The story of Joseph is one of the longer and more intricate stories in Genesis and there are some developments in it that may seem confusing when not looked at more closely. One such development is when Joseph sends his brothers back to their father but plants a silver cup in Benjamin’s sack. Joseph sends his servant after his brothers to accuse one of them of having stolen the cup and whoever did must return to Egypt as a servant while the other brothers are free to return home. The reason Joseph does this is to test his brothers. When they were younger, Joseph’s brothers sold Joseph into slavery and then returned to their father with Joseph’s clothes bloodied to make it look as if he was killed. They commit this terrible sin knowing that Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son and that his death would cause Jacob significant grief. By planting the silver cup in Benjamin’s sack and therefore making him a servant in
Egypt, Joseph is testing the character of his other brothers to see if they would again allow their father to lose his favorite son and fall into a state of grief, but instead they return to Egypt and beg Joseph to free Benjamin because they know how much it would hurt Jacob. This proves that they have in fact changed from when they were younger. This story of Joseph continues to follow the theme of the beloved son as, similar to Jacob and the other central characters from Genesis, Joseph undergoes a “death” and “resurrection.” Gary Anderson points out that this death is both literal and metaphorical to the characters in the story. To Jacob, Joseph literally dies as his brothers convince Jacob with the bloody clothes, but to Joseph, his death is more metaphorical. Anderson references The Psalter noting that being entrapped in a pit is closely related to entering the underworld and Joseph also “undergoes a series of elevations and humiliations only to find himself the provisioner not only of his family in Canaan but of the entire known world.” This is directly related to the idea of the “beloved son” going through a symbolic death only to be reborn in the grace of God.
