The Favored Son

The first two verses of Genesis 37 alert the reader to two things.

First, Jacob is now at home, where he belongs—‘Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan’ (v. 1). This tells us that even though this world, as it presently is, is not our forever home, nevertheless, temporary homes are types and shadows, and how we settle into them matters because of what it says about God.

Second, in the words: ‘These are the generations of Jacob’ (v. 2), we have our final toledot marker, signifying the beginning of the last section of Genesis. But a new central character emerges.

• A son favored by the father.

• A son hated by the rebellious sons.

• A son handed over to the Gentiles for silver.

• A son taken down to the house of bondage.

Doctrine. The favored Son to come will be hated and handed over by those for whom He comes to die.    

A son favored by the father.

‘Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age’ (v. 3a). This expression is also used in 44:20.

‘And he made him a robe of many colors’ (v. 3b).1 Another use of this attire in 2 Samuel 13:18 suggests a royal robe.

Later on in the passage, we get a glimpse of what would have been becoming normal practice for the family—Joseph checking up on them. But pay attention to the words of this passage, because it moves us quickly beyond a simple tale of favoritism to a detailed typology of another Favored Son to come.

Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word … And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan’” (vv. 12-14, 17).

Note seven truths: (i.) he was sent to the wayward sons of Israel — cf. Matthew 15:24; John 1:11; (ii.) that the sons of Israel were supposed to be tending to the father’s flock — cf. Ezekiel 34; (iii.) that the father sends the son to them from afar — cf. John 6:38; (iv.) that the son willingly presents himself — cf. Hebrews 10:7; (v.) it is specifically to draw near for a kind of judgment or evaluation — cf. Matthew 21:34; (vi.) ‘well with your bothers’ signifies well-being and thus there is still good will on the sender’s part — cf. John 3:16-17; and (vii.) the sons had abandoned their post — cf. Jeremiah 12:10; Ezekiel 34:2.

So Jesus had told a parable to the sons of Israel, about,

“a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them” (Mat. 21:33-36).

I will come back to this, but at this point I will only say that, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them” (Mat. 21:45).

In the wider angle lens, the succession of tenants who kept mistreating the succession of servants represented the history of Israel mistreating the prophets whom their covenant LORD would send to them.

A son hated by the rebellious sons.

‘But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him’ (v. 4). These sons of Jacob were already not at peace with their father, so the reality is that Joseph only adds fuel to the fire. Their guilt was already acquired by their heart toward their father. In the same way, if the Father had never sent the Son into the world, Romans 1:20 and John 3:19-20 make plain that all mankind would already be at war with God. Rejecting Christ adds to that guilt—“whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (Jn. 3:36). It remains. It was already there. Rejecting the Son piles guilt upon guilt, but the ultimate Father did not have to send His favored Son at all. It was an incomparable favor upon mankind that it pleased God to send Him.

It is not only what the father, Israel, did here, but what the son would do, that would add insult to injury—at least in their minds: ‘Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. He said to them, ‘Hear this dream that I have dreamed’ (vv. 5-6). Here is where commentators, sermons, and Bible studies through the years, have piled on to the previous lesson about favoritism the additional possibility of youthful arrogance on Joseph’s part.2 While that is certainly not unreasonable, neither is it the point to get caught up in.

“Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me” (vv. 7-9).

It has been pointed out how Jacob says to Joseph, ‘Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?’ (v. 10) And so, the question is raised, “Wait, but Joseph’s mother, Rachel, is dead at this point (cf. 35:18-19).” There are two possible answers:

In the first place, it is possible that the dream pointed forward to the resurrection. After all, even in the fulfillment later on in Genesis, it was the brothers who the text emphasizes bowed before him and not even the father (let alone the mother). Naturally, the disadvantage to this view is that it makes the dream too subjective, with too much separation between its meaning and the fulfillment in real time—since the end of Genesis seemed to fulfill it.

The second possibility is picked up by the Reformation Study Bible note: “37:10 mother. Probably a reference to Joseph’s stepmother, Leah; his mother Rachel is already dead at this point (35:16–20).”3

Having said that, the text clues us in on Jacob’s accumulated wisdom. He had walked with God too much to be where the brothers were at. So it adds, ‘And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind’ (v. 11).

A son handed over to the Gentiles for silver.

If we return to the parable of the tenants, we read how, after servant after servant was met with the violence of the sons of Israel,

“Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him” (Mat. 21:37-39).

So here, ‘They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him’ (v. 18). The Pharisees were always watching Jesus, just as the demons were always, from afar, trying to beat Jesus to the synagogue, or to lay a trap for Him in the crowds. And so it was here, in that shadow, centuries before, that,

They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams” (vv. 18-20).

Reuben’s intervention in verses 21 and 22 show how the type or shadow is not as pronounced or intensified as the antitype or the substance to come. There is still a remnant of that familial bond in his soul, ‘that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father’ (v. 22b). Of course, he was also the oldest and would thus have the greatest guilt; but his more merciful plan was foiled by their opportunity for profit, as we see further down in verses 29 and 30.

Note two details: ‘they stripped him of his robe … And they took him and threw him into a pit’ (vv. 23, 24). So about Jesus, “when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe” (Mat. 27:31).

The switch from ‘Ishmaelites coming from Gilead … on their way to carry it down to Egypt’ (v. 25) to ‘Then Midianite traders passed by’ (v. 28) is explained by the fact that in those centuries later on—when the Pentateuch was written—the two were treated as synonymous terms. We know this also from Judges 8:24, when Gideon’s band had just defeated the Midianites:

“And Gideon said to them, “Let me make a request of you: every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil.” (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.)

But here we have those outside of the family of Israel, and so they are rightly classified as Gentiles. That sets us up for the punchline. They ‘sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver’ (v. 28). As Kidner comments, this was “the current slave price in the early second millennium” (cf. Lev. 27:5).4 So with Jesus, it was said: “he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon” (Lk. 18:32), and that by the traitor Judas for thirty pieces of silver, foreshadowed here by Judah for twenty pieces of silver.

A son taken down to the house of bondage.

I will say only one brief thing here by way of reminder. First, notice the last verse: ‘Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard’ (v. 36). We have seen already that Egypt functions as a type in the Bible for the slavery element of spiritual Babylon.

For the Favored Son to go down into this house was to go down into chains, to go before the chosen family, so that his destiny would be theirs, down into that tomb with him, and up back into the land of the living. For them those events would be separated by four centuries, while for the Favored Son to come, from one Friday to a Sunday morning.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Admonition. Never despise one who comes in the name of the Lord, no matter his rank or age or other outward offenses. When Paul said “Do not despise prophecies” (1 Thess. 5:20) to Christians, he came from a long line of those in Israel who had become increasingly hardened against hearing.

“But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy” (2 Chr. 36:16).

Objection: “But there have been many false prophets and messengers with their own agendas!” That is true—but the remedy to this is to search the Scriptures like those Bereans did with Paul, not to hear less but to hear more: to make sense, not to make silence. So Paul’s words to those Thessalonians are followed with a method: “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:20-21).

Use 2. Consolation. One commentator observes in verse 14—‘So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem’—reminding us that “Hebron means fellowship or communion.”5 Going back to that good will of the sender, even in spite of the guilt of the ones being checked up on, it may remind us of God walking after Adam “in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8), but from Hebron to Shechem is likened to the trek from heaven to earth—from the place of perfect fellowship to the place of total violence.

Unlike when Jospeh was thrown into the pit, the Favored Son of heaven went willingly all the way from the throne to the pit—and Psalm 49 tells us that that pit was our pit. It had our name on it. Jesus was placed there willingly.

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phi. 2:8).

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1. “See Septuagint, Vulgate; or (with Syriac) a robe with long sleeves. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain; also verses 23, 32.” — ESV Study Bible.

2. Kidner, for example, says “Israel has learned nothing from his early experience of favouritism” (Genesis, 192).

3. Kidner suggests the same: Genesis, 193.

4. Kidner, Genesis, 195.

5. C. Knapp quoted in Pink, Gleanings in Genesis, 354.