappiness. In unhappiness one is stuck in time. In grief time is totally askew. Christmas at Crosswicks was only three days ago and it was years ago. Coming to Maplewood to Maria and John and the babies is a parenthesis in time ... It is time I started saying 'this winter' and stopped saying 'this summer'. 'This summer' was so fiercely intense it's hard to get out of its grip. Especially since out of its grip means out of my life with Hugh and into a new life where I'm still groping my way."
So Jacob, too, because of Joseph's death, moved into a new way of loss. How could his other sons comfort him? Did he turn to little Benjamin?
The older brothers carried the burden of what they had done, but how painfully it weighted their consciences we do not know. Reuben, it would seem, was filled with pain and regret for having failed to rescue Joseph and return him to his father. The others may have felt that they were fine fellows for having spared the braggart's life, for having sold him into Egypt rather than murdering him. In any case, life had to go on, there was work to do, flocks to tend.
And where was God, the Maker of the Universe who took Abraham out to ask him if he could count the stars, who sent the ram in the bush to spare Isaac, who wrestled with Jacob, during all this? Thoughts of God seem to be singularly absent in Jacob's sons, and if there is any sense of God at all it is the tribal god, the one god among many gods, the masculine deity who is around to help his tribe. To the casual reader this rather chauvinist figure appears to be the God of the Old Testament. Our visions of God are partial and incomplete at best. But the God who shines through the Old Testament is the mighty Creator who made the brilliance of all those stars he showed Abraham, the God of the universe.
There have been many times in history when people must have wondered what kind of God we Christians have -- for instance, when crusaders slaughtered Orthodox Christians in Constantinople; when the Spanish Inquisitors burned people at the stake for tiny differences in interpretation of faith; in Salen where a woman could be hanged as a witch if an angry neighbor accused her out of spite. Perhaps God needs less of our fierce protectiveness for his cause, and more of our love to El, to each other.
Did Simeon and Levi think they were doing God's will when they slaughtered
Shechem? Did the brothers even consider what God would think of their selling Joseph into Egypt? Did Reuben turn over his anguish to God when he was unable to save his brother? Perhaps he wanted to unburden himself to Bilhah, but whenever he even turned in the direction of Bilhah's tent his father's suspicious eyes were fixed on him. Bilhah's consolations were denied him forever.