Commentaria in Genesim
10. HIS FATHER REBUKED HIM,—not that he was offen- ... dreams; thirdly, lord and prince, but in a dream, as if to say: Our Joseph will be lord and prince, not in reality but in a dream: he dreams that he will be our prince; let him be prince then, but by his dreams: let us call and make him prince and king of dreams.
Allegorically, St. Ambrose, book On Joseph, chapter 3: “This, he says, was written of Joseph, and fulfilled in Christ, when the Jews in his passion said: If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from
CAST HIM INTO THE PIT.—Ruben said this to free Joseph from death; for he was thinking of secretly drawing him out of the pit and bringing him back to his father, that he might recover, by this piety toward a brother so dear to the father, the favour lost by his incest.
Allegorically, Joseph is put into the pit, that is, Christ descends to the dead: thence drawn out, he is sold to the Ismaelites, because Christ rising again is acquired by all the Gentiles in the commerce of faith, says Eucherius, book 3, chapter 36.
24. AND THEY CAST HIM.—Josephus adds that Joseph was let down by Ruben with a rope. What did Joseph do here? He was like a sheep among wolves; he wept, groaned and prayed. Hear the very brothers, chapter 42: “Deservedly, they say, do we suffer these things, because we have sinned against our brother, seeing the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we heard him not.” St. Ephrem pathetically describes this entreaty of Joseph to his brothers in the treatise On the Praises of Joseph.
25. RESIN.—That is called resin which is a tenacious humour flowing from a tree and adhering to it; the most prized is that which flows from the terebinth, and is called terebinthine.
STACTE.—Stacte is a tear of myrrh, which flows and distils from the myrrh tree; hence it is called stacte, that is, distilled, from stazein, to drip.
26. JUDAS SAID THEREFORE.—Judas, fearing that Joseph would at last be killed in the pit by his brothers, for this reason urges that he be sold. Severian notes that it was fitting that the author of the selling of Joseph was Judas, because through Judas Christ was to be sold, whose type was Joseph; but this Judas sold Joseph with a good mind and end; that Judas sold Christ with an evil and sacrilegious one.
28. THEY SOLD HIM.—St. Basil notes, in the sermon On envy, that the envious, by the very means by which they try to obscure the glory of rivals, make it more illustrious. “Therefore, says St. Gregory, book 6 of the Moralia, chapter 14, Joseph was sold by his brethren lest he be adored by them; but therefore was he adored, because he was sold. So divine counsel, while it is avoided, is fulfilled; so human wisdom, while it resists, is caught.” Did not that saint say truly? “Persecutors are goldsmiths, who fashion for us the crowns of the present and of the eternal kingdom.” To the brethren, then, and to the world this Joseph seemed wretched and unhappy; in reality he was not. For by this very deed God begins to raise up his sheaf and to cast down the sheaves of his brethren. For then God begins to exalt, when he humbles; and the more he intends to exalt anyone, the more deeply he humbles him. So he did in Joseph, and most of all in Christ. The bridal chamber of virtue and glory is therefore adversity and abasement.
TO THE ISMAELITES.—A little before, Moses called these merchants Madianites, either because they dwelt in Madian, being of the descendants of Ismael; or rather because partly they were Ismaelites, partly Madianites. For so Flemish and French merchants are wont to set out together for the fairs. So Cajetan and Pererius.
FOR TWENTY PIECES OF SILVER.—Understand shekels. So the Chaldee, that is, 20 Brabant florins. So Pererius, Maldonatus and others; although some, like Ribera and Suarez, think a piece of silver to be half a shekel, so that Joseph was sold for 10 Brabant florins. Origen, St. Augustine and Bede read thirty pieces of silver, because for so many Christ was sold. But the Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek and Josephus constantly read twenty pieces of silver. “It was not fitting,” says St. Jerome, “that a servant be sold for as much as the Lord,” namely Joseph for as much as Christ; or rather, Christ, because a man, was sold for less than Joseph, as a boy; for a man is bought more cheaply at 30 florins than a boy at 20. Add that Christ was bought for the cross, Joseph only for servitude; the sale of Christ was therefore more vile and ignominious than that of Joseph.
30. THE BOY DOTH NOT APPEAR, AND WHITHER SHALL I GO?—as if to say: Since Joseph, dearest to his father, has perished, or been killed, whether by you or by beasts, what shall I do? whither shall I turn? whither go? for I dare not appear before our father. For the father will demand his Joseph of me, as the elder son, and when I cannot present him, I shall bring upon him great sorrow and upon myself offence; since therefore I have gravely offended my father by my incest, and know that by this loss of Joseph I shall have to offend him still more, I should not dare to come into his sight: whither then shall I go?
31. AND THEY TOOK HIS COAT, AND DIPPED IT IN THE BLOOD OF A KID WHICH THEY HAD KILLED.—Allegorically St. Ambrose, book On Joseph, chapter 1: “This also, he says, that they sprinkled his coat with the blood of a kid, seems to signify that they, seeking him by false testimonies, brought into the odium of sin him who forgives the sins of all. To us he is a lamb, to them a kid. To us the Lamb of God was slain, from whom he took away the sin of the world: to them a kid, whose errors he embittered, whose offences he heaped up.”
34. AND RENDING HIS GARMENTS.—It was an old custom to rend garments in mourning; and this was a symbol of lamentation: for the rending of the garments signified the heart rent with grief. This was the seventh tribulation of Jacob.
AND HE PUT ON SACKCLOTH.—The first who is read to have put on sackcloth, or haircloth, in mourning was Jacob in this place; whence his posterity, the Israelites, afterwards imitated the same in mourning; hence also the garb of Christian penitents was of old haircloth, as Tertullian testifies, book On Penance. Let the wearers of haircloth therefore glory in the patriarch Jacob as their standard-bearer, and set him against the soft innovators, who are vexed by all things rough, and have never put on haircloth, and perhaps have never seen it.
So St. Hilarion, according to St. Jerome, subdued his body with rough haircloth made of palm-leaves. So St. Simeon Stylites, who for 80 years stood continually on a pillar, was clothed with haircloth, according to Theodoret. So hermits, monks, ascetics and penitents armed themselves with haircloths, according to Palladius, Theodoret, Climacus and others.
But hear of women, nay of Duchesses and Queens. St. Margaret, daughter of the king of the Hungarians, macerated her body with haircloth. The same did St. Hedwig, Duchess of Poland. St. Clare, a noble virgin, for 28 years wore a hairy haircloth of pigskin, with prickly hairs and bristles turned toward the flesh and pricking it. St. Radegund, queen of the Franks, exchanged purple for haircloth. And, to omit others whom our Gretser relates, book 1 On Discipline, last chapter, hear a memorable example which an ancient author relates of St. Cunegund in her Life. Cunegund was the wife of the Emperor Henry, and remained a virgin in marriage; and to prove her virginity to her husband she walked unharmed with bare feet over glowing iron. She, her husband the Emperor being dead, from an Empress became a religious, put on haircloth, and wished to sleep in it continually, nay to die in it; and when, in her agony, she saw royal obsequies being prepared for her and golden coverings being spread over the bier, then she turned away her pallid face, which before she would have shown joyful as to a coming bridegroom, and refused with her hand. “This garment, she said, is not mine, take it hence; it is alien; with these I was joined to an earthly bridegroom, with those to the heavenly one. Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, naked shall I return thither; in these wrap the vile matter of this wretched flesh, and lay my little body in its own little tomb beside the tomb of my brother and of the Lord Emperor Henry, whom I now see calling me.” And with these words she rendered her virgin spirit to Christ her Bridegroom. So of Cecilia we read: “Cecilia subdued her limbs with haircloth, and besought God with groanings,” saying that word of David: “Let my heart be undefiled in thy justifications, that I may not be confounded”; and so she merited the sight and protection of angels, and the conversion of her husband, and the illustrious crown of martyrdom, and the integrity and incorruption of her body even to this day. Finally St. Martin, dying, lay on ashes and haircloth, and said: “It does not become a Christian to die otherwise than in ashes,” as Sulpicius testifies. Imitating which, St. Charles Borromeo ordained that his clerics should cover themselves at death with haircloth and ashes, and went before them by his own example; for dying he lay on the haircloth which in health he frequently used, and on ashes first blessed, as his Life has, book 7, chapter 12.