Sold into Egypt

by Madeleine L'engle

  After the brothers had eaten, Joseph ordered their bags to be filled with corn, and they bade him farewell with much gratitude, if considerable perplexity, and set off for Canaan. This time Simeon was with them and their hearts were light.

  But then again they were faced with the unexpected, and further terror. The cat was not through playing with the mice. Was that all it was for Joseph? Mere cat play? Or was there anguish in his heart, too? We human beings are often unaware of our deepest motives, and our motives, at their best, are usually mixed. Joseph was settled in Egypt, in a position of power—power that involved incredibly hard work, but still power. He was married to Asenath. He had sons. He had put Canaan and his family behind him, perforce. His brothers had betrayed him with “a horror and a hissing and an everlasting reproach.” There was no point in looking back. He had to make his home in Egypt, to live as a stranger in a strange land.

  Now he sent his steward riding after his brothers, and the steward stopped them and accused them of taking his master’s silver cup.

  They were horrified.

  “No, no!” Reuben cried.

  “How can you say such things to us? Why would we take your lord’s silver cup after his great kindness to us?”

  All the brothers protested their innocence loudly, and Reuben continued,

  “You know that the money which we found in our sacks we brought again to you from the land of Canaan. How, then, should we steal silver or gold out of your lord’s house? If any among us has anything of your master’s, he will surely die.”

  All the bags were opened. And there, in Benjamin’s sack of grain, the silver cup was found.

  The brothers looked at each other, and at Benjamin. There was terror in their eyes, in their voices.

  Wordlessly, Reuben picked Benjamin up and helped him onto his donkey, and the brothers turned back toward Egypt.

  Benjamin was silent, terrified. Reuben had said that whoever took the silver cup would surely die, and Benjamin felt a great weight of horror. He had not taken the cup; why was it in his bag? Why? Why did the great lord heap his plate with more food than any of the brothers? What did he want?

  It was a heavy and silent ride back to Joseph’s palace, where he was waiting for them. He confronted them,

  “What deed is this that you have done? Did you not know that a man such as I am can certainly divine?”

  And Judah said, hopelessly,

  “What shall we say to my lord? What shall we speak? God has found out the iniquity of your servants. Behold, we are my lord’s servants, both we, and he also with whom the cup is found.”

  Judah’s dark eyes were bleak. It was apparent to Benjamin that this older brother believed that they were all going to be killed for this thing that not one of them had done.

  Joseph looked at Benjamin, and his eyes were surprisingly mild. He told them that the one in whose sack the cup was found would be his servant. Then he said to the others,

  “As for you, get you up in peace to your father.”

  In peace, without Benjamin?

  Judah approached Joseph and said,

  “Oh, my lord, let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant.”

  And he pleaded with Joseph not to take Benjamin away from his father.

  “Do not be angry with your servant, though you are equal to Pharaoh himself. My lord has asked his servants if we have a father or a brother. And we answered, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young son born to him in his old age. His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him.’ After we had told you this, my lord told your servants to bring our young brother to him, and we said to my lord that we could not take our brother away from our father, for if we did so, our father would die. But you told your servants that unless we brought our youngest brother to you we would never see Simeon again.”

  And so he went on, an impassioned speech, a brave speech, because Judah had to acknowledge openly that the sons of Rachel were more dear to their father than the sons of the other wives. Judah ended by crying,

  “If the boy is not with us when we go back to our father, and if our father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, sees that we do not have the boy with us, he will die. Your servants will bring the grey head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to our father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life.’ Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father!”

  At these words of anguish Joseph could no longer control himself in front of all his attendants, and, interrupting the interpreter he cried out, “Go away!” His servants and attendants looked at him wonderingly.

  “Leave me!”

  And they left him. At last he was alone with his brothers.

  BENJAMIN

  “Go away!” the great man orders all his servants. He heaves with sobs like a child, and all his retinue hurry to leave him. My brothers and I are frozen. Rooted to the spot. We cannot move.

  And the great man weeps, and then he lifts me in his arms as though I were a small child—how strong he is!—and then he cries out,

  “I am Joseph! And does my father yet live?”

  And no one dares answer him. They are all still afraid. But he holds me as once my sister Dinah held me, and I put my arms about his neck as though I were still a child, and I say, “Yes. Our father lives.”

  And now I know why he seemed familiar to me: He is my one full brother, my mother’s son.

  “And our mother,” I breathe, “do you remember our mother?”

  He holds me even more closely. “Yes. I remember our mother.” And he tells me about her, how beautiful she was, and always sweet-smelling. In a land of tents made of skins, and of dust, and camel dung, always she smelled sweet. And when she knew that she was with child, with me, how happy she was, and how happy he was, too, and our father—and then, in birthing me, she died.

  And again he wept, and I wept, too, for the mother I had never known. Oh, I wasn’t lonely, and I wasn’t unmothered. I had, you might say, mothers to spare. Too many mothers. But I was loved; I did not lack for love. And yet I wept, for loss of my mother, for gain of my brother.

  And our brothers stood and their eyes were full of sorrow and full of anxiety.

  “Come near to me,”

  Joseph said to our brothers, and slowly, one by one, they came near. And he said,

  “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.”

  And they bowed their heads, and their eyes were downcast and they mumbled.

  And Joseph said, speaking kindly, his arm still about me as I stood beside him,

  “Do not be grieved, or angry with yourselves, that you sold me, because God sent me before you to preserve life. You meant it for evil, but Yahweh meant it for good.”

  God’s plan. Did God send Joseph to Egypt? If my brother had stayed in Canaan, he would not have saved the corn and grain to avert famine.

  Was my mother’s death part of God’s plan? Was there some good purpose that it served that I do not yet know about?

  Joseph told us that the famine would continue for five more years. And he said,

  “God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you who sold me into Egypt, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house, and ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.”

  “Sold into Egypt? Who sold someone into Egypt?” I ask.

  Joseph turns away. Simeon and Levi turn away. The others stare down at their feet, those feet washed by Joseph’s servants after the dirty and dusty trip from Canaan. No one speaks.

  I ask again.

&nb
sp; Reuben and Judah draw me aside. Try to explain. Neither one tries to clear himself, but each one says that it was the other who did not want Joseph killed.

  Killed.

  My brother killed by his own brothers. My heart beats with new fear.

  Only Reuben and Judah had held back from killing. Reuben wanted to rescue Joseph from the pit and bring him back to our father. But the others—and Judah did not stop them—sold him to a group of travelling merchants on their way to Egypt.

  How can I ever feel safe with my brothers again?

  What will our father—

  But Joseph turns then and comes to me and tells me I must never, ever, say anything to our father. It would kill him, Joseph says, and Reuben and Judah nod agreement.

  I am made to promise.

  So I do. What purpose would it serve to grieve our father, when we can bring him such joy? And how he will rejoice that Joseph is alive!

  I think again about what Joseph said about God’s plan.

  “Do you truly think it was God’s plan for our brothers to sell you into Egypt?” I demand.

  He nods.

  “I do not understand.”

  “You do not need to understand,” Joseph says gravely. “Nor do I. I only know that where there was great hurt, there is now great good, and that our God can come into all our pain and make use of it, as he has done with me.” And he opens wide his arms to all the brothers, all of them.

  And there are tears. And there is joy.

  Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall:

  The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and persecuted him: But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob;

  Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:

  The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.

  GENESIS 49:22–26

  Of course Benjamin would not have known of his brothers’ treachery, and his reaction would have awakened Joseph’s pain. Pain, lying long dormant, can rise up and be as acute as when it was first felt. The wonderful letters I have received since the publication of Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage have reawakened my pain at Hugh’s illness and death. The letters speak affirmation and joy; yet grief that had been drowsing, if not sleeping, is suddenly wide awake.

  We don’t “get over” the deepest pains of life, nor should we. “Are you over it?” is a question that cannot be asked by someone who has been through “it,” whatever “it” is. It is an anxious question, an asking for reassurance that cannot be given. During an average lifetime there are many pains, many griefs to be borne. We don’t “get over” them; we learn to live with them, to go on growing and deepening, and understanding, as Joseph understood, that God can come into all our pain and make something creative out of it.

  Through his pain Joseph had learned to be a human being. And he had learned that to be human is to be fallible, and therefore in the end he harboured no hate nor held a grudge against his brothers.

  To be human is, yes, to be fallible. We are the creatures who know, and we know that we know. We are also the creatures who know that we don’t know. When I was a child, I used to think that being grown up meant that you would know. Grown-ups had the answers. This is an illusion that a lot of people don’t lose when they grow up. But our very fallibility is one of our human glories. If we are fallible we are free to grow and develop. If we are infallible we are rigid, stuck in one position, as immobile as those who could not let go the idea that planet earth is the center of all things.

  I was talking about this to a friend, and she said, “You don’t think the pope is infallible?” And I laughed, because that wasn’t what I was thinking at all. The pope is the pope. The Church has always tended to make absolute statements, and absolutism has always caused trouble. It was absolutism that caused the disastrous split between the Eastern and Western Churches, which was the beginning of the continuous and devastating fragmentation of Christendom.

  When I was speaking at a Mennonite college I was told that the split between the Mennonites and the Amish in the fifteenth century came about because of buttons. Buttons. One group, I forget which, decided it was all right to wear buttons because they were useful. The other said, no, buttons are a decoration and are sinful. And they split over buttons.

  Peripheral. And each fragment of the church, from the extreme evangelical right to the extreme permissive liberal left is convinced of the Bible’s infallibility or the pope’s infallibility or the infallibility of the creeds or the infallibility of not having creeds.

  Wait! Did I imply that Scripture is not infallible? Scripture is true, and fallibility and infallibility is not what Scripture is about. According to Scripture it is perfectly all right to have slaves as long as you treat them kindly. Slaves are told to be diligent and loyal to their masters. The psalmist says that he never saw the good man go hungry or his children begging for bread. Yet we know that good men do go hungry and their children do beg for bread every day. In his letter to the people of Thessalonica Paul’s harsh words about the Jews have encouraged the ugliness of anti-Semitism:

  It was the Jews who killed their own prophets, the Jews who killed the Lord, Jesus, the Jews who drove us out, his messengers.

  Taken out of the context in which Paul was writing to the suffering Thessalonians, his words can do untold harm, and they have often done so.

  So what do I believe about Scripture? I believe that it is true. What is true is alive and capable of movement and growth. Scripture is full of paradox and contradiction, but it is true, and if we fallible human creatures look regularly and humbly at the great pages and people of Scripture, if we are willing to accept truth rather than rigidly infallible statements, we will be given life, and life more abundantly. And we, like Joseph, will make progress toward becoming human.

  There are some creatures which are not given the blessing of infallibility—those insects that live totally by instinct. The instinct of an insect has to be infallible or it will perish. Every ant in an ant colony knows exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. And an ant which deviates from the infallible pattern is a goner.

  An ant has superb instincts, but precious little free will. Free will involves fallibility. An ant approached by Potiphar’s wife would not have had the free will to say, No—or Yes.

  With free will, we are able to try something new. Maybe it doesn’t work, or we make mistakes and learn from them. We try something else. That doesn’t work, either. So we try yet something else again. When I study the working processes of the great artists I am awed at the hundreds and hundreds of sketches made before the painter begins to be ready to put anything on the canvas. It gives me fresh courage to know of the massive revision Dostoevsky made of all his books—the hundreds of pages that got written and thrown out before one was kept. A performer must rehearse and rehearse and rehearse, making mistakes, discarding, trying again and again.

  One of my favourite stories when I was a child was that of the Scottish leader Robert Bruce and the spider. Bruce had lost yet another battle. He had crawled into a cave, wounded and defeated. He was giving up. And while he lay there he watched a spider spinning her web. To make its perfection complete she had to throw a strand of silk to the center of the web. She threw and missed. Threw and missed. Six times she missed. But the seventh time she threw, the silk flew to its perfect place.

  So Robert Bruce left the cave, gathered his people together, and together they fought one more battle. And this time they won.

  The memory of that story, read when I was a small child, has stayed with me all these years. I
, too, like most of us, have had to throw that strand of silk over and over again.

  Infallibility and perfectionism go hand in hand. Perfectionism is a great crippler. We must be willing to try, to make mistakes, to try not to make the same mistakes too often, but to keep on trying. If I were a perfectionist I couldn’t get the pleasure I do out of playing the piano, because there isn’t any way that I can play like Rubenstein. But I don’t have to be perfect. I have to listen to my fingers and hear what I want them to do perhaps more than what they are actually doing. But I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to enjoy.

  Joseph was a great mathematician. He had to be, in order to figure out the complicated logistics of storing food for seven years for the great land of Egypt, of distributing it, not only to the Egyptians, but to those who came from Canaan and other lands, of knowing how much to give and how much to keep in order that the supply might last until the time of famine was over. And, like all great mathematicians, he was an artist. The artist cannot be an artist without believing in the goodness of matter, of all that has been made; the artist cannot be an artist without having faith that what God has created is delightful and to be rejoiced in. Sometimes the man of business can fall into the Manichaean heresy of assuming that only spirit is good and all matter is evil. Is it coincidence that Puritans denigrated the joys of sex but were successful in business? Joseph refused Potiphar’s wife’s advances because he would not betray his master, but he knew and enjoyed his own wife, Asenath.

  Joseph, as a great mathematician, managed to combine a cool business sense with the art of numbers, and this combination is what business too often lacks. One of the horrors of the Industrial Revolution was that its factories reduced many of the workers to a state little better than bees in a hive or ants in a hill, and along with this denigration of the value of our humanness came the suspicion of the arts as being a “tool of the devil.”