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But we are anticipating. No sooner did his brothers descry Joseph in the distance,
than the murderous plan of getting rid of him, where no stranger should witness their
deed, occurred to their minds. This would be the readiest means of disposing alike of
"the dreamer" and of his "dreams." Reuben alone shrunk from it, not so much from
love to his brother as from consideration for his father. On pretense that it would be
better not actually to shed their brother's blood, he proposed to cast him into one of
those cisterns, and leave him there to perish, hoping, however, himself secretly to
rescue and to restore him to his father. The others readily acceded to the plan. A
Greek writer has left us a graphic account of such wells and cisterns. He describes
them as regularly built and plastered, narrow at the mouth, but widening as they
descend, till at the bottom they attain a width sometimes of one hundred feet. We
know that when dry, or covered with only mud at the bottom, they served as hiding-
places, and even as temporary prisons.(Jeremiah 38:6; Isaiah 24:22) Into such an
empty well Joseph was now cast, while his brothers, as if they had finished some
work, sat down to their meal. We had almost written, that it so happened - but truly it
was in the providence of God, that just then an Arab caravan was slowly coming in
sight. They were pursuing what we might call the world-old route from the spice
district of Gilead into Egypt - across Jordan, below the Sea of Galilee, over the plain
of Jezreel, and thence along the sea-shore. Once more the intended kindness of
another of his brothers well-nigh proved fatal to Joseph. Reuben had diverted their
purpose of bloodshed by proposing to cast Joseph into "the pit," in the hope of being
able afterwards to rescue him. Judah now wished to save his life by selling him as a
slave to the passing Arab caravan. But neither of them had the courage nor the
uprightness frankly to resist the treachery and the crime. Again the other brothers
hearkened to what seemed a merciful suggestion. The bargain was quickly struck.
Joseph was sold to "the Ishmaelites" for twenty shekels - the price, in later times, of a
male slave from five to twenty years old (Leviticus 27:5), the medium price of a slave
being thirty shekels of silver, or about four pounds, reckoning the shekel of the
sanctuary, which was twice the common shekel (Exodus 21:32), at two shillings and
eight-pence. Reuben was not present when the sale was made. On his return he "rent
his clothes" in impotent mourning. But the others dipped Joseph's princely raiment in
the blood of a kid, to give their father the impression that Joseph had been "devoured
by a wild beast." The device succeeded. Jacob mourned him bitterly and "for many
days," refusing all the comfort which his sons and daughters hypocritically offered.
But even his bitterest lamentation expressed the hope and faith that he would meet his
loved son in another world - for, he said: "I will go down into the grave (or into
Sheol) unto my son, mourning."
Except by an incidental reference to it in the later confession of his brothers (Genesis
42:21), we are not told either of the tears or the entreaties with which Joseph vainly
sought to move his brethren, nor of his journey into Egypt. We know that when
following in the caravan of his new masters, he must have seen at a distance the
(^)