Joseph Was Thrown In A Pit. Why?

Jospeh was thrown in a pit, but that didn’t stop him seeing the dream he had come to fruition. Be careful sharing your dreams.

Have you ever had that experience of wanting to get in a time machine, go back a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, and change something.

You’ve stuffed up big time.

You regret the decisions made, and the choices taken.

Possibly you are flooded and overwhelmed by all that has happened.

But you know you can’t go back.

There is no magic wand to wave or eraser to rub out what’s happened and write a different script.

But we can learn lessons.

We can change and still find hope for the future.

The biblical character Joseph made some bad choices in his teenage years.

Have you made poor choices in your teenage years? Maybe even in later years too!

But his story is a story of hope. One in which we can learn valuable lessons.

Joseph shares his dream

Joseph’s story is one of parental favouritism and sibling rivalry.

It’s a story of youthful naivety and possibly arrogance.

But this is also a story where, even though all the characters did things where they all probably wanted a time machine to go back and change, God was able to make something good out of it.

The favouritism

This is the story of Jacob.

The story continues with Joseph, seventeen years old at the time, helping out his brothers in herding the flocks.

These were his half brothers actually, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. And Joseph brought his father bad reports on them.

Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any of his other sons because he was the child of his old age.

And he made him an elaborately embroidered coat.

When his brothers realized that their father loved him more than them, they grew to hate him—they wouldn’t even speak to him. Genesis 37:2-4

Here is the setup for the story. The introduction to the drama.

There was favouritism by a father of his youngest son. He made an ‘elaborately embroidered coat’. In our context, it would be dressing all the older kids from the local bulk outlet store and dressing Joseph in an Armani suit.

This bred jealousy, envy and hatred in the older brothers.

The dream

Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.

He said, “Listen to this dream I had. We were all out in the field gathering bundles of wheat. All of a sudden my bundle stood straight up and your bundles circled around it and bowed down to mine.”

His brothers said, “So! You’re going to rule us? You’re going to boss us around?” And they hated him more than ever because of his dreams and the way he talked.

He had another dream and told this one also to his brothers: “I dreamed another dream—the sun and moon and eleven stars bowed down to me!” Genesis 37:5-9

Into this tinderbox of sibling hatred Joseph throws a spark.

His dream was a foretelling of what would happen in the future (Genesis 42:5-7), but possibly with youthful arrogance and naivety he shared the dream.

The reprimand

When he told it to his father and brothers, his father reprimanded him: “What’s with all this dreaming? Am I and your mother and your brothers all supposed to bow down to you?”

Now his brothers were really jealous; but his father brooded over the whole business. Genesis 37:10-11

The response was a reprimand from his father. His brothers hated him even more and now were really jealous. There was no gentle curiosity.

No exploration of what the dream might mean.

We read though that Jacob ‘brooded over the whole business’. Jacob kept thinking about it, pondering ‌it, and mulling it over.

The scheme

The story continues, and we find Jacob sending off Joseph to see his brothers.

Joseph … tracked his brothers down, and found them in Dothan.

They spotted him off in the distance.

By the time he got to them they had cooked up a plot to kill him.

The brothers were saying, “Here comes that dreamer. Let’s kill him and throw him into one of these old cisterns; we can say that a vicious animal ate him up. We’ll see what his dreams amount to.”

Reuben heard the brothers talking and intervened to save him, “We’re not going to kill him. No murder. Go ahead and throw him in this cistern out here in the wild, but don’t hurt him.”

Reuben planned to go back later and get him out and take him back to his father. Genesis 37:17-24

When Joseph reached his brothers, they ripped off the fancy coat he was wearing, grabbed him, and threw him into a cistern.

The cistern was dry; there wasn’t any water in it.

Joseph thrown in the pit

Here is where I think Joseph would have wanted to go back in time.

Maybe there was anger at his brothers. Possibly even anger at himself for being so naïve as to all that he had done.

The gossiping about his brothers.

The sharing of his dreams.

Perhaps he wished he could take it all back.

Perhaps he doubted his dream, that his future wasn’t that of a leader with people bowing down to him.

Wasn’t he the favoured son? Wasn’t he the apple of his father’s eye?

Where’s God in all of this? I thought I was the chosen one?

In that pit and in future struggles, Joseph learned the heart qualities needed to be a leader, that others’ needs came first before his own.

Patience produces character

Joseph had been given a beautiful dream. It was a dream that would hold him true through some incredibly demanding times.

The time of being sold into slavery. A time when he was thrown into prison under false allegations and then let down by someone he had helped.

He must have held on to that dream and the God that had planted that dream deep into his heart.

The mistake he made, most likely in teenage naivety, was to share the dream with those that couldn’t handle the vision of the dream.

Looking back now with hindsight, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to say.

But when you’re seventeen, you don’t generally have the wisdom that comes with many life struggles.

You probably think you know it all and you want to share your wisdom with others.

But not enough hard, unanswerable questions have swirled around the brain for you to learn that patient silence might be a better course of action.

Patience produces character, and character produces hope Romans 5:4

Have you been thrown into a pit?

Perhaps you have had the experience of rejection?

Maybe you’ve done things that you now regret and wish you could go back in time and change the path taken.

People have shot you down, dismissed your thoughts, and thrown you in a pit.

Perhaps you have done this to yourself and your dreams.

I wonder what would have happened if someone in Joseph’s life had taken notice of his life and explored his deep inner world.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes this.

In order to understand any man, one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime And Punishment

But in that pit, God was still there.

God used that pit experience, and others, to craft Joseph into the leader that was needed in the future.

Can God use your pit experiences to craft and form?

Be careful

Be careful where you share your dream
Be careful who you tell
Some will want to throw you in a hole
Some will think you unwell

Hold it like a treasure
Ponder on it day and night
Let it mature and take form
Growing under patient light

The mystic way is often fraught
Judgements made solitudes sought
Throw him off a cliff, they say
A cross for him is wrought

In that dry well
Abandoned and estranged
God is still at work
Nothing lost within the frame

I hold this treasure within me
Like Mary and Jacob did
Waiting for the consummation
All things working together for the good

Be careful where you share
The fire sparks that burn within
Few will truly understand
Some will call it sin

Listen for the whispers
Of those who know ancient lore
Mingle the fires together
Bonfire glory for us all

Quotes to consider

Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid – the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

It may be that you ought to thank God; why, for all you know he may be preserving you for something. Be of great heart and fear less. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Questions to answer

When have you wanted a time machine or a magic wand to change something ‌you now regret?
Why are we quick to judge and not be ‘deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas’?
What comfort does it bring you to know that God can take the ‘pit’ like experiences of our lives and bring us to where God always intended us to be?

Formation exercise

Read the story of Joseph. Genesis 37-46. Note the times when Joseph was thrown into ‘pit’ like experiences. What do you think he learned in those places?