People Exegesis

The following essay first appeared in Issue 27 of The Mockingbird print magazine.

All the familiar hubbub of a restaurant greeted our ears as my wife and I stepped inside. We slid into the booth across from another couple with whom we were casually acquainted. After scanning menus and placing orders, we settled in for the getting-to-know-each-other-better phase.

That never happened. Not really. For a few minutes, the husband vented about esoteric work politics. We politely asked some follow-up questions. The wife relayed stories about the schooling and relationships of their sons and daughters. We politely asked some follow-up questions. I sipped my drink, asked more questions, and told the typical “Oh, yes, I experienced something similar” kinds of stories.

This was years ago now. I still remember, however, that my wife and I later had a good-natured chuckle over the fact that we had been asked a total of zero questions. Like, the entire night. The other couple, on the drive home, doubtlessly had their own chuckle about us. Maybe one of the stories I told seemed a bit far-fetched. “Did he expect us to believe that?” she might have said. Perhaps they both wondered, “Why did they ask us so many questions?” And why had we not talked more about ourselves and shown less interest in them?

Interiors by Amie Hollmann. 2024. NYC.

Ah, human communication. A truly comic enterprise!

I’ve come to think of these social experiences as People Exegesis. I’m interpreting her. He’s interpreting me. Noting facial expressions, tone of voice, a couple’s interactions, and, of course, following the verbal conversation as well. In many cases, we have a follow-up commentary session with our significant other regarding the “human texts” we have been interpreting during social engagements.

People exegesis. It’s the ABCs of life, is it not? We begin our training in the cradle as we watch the faces of our moms and dads. Throughout life, we sharpen our interpretive skills. We learn the good, the bad, and the boring about folks. We marvel as they show incredible grace to the undeserving, or we cringe as they stoop to unspeakable acts of selfishness. It does not take long to realize that we, and all the men and women with whom we live our lives, are blends of the graceful and the grotesque.

In that way, we all become living icons of the shoulds and should-nots of life, as well as, on astonishingly rare but always beautiful occasions, conduits of divine love — the kind of love that ripples from heaven into our lives through acts of astonishing grace.

Over years of teaching the Bible, especially the narratives of the Old Testament, it began to dawn on me how much of what I just described applies to reading the Scriptures as well. How so? Much of biblical exegesis is, more precisely, people exegesis. Every narrative involving people in the Bible necessitates interpreting the people themselves.

This ought to be obvious but, at least in my experience, it seems a far under-appreciated aspect of Bible reading. What we do in our face-to-face interactions with fellow humans — read and exegete them — we also must do in our face-to-text interactions with the likes of Abraham and Sarah, Ruth and Boaz, Ahab and Jezebel. What we discover is that biblical men and women, just like our neighbors and coworkers, are narrative icons of the ugly underside of law-breaking humanity, as well as striking images of the love of God that invades our world and gives us gratis the exact opposite of what we have coming.

To illustrate how this works, let’s sit down with one of the more well-known biblical individuals: Joseph of coat-of-many-colors fame. When I was a boy in Sunday School, Joseph was paraded before our impressionable young eyes as the epitome of piety. “Joseph is one of the godliest men in all the Bible,” we were informed.

But was he really? I’m not so convinced anymore. Sure, he was far better than many of the notorious ne’er-do-wells in the Bible. Unlike later leaders of Israel, for instance, Joseph wasn’t building altars on which to sacrifice babies or underwriting religious prostitution. He wasn’t that guy. But that does not necessarily mean that Joseph was Mr. Rogers of Egypt, either.

The challenge for us here is to engage in People Exegesis. To treat Joseph not like a literary character in a novel but like a flesh-and-blood person in our social circles. Someone who is eating dinner across the table from us. Let’s listen to him converse. Let’s read his actions.

To begin let’s focus on a feature of Joseph’s personality that is hard to unsee once you see it: the man is Mr. Loquacious. Joseph talks more than any other human character in Genesis, even out-talking his father, Jacob, who rarely passed up a chance to jack his jaw. The big red flag is Joseph’s favorite topic of conversation: himself.

Here are two examples. In one of the more darkly humorous scenarios, when the wife of Joseph’s master tries to lure this handsome young man into her bed, rather than simply uttering a curt “Nope!” he launches into a sermonic reply in which he somehow manages also to brag about his importance in the household four times (Gen 39:8–9). Later, after Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams about the upcoming famine, he immediately adds this suggestion, “Now therefore let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt …” (41:33). A wise and discerning man. Obviously, Joseph has Joseph in mind. These examples — to which more could be added — are even more illuminating when we recall our first impression of Joseph. We read that he “brought a bad report of [his half-brothers] to their father” (37:2). The Hebrew word for “report,” dibbah, is not as iffy in meaning as most translations let on. This is the same noun used for the “bad report” brought by the Israelite spies (Num 13:32; 14:36–37); the “whispering” of schemers and plotters (Ps 31:13); foolish “slander” (Prov 10:18); and “evil gossip” (Ezek 36:3). In other words, this dibbah was not dutiful Joseph, the kid brother, playing the part of a family whistleblower because it was “the right thing to do.” No, this was teenage Joseph slandering, maligning, and defaming his brothers.

Illustrations by Aubrey Swanson Dockery.

The more we hang with Joseph and engage in “People Exegesis,” the better we get to know him. And the better we get to know him, the better we get to know one of his faults: lots of me, me, me (like our dinner friends from years ago!). Simultaneously and more importantly, Joseph becomes a mirror of our souls (and mouths). In his self-absorption, he is what the Bible would call a breaker of the law — that is, one who does not live up to God’s demands for how we conduct our lives in this world. God’s law is the ought-ness of the human condition, how we were created to be, act, think, and speak. In Joseph’s breaking of this high standard, he is also “being us” for we, like him, gravitate toward self-focus. St. John wrote, “The Law was given through Moses,” as indeed it was (Jn 1:17), but if we have ears to hear and eyes to see, the law was also given through Joseph and others. “Given” in this sense: we see in them what we find in ourselves, namely, all the ways we do not measure up to how we should be.

But of course there is more to Joseph. Just like people today, he is multifaceted. As a scrooge occasionally surprises us with generosity or a sweet pious grandma tells an off-color joke, so people in the Bible, like Joseph, have personalities colored by splashes of delight as well as by darker hues of vice. As they can embody the very human tendency of law-breaking, so they can be used by God for the very divine penchant of undeserved, one-directional love.

Joseph becomes the channel for this love on at least two occasions, both involving his brothers. And both times, Joseph the Chatterbox became Joseph the Pardoner.

The first occurs in an emotionally gripping scene when Joseph finally stops masking himself as a callous Egyptian viceroy. After an impassioned speech by his older brother Judah (Gen 44:18–34), Joseph finally breaks down, big time. Shooing everyone out of the house except his brothers, he says, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” (45:3). His brothers, understandably a little freaked out by his tears and words, take some convincing.

After all, put yourself in his brothers’ shoes. It was bad enough when they assumed the guy was just an irascible foreign dignitary with an eccentric interest in their family. Now things have just gotten worse: this is Joseph, the kid brother they hated, betrayed, and shoved into the slave market years before. The very same one who gave every indication that he was eager for revenge. Now Joseph is also in a position where he can do whatever he wants with his brothers. Enslave them? Yes. Execute them? Sure. He is the cat, they the mouse. They are entirely at his mercy.

Shockingly, mercy is exactly what Joseph doles out. He begins with reassurance: “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here” (45:5). He continues with a confession of the Lord’s providential hand in his life:

God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God (45:5–8).

Loquacious as ever, he finishes with his promise to provide for his entire family in Egypt (45:9–13). Then, to buttress the verbal with the physical, he “kissed all his brothers and wept upon them” (45:15).

Joseph the potential punisher is now Joseph the gracious pardoner. It is hard to fathom him being so forgiving, especially toward those who trampled underfoot familial trust and thrust him into a life of enslavement and prison. Yet he does forgive. And in so doing, Joseph becomes far more than a flat moral example for us; he becomes an icon of Christ. The Christ who also is betrayed by one close to him. The Christ who is sold into the hands of his enemies. The Christ who endures all the horror that Rome can muster in their public humiliation and torture of crucifixion victims. The same Christ who looks down from the cross and does not say, “Almighty Judge, burn all these sinners in hell,” but prays, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).

The second occasion during which Joseph channels mercy for his brothers is almost more poignant than the first. About seventeen years after he is reunited with his family, his father Jacob dies (49:28–50:14). Joseph has not only forgiven his brothers years before, but has used his political clout to provide for them and their families. In word and deed, he has assured them that all was well.

But all is not well in his brothers’ minds. Fearful that Joseph had only been biding his time until their dad was buried so he could exhume the hatchet of revenge, they concoct a pitiful story. They claim that, before Jacob died, he told them to tell Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you” (50:16–17). The brothers add, “And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father” (50:17). “Old guilt gathers no rust,” Martin Luther once quipped when commenting on these events.

The response of Joseph is initially to weep (50:17). I suspect his tears are an amalgam of compassion, frustration, and love. As if to say, “Don’t you guys get it? I love you. I forgave you long ago.” He tells them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones” (50:19–21). In this way, “he comforted them and spoke kindly to them” (50:21).

During both of these episodes of mercy, the exegesis of Joseph reveals far more than a model of morality. Yes, of course he exemplifies how we are to forgive those in our own lives. Much more importantly, however, he is an earthly instrument of heaven, showing astonishing grace to the ungracious, thereby becoming a window into the very heart of the Father himself, who never tires of forgiving, and is never tightfisted with absolution, but every hour of every day relishes the chance to embrace his sons and daughters with arms of pardon.

When I read these old stories of Joseph and other biblical characters, I realize more and more how fresh and modern they are. Then as now, parents screwed up. Brothers fought. People hurt and got hurt. Open up any random page in the Bible and you will stumble upon a story that illustrates how we live up to the down-and-dirty sides of our me-absorbed human nature. But keep reading and you will also see narratives like those later ones of Joseph, where someone beats a sword into a plowshare to sow the good seed of pardon into the surprised and unworthy heart of another.

In that way too, Joseph exemplifies the inner civil war that rages inside every Christian where, to paraphrase Paul, “the good I want to do, I don’t do; and the bad I don’t want to do, I keep right on doing” (Rom 7:15–20). The Latin phrase simul iustus et peccator perfectly captures this infuriating dilemma within us. It means “simultaneously justified and a sinner,” or more simply, “at the same time saint and sinner.” If Christians ever wonder why their attempted white snow of good deeds always ends up with a distinctive yellow tinge, there’s your answer.

In the gospel moment that Joseph has with his brothers, we see what we too have experienced time and again, when the Son of the Father has smiled at us, beckoned all the heavenly host to gather round, looked us in the eye, and said, “You are a beloved, beautiful, forgiven child. Nothing and no one will ever separate you from my heart of love.”

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