Joseph: The Mirror of Empire

The Joseph We Thought We Knew

When I was a young flamboyant boy listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber on cassette tapes during long summer drives across Australia, I heard the fabulous stories of Joseph and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat. Joseph was brilliant and proud and pretty. He made colorful clothing choices.

I remember the stories from Sunday school. You remember—his jealous brothers, being thrown in the pit, sold as a slave. His dream analysis that made him a star. The seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows. He started wearing Egyptian headgear. He was the hero since, after he was treated so badly, he ended up forgiving his brothers. Happily ever after.

And then I'll admit, Joseph faded from view for me for about twenty-five years.

Joseph came screaming back into focus, however, when I read Walter Brueggemann's Journey to the Common Good and reread what Joseph actually does in the final chapters of Genesis. Now I see Joseph completely differently.

Framing the Story: Behind, In, and In Front of the Text

Before we jump into Joseph's story, I want to lay out some framing that will serve this entire series. Paul Ricoeur, the great textual analyst, urges us to ask three questions: What is behind the text—who was writing and why? What is in the text—what the story actually says? And what is in front of the text—what it asks of us today?

Christians read the Old Testament through Christ. The Bible does not hide human cruelty or abuse of power, but it does not baptize it either. Stories of conquest, domination, or Joseph's economic policies are part of an honest record, not a rule book. Jesus becomes our compass. Any reading of scripture that leads us away from his way of mercy, justice, and self-giving love has lost its bearings.

Defining Empire

Today's word is empire. Empire in our context doesn't just mean ancient kings or nations. It means a system of power that organizes life around domination, fear, and scarcity rather than relationship, justice, and enough for all. As theologians outline, empire's deepest spiritual danger isn't only the whips—it's the claim to total jurisdiction. Jesus announces and embodies a rival social order, and that rival story starts in Exodus.

Behind the Text: Who Wrote This and Why?

Most scholars think that these stories were set long before they were written down. The Exodus story world is usually placed somewhere around 1200 BCE, but the form of the story we have in Genesis and Exodus as part of the Torah was shaped and gathered much later—especially in and after the Babylonian exile and then in the Persian period when the Torah became publicly established.

When we read Exodus, we are hearing a memory of ancient oppression told by a community living under later empires. They're trying to learn how God's people survive, resist, and stay human inside someone else's system.

Nothing is accidental. These stories were edited while the Hebrews were navigating power, assimilation, scarcity, and hope. They preserved memory, but they also critiqued it. They helped the people of God reckon honestly with their past so they could imagine a different future.

And do you think they knew people like Joseph—talented, brilliant young things co-opted by those in power and used to sell out their own people in the name of compromise? You betcha.

In the Text: Where Andrew Lloyd Webber Leaves Off

Hidden in an often-skipped chapter—Genesis 47—nestled among family trees and prophecies, is the story of Joseph the imperial administrator. Joseph, the cherished dreamer and survivor of betrayal, who gathers grain and distributes food, then centralizes everything under Pharaoh.

Let's think of it another way. Back when Joseph is young, Pharaoh has a nightmare. He can't interpret it; none of his own people can help him. So he brings in a slave boy to interpret his dreams. Joseph does. Joseph gets promoted and ingratiates himself into Pharaoh's court. He uses the trappings of power to trick, test, and then reconcile with his brothers.

But before we leave Joseph's story, we learn that during a famine, Joseph creates an ingenious plan for his master, Pharaoh. Here is where we discover how the Hebrews became slaves in Egypt in the first place.

The Con Job

Egypt's great granaries were full because the poor farmers had harvested the grain, and it was collected by Joseph's department. When the famine hits, instead of distributing the grain, Joseph sells the bread back to them—which, by the way, is exactly the pattern we see echoed by the British Empire. Collect the raw goods, sell it back to those who'd collected it. Use laws to stop them from harvesting it for themselves. Sugar, salt, potatoes, cotton, grain. Over a hundred million people around the world—many brown and black-skinned people, and the Irish—lived under this system. And in every port, local administrators like Joseph made the system work for empire.

In the first year, they give Joseph all their money. But the famine isn't over. And we suspect Joseph has an inkling that this famine won't be a one-year affair—remember, there is precedent in Genesis for Joseph knowing the length of famines through his dreams.

In the second year, the people have run out of bread but have no liquid assets. So this time Joseph takes their assets that produce wealth—their livestock, their means of production.

But it isn't over. In the next year, they have nothing left. And Genesis is goosebump-inducing in its conciseness:

"Our money is all spent and the herds of cattle are yours. There is nothing left in your sight but our bodies and our land." They beg him and say, "Buy us and our land in exchange for food." (Genesis 47:18–19)

Note that they don't even get bread here, or grain. They're simply given seeds—their lands and bodies sold for seeds.

"So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other." (Genesis 47:20)

We can hear the sharpness of the scribes condemning Joseph with objective facts—and noting, of course, that he protects the priestly class.

Instead of seeing poverty as a result of personal failure and the workers as foolish or stupid, we see in their resignation that they know they're being conned, but they have no choice. And we see this story echoed up until our modern day—money, assets, and lands centralized for billionaires and their enablers.

Does Scripture Approve?

And the scriptures are okay with this? The answer is no.

This is no Disney story. The narrative takes the main character and slowly moves us from empathy to doubt to revulsion. And we should be revolted by Joseph.

Conservative readings emphasize that he was God's tool carrying out God's will—because he saved the people of Egypt by selling them bread, and because it was supposedly part of God's plan that God's own people be thrown into slavery in order to be freed later. I don't buy it. That argument has apologized for or enabled terrible things to happen, because the anointed dictator, or president, or violent general is said to be carrying out God's plan.

Even if God can work through such actions, scripture itself shows us—most clearly in David's abuse of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah—that what happens at the center of the story is not always faithful to the covenant of God.

The Great Arc of Scripture

If we skip to the end of the Bible or even glance across scripture, a pattern emerges again and again: God draws people out of systems of control—out of Pharaoh's grasp, out of Babylon, out of Rome.

Joseph becomes the cautionary prelude to the Exodus, the one who secures the system that later enslaves the people. No wonder those in power want us to focus on the colorful coat or Joseph's family story. It's like a film where the actors are in the foreground, engaged in interpersonal drama, while in the background we see some horrific thing taking place. Genesis 47 is the unignorable background to the Joseph family story.

Scripture delights in the arc of the great divine saga. Here we have Joseph, born in Israel, taken captive into Egypt, rising to power, and ultimately binding the people into slavery. Then Moses, raised as an Egyptian, rejected by empire, leads the people out into wilderness and freedom.

And guess what? It's not Joseph's policy of scarcity and co-option that Jesus follows in the New Testament. No—Jesus creates abundant bread, like Moses. God has a preference, and it isn't Joseph.

In Front of the Text: Joseph as Mirror

Why does Joseph strike me so deeply? Because when I look in the mirror, I see him.

Do you see yourself? Do you hear your own self-justifications?

• "People are fed today."
• "Slaves tomorrow—make the system work today."
• "Other people's children pay the price in the future? That's someone else's problem."

Prosaic evil takes place at arm's length. Isn't that how "the way things are" seduces us quietly? Empire will always invite us to collaborate.

Next week we see a taste of how we might respond differently with Shiphrah and Puah. But for today, Joseph stands before us as a mirror. Where do we compromise? Where do we justify? Where do we serve the empire and Pharaoh instead of God's liberating abundance—and who suffers because of it?