Apart from God’s prophets, Joseph is one of the few major figures in the narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures whose life is marked by faithfulness and suffering, but not by any great evil. It’s easy for me to forget that Moses murdered a man;[1] I usually do remember that David had a man murdered so he could have the man’s wife for himself[2]—and in the narrative, the woman who becomes the mother of King Solomon raises no objection. Our readings omit too often stories of God requiring the deaths of people of all ages. In the New Testament, God will require the death of only one.
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