Joseph, Jesus and the Pit

Sunday, August 16, 2026

The Rev. Megan Collins

Genesis 37; 39:21; 41:41; 50:19–21 (with a word-study detour into 2 Samuel 13)

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I didn’t grow up going to church as a kid.  

But then I got to 8th grade, and I was fabulously awkward and using so much Aquanet hairspray. (Do you remember the wave hair bump we used to do with our hair on the front?) 

Then I met this girl Christa, and she told me about God (at least what she knew as an 8th grader). Not long after, I got a Bible and went to the closest church I could find.  This was in the peak of the 1990s, when evangelical Christianity was mostly concerned that teenagers not make out with one another. There was a lot of talk with the girls about not being a stumbling block by wearing a tank top. By the end of the month I had a promise ring and had signed a purity pledge.  I was pretty convinced that I would go to hell if I didn’t say the sinners prayer exactly right. But there was not a lot of talk about what to do when life is hard, and God seems quiet.

It wasn’t a great introduction to who Jesus really is. But I was still all in.

Because beyond promise rings and rapture talk (which was also very popular then), there was this beautiful story of a God who loved me, just as I was. 

Then over the next few chapters of my life, that faith was put through its paces, because life can change, in a moment. 

You know what this is like. You’ve been there. 

You make a mistake, or someone else does, and it makes life difficult for you. Or something just happens and it’s no one’s fault, but it changes everything.

Then you find yourself in what feels like the bottom of a pit. 

It feels dark, and lonely, and even scary, and in those times, it can be very hard to see God. 

God can seem very quiet. 

Today we’ll take a look at the story of Joseph in Genesis. Joseph is no stranger to finding himself at the bottom of a pit. Genesis tells us a lot about his life, but there are very few mentions of God. This seems strange at first, but I think it will actually help us find ourselves in it. Let’s take a look. 

In Genesis 37:3 it says:

^37:3 Now Israel (that’s Jacob) loved Joseph more than any other of his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him an ornamented robe.

Even if you have not read Genesis, you’ll likely have heard about this garment Jacob gives to him, because of the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Joseph’s father loves him more than his other brothers, and so he gives him this very special robe.

I discovered something in my studying this week that truly delighted me, so I’ll share it with you. The Hebrew words for this coat are ketonet passim. It’s kind of mysterious because this is the first time we have heard this phrase in Genesis. People have worn garments, but no one else has had a ketonet passim. So we should do what we always do when a word is unusual, which is to go looking for where else it shows up. 

It turns out ketonet passim does show up again in 2 Samuel, chapter 13. This is the only other time it’s used. In this passage, the Bible says clearly what it is.

It is a very pretty garment . . .

intended to be worn by the daughter . . . of a king.

In other words, ketonet passim is . . . . a princess dress. 

I’m going to leave that right there, at least for now. (But isn’t the Bible awesome?)  

Okay, back to our story.

Joseph, wearing his tunic/technicolor dreamcoat/princess dress, has this dream where he is a bundle of grain standing up, and his brothers are sheaves of wheat, and they are bowing down before him. His brothers already know he is their father’s favorite. Now he decides to tell them about this dream. It goes about as well as we would expect: 

37:8b So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.

The brothers hate Joseph and his special garment and his dream and the way his father prefers him. Then one day Joseph is sent out by his father to go looking for his brothers out in the field.

^{37: 23-24}  they stripped him of his robe, the ornamented robe  that he wore, 24 and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

This is the first time life will hand Joseph a really difficult blow, and it won’t be the last. He is betrayed by his brothers, and trapped at the bottom of the pit. He would certainly have heard the stories of his great grandfather Abraham, how the Lord spoke to him, provided for him, gave him these visions. 

But for him, the Lord is . . . silent.

No angelic messenger. No vision. Just Joseph. Alone. 

Most of us have our own version of being in a pit, and feeling very alone, and having God seem pretty quiet. But some of you know this specific part of Joseph’s story better than most.  Some of you have had people you love, even your own family, betray or abandon you or even hurt you.

Some of you even know what it's like to have that happen because you dared to wear a ketonet passim, and that was all it took. You took the risk of being yourself and the people you love abandoned you. But God does not abandon you. God sees you, God loves you, fully, as a child made in the image of God.

The brothers aren’t gone long. They decide instead of leaving him there, they should come back and take him out to sell him for money, but before then can, some traders beat them to it. 

^37:28 When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

So when the brothers return, it’s an empty pit. They don’t know where he is, so they decide to tell their father he was killed by a wild animal. His father is devastated. 

 ³⁴ Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. ³⁵ All his sons and all his daughters sought to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father bewailed him. 

If you have lost someone, you know what Jacob’s grief here feels like. It can also feel like being at the bottom of a pit. It’s dark and lonely and can feel like you’ll never be on solid ground again. I really appreciate that Genesis included the phrase his father “refused to be comforted.” So often the people in our lives want grief to take less time, for us to get over it. It comes from a good place, where they want to help you feel better, but if you’ve lost someone, you know. Grief takes the time it takes. We can’t rush it. So let Joseph’s father’s story here give you the permission to refuse to be comforted too. 

The father is grieving. The brothers have no idea where Joseph is. Meanwhile:

³⁶ Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.

Joseph finds himself in the inner circle of the kingdom’s power. One of Pharaoh’s officials gets a feeling about Joseph and puts him in charge of his whole household. For a brief moment, Joseph’s story is on an upswing. No longer in a pit, he is instead rising to power. But it doesn’t last long. The official’s wife gets insulted when she comes on to Joseph and he resists, (perhaps he had signed a purity pledge?) so she makes us a lie about him and he gets him thrown in prison. And . . . . we’re back on the ground. But it is in this new lowest of lows, Genesis gives us just a glimpse of hope:

39: ²¹ But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; 

The Lord was with him. No speech or promise.  But love. 

Then the Lord disappears again. 

While he is in prison, Joseph passes the time by interpreting dreams for other prisoners, and Pharaoh hears about it. So when Pharaoh later has a dream he doesn’t understand, he calls Joseph in from prison to interpret it for him. This would have been a super precarious position to be in. If Pharaoh didn’t like it, he could have certainly just killed him. Joseph sees in Pharaoh’s dreams that a famine is coming, and they need to prepare, and he tells him that. 

^41:41 And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.”

And just like that, he’s up on high ground again. Joseph is now in control of all of Egypt, and he uses his power to  set aside grain to get them through the famine. His brothers, who by now must have assumed he is dead, later run out of food and they come to Egypt to see if they can get grain for their family. When they get there, they come face to face with Joseph but they don’t recognize him. There’s a lot or back and forth and much later he reveals himself to them. Then he does something unbelievable: he forgives them for what they did. 

If you read the whole story of Joseph in Genesis, you’ll see, with the exception of a few short mentions, God is very quiet. But then at the very end, Joseph says this:

^50:19 “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? ²⁰ Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. ²¹ So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.

Looking back over his life - betrayed by his brothers, thrown in a pit, held in prison on false charges, interpreting dreams for a pharaoh who could have him killed for what he said, preparing for a famine and knowing a whole land was relying on him - Joseph sees God’s presence. 

The timing of this passage is important for you and me. Joseph didn’t say any of this earlier. He didn't say this while he was in the pit. He says this when he can look back, at the end, and see how God was there all along. 

This is one reason I love the Joseph story, for us. 

It feels true to the way we experience God, today. 

The Joseph story doesn’t show God speaking directly in burning bushes or big miracles. 

God won’t often speak to you in a burning bush or in a big miracle either. 

The way we see God in the Joseph story is an occasional assurance that God is there, and then, in the end, an ability to see the good that God brought in spite of everything.  This gives us something to hold onto, that when you look back, even when things didn’t go the way you wanted them to all the time, you can see that you were never alone. God was there, not doing bad things to accomplish good ones, but pulling something good out of the bad. 

This is an important distinction, and  I  appreciate that Joseph puts the blame where it belongs. He doesn’t say God did put me in a pit to teach me something. He puts the blame where it should be: you, brothers, did something awful. You betrayed me, and left me in a pit to die. But God, somehow, brought good out of it, in spite of you.

God doesn’t go around digging holes and shoving us into them so we can be better people or because that’s the only way God could think of to get something done. 

Instead, in spite of how we got there, God enters into the pit with us, and then redeems it. 

The Joseph narrative is unusually long, it covers 14 chapters in Genesis. I know we’ve been in Genesis forever, but we’re going to stay in Joseph  for the next few weeks. But why spend so much time on this story, when God shows up so seldom?  

Because it’s the first time we really see Jesus. 

We started Genesis back in January, and we’ve been joking these past few weeks that if we continued at the current pace, it would take us 29 years to preach through the whole Bible, which means it would take us 20 years to get to the gospels. (I do promise it won’t take that long. We are picking up speed here).  But we’ll also encounter Jesus much earlier than we would think, starting with this story today, right here with Joseph. 

When we started seminary, one of our first classes was an Old Testament overview. On my first paper, I wrote all about how the Old Testament passage in question was really about Jesus. I was so proud of it. Then I got it back, and I had received what they called a “redo.” In other words, I failed and had to do it again.  I was devastated.

But the professors were right, of course. Because as we study the Old Testament, we have to first start with remembering that these texts weren’t written to us. They were written to the Israelites. But then, with that in mind, we can widen our lens. In the Joseph story, there is clearly something happening. It was primarily written to the Israelites, that’s still true. But take another look. In our story today we saw:

A son who was beloved by his father, but hated by those he loved.

He was born to rule but resisted temptation that comes with power.

He was falsely accused, and sold for coins, stripped of his garment and sent to die.

He is the son who fed the hungry, and showed forgiveness to those who didn’t earn it. 

And he talked about God's goodness in it all.

That’s not just Joseph’s story. 

Jesus was 

A Son beloved by his father

"This is my beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17)

But hated by those he loved:

“[The world] hated me.” (John 15:18)

Who was born to rule:

“The Lord God will give to him the throne” (Luke 1:32)

But resisted temptation

“Was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil” (Matthew 4:1)

Then was falsely accused:

"The chief priests and the whole council were looking for false testimony” (Matt 26:59)

And sold for coins:

"They paid him thirty pieces of silver." (Matthew 26:15)

Stripped of his garment and sent to die

“When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes” (John 19:23)

Fed the hungry:

"And all ate and were filled" (Matthew 14:20) 

And showed forgiveness to those who didn’t earn it.

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:24)

And He talked about God's goodness in it all.

The Joseph story is one of the first times the curtain gets pulled back and we see what’s coming.  Because Joseph was good, but Jesus was God, here, somehow fully God but also fully human, just like we are. 

Jesus has been in the pit, in the grief, in the betrayal and abandonment, in the struggle. 

So even when things are hard, when God seems quiet, we can trust that God is not only present, but knows what it’s like.