The Absurd

Genesis 42:10-24

Have you ever used the absurd to get the truth out of someone?  My mother was good at this; often she used the ridiculous in order to extract the truth.  I remember the time my brother Freddie pushed me off the roof of our house and I landed not on my head and not on my feet, and as I was laying there crying, mother ask, “Bobby, were you trying to fly?”  It took only seconds, for the ridiculous to turn into the truth of what Freddie had done to his sweet, little innocence brother.

Joseph knew that his brothers were not spies, so why did he use this preposterous indictment on his brothers?  He did it for the same reason my mother did, he wanted the truth, he wanted to know how his family was, and especially, how his younger brother Benjamin was doing.  Had they also got rid of Benjamin?  Picking up the story in verse thirteen, “And they said, “We your servants, are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan, and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is no more.”  Joseph had the information he wanted, and yet he still called them spies, and he locked them up for three days, while he came up with a plan to get food to his father’s family and also to teach his brothers a lesson that would be passed on till this day.

After the three days, Joseph told them that one of them would be confined while the others took food back to the family, but if they returned without the younger brother he would die.  Now all of this time Joseph has used a translator and his brothers had no clue that he could understand what they were saying.  So the brothers agreed to the terms, and then what had been not said for thirteen years came out; “They said to one another, “In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen.  That is why this distress has come upon us.”  And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy?  But you did not listen.  So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.”  Now this was too much for Joseph and he turned away and wept, and when he returned he took Simon from them and bound him before their eyes.

Never has it been more profound, that a man’s ways will find him out, or we will reap what we sow; Joseph’s brother have a long trip home to remember the cries of their seventeen year old brother Joseph, and how jealousy and hate had caused them to plot to kill him, and then to sell him as a slave.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice