Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.
Genesis 37 ends far from home. Joseph is alive, sold into Egypt, and now the property of one of Pharaoh's officials. The verse names the man who bought him and the post he held. Behind the sale stands a larger question: who was directing it?
The man who bought him
Potiphar's post was "captain of the guard." One dictionary shows what the older margin does with that title:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe word "executioner" does not occur in the Old Testament text, only in the margin. In three places the text points out men as "captain of the guard," while the margin calls them "chief of the executioners or slaughtermen": Genesis 37:36; Jeremiah 39:9; Daniel 2:14.
So Joseph did not just change country. He became the property of the man over Pharaoh's executioners.
Sold on, and passed to the Gentiles
The chapter records two sales: brothers to traders, traders to an Egyptian. The story names those traders both ways — Ishmaelites and Midianites. The second sale moves Joseph out of Israel's family and into Gentile hands, and commentators see there the shadow of a later handing-over.
Frederick W. GrantJoseph's brothers plan at once to kill him. In fact they throw him into a pit — but a pit with no water in it. "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death," the Jews said to Pilate. Then they draw him out of it and sell him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. So Israel handed the Lord over to the Gentiles.
The parallel is not exact. Commentators mark the difference in price: twenty pieces of silver for Joseph, thirty for Christ (L. M. Grant).
What the sale cost the boy
The verse reads like a business record. One writer sets it beside what the brothers admitted years afterwards:
L. M. GrantScripture says nothing here about how deeply Joseph felt the trauma of his ordeal. But we learn something of it from his brothers' later words to one another: "we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen" (Gen. 42:21). He was now taken to a far distant country and made a slave at the tender age of seventeen. How many must have been the hours of his painful agony!
Brought there, not gone there
Egypt appears more than once in Genesis, and the outcome is not always the same. One writer draws the contrast from a single verb:
Hamilton SmithThus Joseph passes into the land of the Gentiles and is "brought" into Egypt. Egypt was a snare to Abraham, and his stay in Egypt brought him only sorrow and shame. With Joseph, however, it brought blessing and glory. Why this difference? Is it not that in Abraham's case he "went down into Egypt to sojourn there" (Gen. 12:10); but Joseph was "brought" into Egypt. One went there in unbelief and self-will. God brought the other there according to His own settled purpose and foreknowledge.
The plan they meant to kill
The brothers meant the sale to defeat God's purpose. The place they sold him into is where God carried it out.
J. N. DarbyNotice how God's ordering kept Joseph's trial from anything that could hinder it. The trial was meant to frustrate God's purpose, and it seemed to run clean against it. Yet his righteous suffering in Egypt is the very thing that brought about the whole plan they seemed to be frustrating. It was the Egypt his brothers sold him to, and the prison Potiphar put him in, that brought him to Pharaoh's butler and baker — and that made him governor over all the land of Egypt. We cannot put God out of His way. It is better to trust Him.
God's overruling reached beyond one man. It also governed the timing of an inheritance:
C. H. MackintoshBut then God was in all this, as well as man; and it is His prerogative to bring good out of evil. Joseph's brothers might sell him to the Ishmaelites. The Ishmaelites might sell him to Potiphar. Potiphar might throw him into prison. But the LORD was above it all, and He was accomplishing His own mighty ends. "The wrath of man shall praise Him." The time had not yet come when the heirs were ready for the inheritance, and the inheritance ready for the heirs.
Summary
- Sold. The chapter closes with a price on a favoured son. Traders hand him to Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh's guard — a title the margin renders "chief of the executioners."
- Handed over. Israel's own family passed Joseph into Gentile — that is, non-Jewish — hands. Commentators see the shadow of a later handing-over, at a lower price: twenty pieces of silver against thirty.
- Suffered. The verse says nothing of Joseph's agony. His brothers supply the missing line years later, remembering the distress of his soul as he begged them.
- Brought. The verb matters. Abraham went down to Egypt in self-will. God brought Joseph there by His own purpose — same country, opposite outcome.
- Overruled. The very Egypt they sold him into, and the very prison Potiphar threw him into, made him governor over all Egypt. "We cannot put God out of His way. It is better to trust Him."