How to Read the Bible: A Case Study

 

How to Read the Bible: A Case Study

February 14, 2021

 

I recently got into a discussion with a friend and colleague of mine over the meaning of a particular Bible passage, namely, Genesis 43:3-11. Those verses are the culmination of the story of Joseph and his brothers. In earlier parts of the story Joseph’s brothers, all of them sons of the patriarch Isaac, get mad at Joseph because, frankly, he’s being quite an arrogant jerk with them. They decide to kill him and tell their father that a wild animal had devoured him. They seize Joseph and throw him into a dry pit. One of them, Reuben, planned to come back to rescue Joseph, but the brothers see a caravan of traders coming by heading for Egypt. So they drag Joseph out of the pit and sell him as a slave to the traders. The traders take him to Egypt. Quite unexpectedly (and inexplicably and unhistorically) Joseph rises to the position of ruling all of Egypt for the pharaoh. He stores up a large supply of grain because he knew several years of famine were coming. And no, the great pyramids of Egypt were not Joseph’s grain elevators as I heard a biblical literalist who was one of President Trump’s cabinet officers say once that they were. Back home in Canaan the famine hits, and Joseph’s brothers flee to Egypt, where they expect there will be food. Joseph appears before them and reveals his identity to them. Then we get to the part of the story where my friend and I had a disagreement.

Our disagreement was over these lines from the story. We read that Joseph says to his brothers, “And now, do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” Genesis 43:5. Joseph repeats his point, saying, “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.” Genesis 43:7. Then he says again, “So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” Genesis 43:9. I read these lines one way. My friend reads them a different way.

I take these lines at face value. They say what they say. They don’t say what they don’t say. Joseph’s attributing his being sold as a slave and ending up in Egypt not to his brothers but to God seems to me necessarily to be saying that God brought about Joseph’s brothers act of first trying to kill him, then selling him into slavery. That is, God did something evil so that later on God could do something good. Joseph asserts that though it sure looked like it was his brothers who did evil to him, in fact it wasn’t them but God who did evil to him.

I can’t read this story any other way. Because I can’t I have long thought that the story gives us some very bad theology. The story says that God does really bad stuff to people just so God can bring something good out of it. I’m sorry, Joseph, but that’s just flat wrong. God doesn’t cause bad things to happen to people for that or any other reason. God isn’t about harming anyone for any reason. No, Joseph’s brothers throwing him into a pit, then selling him into slavery was not God’s doing.

The disagreement I had with my friend came about because he doesn’t read the story that way. In our conversation he asserted that that you can read the this story as not saying that God was the one who had Joseph sold into slavery. He reads this story as saying that God was able to bring something good out of what happened without understanding that God caused what happened. Now, my friend’s reading of this story gives us very good theology, not the very bad theology my reading gives us. God does indeed bring good out of the bad.

I have lived that truth in my own life. Back in 2002 I was just beginning my first call as a church pastor. At that time my wife was dying of breast cancer. We both knew that her death would come soon, and indeed it did. I was with her to the end, and the people of my church knew what had happened. They knew that I had lived through my wife suffering and dying. My wife’s premature death was nothing but a tragedy. It was a very bad thing, and I will never think of it as other than a very bad thing.

But that I had had that painful experience, and that the people of my church knew that I had had that painful experience, made a better pastor. It made a better pastor in general. More specifically it made me a better pastor for people experiencing something like what I had experienced. It’s not that anyone’s experience is identical to any else’s, but when I was pastor to people with a terminal illness or whose spouse had a terminal illness, those people knew that I could understand what they were going through better than anyone who had not lived through such an experience.

I also know, however, that God did not cause my wife’s suffering and dying just so God could make me a better pastor. Frankly, I could not love and would never serve a God who would do such a thing. God is love, and a God who is love would never do such a thing. Yes, with God’s help my experience made me a better pastor. That’s the good that God brought out of tragedy of my wife’s death, but God did not cause that death.

My friend and I share this theology. What we don’t share is how to read the story of Joseph revealing himself to his brothers. My friend reads that good theology into the story. As much as I respect this friend, and I do, I hear him doing something that I consider  improper when reading scripture. I hear him making the story say what he would like it to say rather than accepting what it actually does say. He is reading meaning into the text rather than finding the meaning that is in the text. In this instance I reject the meaning that I am sure is in the story, but I don’t read other meaning into it.

I think there is a lesson we can take from my recent disagreement with my friend over the meaning of this story. In any reading of any biblical text (or any other text for that matter) we must begin with the text as it is. We must read the text very carefully and clearly. We must ask questions like are what the story’s words and what do those words mean. The text is what it is. It has its own integrity that we must respect. It is true, as I have taught and written for a long time, that a text can have more than one meaning. It can even have a meaning different from the meaning the author of the text intended. What the text can’t do is mean something that contradicts the words of the story. It can’t have a meaning that is fundamentally different from the meaning of the words of the text. In the story of Joseph revealing himself to his brothers “God sent me before you to preserve life” and “It was not you who sent me here, but God” cannot mean that God didn’t send him there. I don’t mean to suggest that what the text says is correct. It isn’t, but that it isn’t correct doesn’t mean that the text doesn’t say what it says.

It is so easy for us to read any text as saying something other than what it actually says. To read it as saying what we’d like it to say or something we’ve been told that it says. I will never assert that every meaning of every biblical text is true. Many people insist that everything in the Bible is true, but that contention is so obviously wrong that I don’t know how anyone can believe it. The realization that something in a biblical text is not true is however not license for us to read whatever meaning we want into the text. We can’t read Jesus saying “Love your enemies” to mean “hate your enemies.” We can’t even read it as saying its OK to be indifferent toward your enemies. The text “Love your enemies” just doesn’t say those things, nor does it give us permission to say that it says those things. Our tendency to be too loose in our reading of biblical texts is precisely why we must not wander too far from the what the text actually says as we look for meaning in the text. That’s the caution I leave with you today. Let’s be careful with our texts. It is the only way to handle them appropriately.

The Scripture quotations contained here are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used with permission. All rights reserved.