OT44

THE TEXT IN THE INTERPRETIVE TRADITION

In his assessment of Genesis 37, De La Torre compares Joseph the dreamer to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and suggests that dreamers’ goals are to bring in a utopian order, overcoming present oppressive paradigms and promoting a more just and equitable society (De La Torre, 302–3). Elsewhere, the author has noted the similarity between Joseph’s enslavement by his brothers and the experiences of enslaved Africans, who like Venture Smith were sold by their African “brothers” (Sadler 2010, 77). Brueggemann has suggested that the narrative may be a call to the listening community to let the dream be at work, even when its outcome is less than clear (Brueggemann, 293).

The story of Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38 has been variously understood as a narrative of a woman’s empowerment and cunning that secures her a place in the familial line (Niditch, 41–43); as “one of the strangest and most ethically troubling” stories in Scripture in part because Tamar in the course of her narrative is involved in “sexual intercourse with her brother-in-law (v. 8), in coitus interruptus (onanism, v. 9), in prostitution (vv. 15–16), and in sexual intercourse with her father-in-law (vv. 24–26)” (Hiebert, 23–24); and as a story meant to decry masturbation as onanism, or the sin of Onan, who spilled his semen on the ground in order to avoid impregnating his brother’s wife (De La Torre, 263). This rich account describes a woman’s attempt to exercise autonomy over her own life and to shape her own future when the masculine forces in society have failed her.

There is an interesting interpretative tradition to Genesis 47 in the discussion of Joseph’s role in the development of slavery in Egypt. For example, Sarna reads Gen. 47:21 as though Joseph took the population from the cities, reading with a problematic MT. Other commentators, following the choice of the NIV and the NRSV favoring the witness of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint, read verse 21 as though Joseph produced the slavery that will eventually affect his own people (see Fretheim, 655). Brueggemann notes that Joseph “played the royal game and forgot the promise” by fostering an oppressive system in Egypt that will eventually enslave his own people (Brueggemann, 358).

The stories of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers are a fitting way to close these narratives. They are the stories that epitomize the troubled human relationships that characterize our own brokenness as people in this world. They offer the promise that even after humanity’s grossest acts of injustice, threats of murder, and manifestations of hatred, forgiveness and reconciliation are still possible. Thus Hiebert concludes, “Throughout the book of Genesis, these stories of conflict and resolution hold up the values of courage and compassion over those of accusation and retaliation” (Hiebert, 23). In the end, there is the promise of restored relationships with both God and our human siblings as God’s providence offers redemption to all who may have fallen on hard times along the way.