This is the account of Jacob's family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them. – Genesis 37:2

Today's Scripture Reading (October 18, 2024): Genesis 37

Many years ago, I read a statistic that asserted that 90% of Pastors are raised in dysfunctional families. The next time I sat down with some friends, it became the subject of our conversation. Is it possible the level of dysfunction is that high in the families of origin of pastors? The conversation was quite revealing, but maybe the most surprising conclusion of our discussion was that the number might be low. It is a reality that is not restricted to the families of Pastors. Regardless of your occupation, the incidence of some level of dysfunction in the families of the people around us is quite high. We all know and have been affected by broken families and broken people. We all suffer. Divorce rates inside and outside the church are about the same. We shut down hard conversations that we don't want to have. Sibling rivalry rages in many families. The result of all of this and more is significant dysfunction in our family units, a dysfunction that touches all of us. It isn't a question of whether there is dysfunction in our families but rather the level of dysfunction that is present.

With this verse we begin one of the major epic stories of the Bible. But this story is also a story of dysfunction. Jacob had grown up in a family that was marked by dysfunction. A significant sibling rivalry raged between Jacob and his brother, Esau. There was no doubt that Mom and Dad had a favorite child. Isaac favored Esau, while Rebekah favored Jacob. All of this had a significant effect on Jacob's life.

It was a pattern of dysfunction that continued in Jacob's family. A pattern that began with Isaac wanting to marry Rachel but being tricked into marrying her sister, Leah, first. It meant the seeds of dysfunction were sown into Jacob's family long before the children came along. This passage mentions Jacob's wives, Bilhah and Zilpah, but the women were actually servants of Leah and Rachel. It is also possible that, like Leah and Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah may have also been sisters. All of this meant the level of dysfunction with these two sets of sister wives was increased even further.

While Joseph is sometimes seen as the lone sane person in the family of Israel (Jacob), as this portion of the story begins, Joseph is only seventeen. He was an adult in Jewish society, and yet still struggled with a developing brain and body that we associate with adolescence and early adulthood today. And what we are told is that Joseph seemed to like to act as a spy, tattling on his brothers whenever they did something wrong. This trait meant that Joseph couldn't be trusted and would have raised the level of dysfunction in the family to an even greater level. If there is something that should be said in Joseph's defense, his brothers were older and should have been able to find ways to de-escalate the situation with their younger brother, but they decided not to do that. Instead, maybe like a lot of us, the dysfunction had become routine in their lives, and they choose only to increase that dysfunction in their relationship with their younger brother.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 38