I usually don’t get this much into religion on my blog, but while we’re at it anyway:
The thing about Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery is that it’s not an isolated incident. It’s part of a much larger pattern of younger brothers gaining supremacy over the older ones, and the older ones retaliating (at times incredibly viciously), which we see over and over throughout the book of Genesis. We see it with literally the first brothers ever to come into existence, Cain and Abel. We see it with Ishmael’s banishment because Sarah wanted the inheritance to be solely Isaac’s (“the son of this slavewoman will not inherit with my son, with Isaac”). We see it with Jacob tricking Esau into selling his birthright and then having to flee the inevitable fallout. We see it with Joseph and his brothers. And then even when Jacob is on his deathbed, we still see him try to bless Joseph’s younger son over the older one. And that’s when Joseph speaks up and says “That is not correct, my father, because this one is the oldest,” and you get a sense of the pattern starting to be broken.
But you don’t really see that pattern break once and for all until the book of Exodus, when Moses is chosen to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, to basically become the supreme leader above all other leaders in Jewish history... and his older brother, Aaron, is nothing but wholeheartedly loyal and unconditionally supportive of him. There isn’t so much as a flicker of jealousy. He never suggests that maybe this should have been his place instead (even though he’d have a pretty fair case for it, since not only is he the older brother, he’s the one who was living with the other Hebrew slaves while Moses was off living in a palace and then far away in Midian). He goes to find Moses in Midian, embraces and kisses him, and then stands by his side throughout everything that happens afterwards. In light of all the stories of brotherly rivalry we see in the Bible beforehand, that’s incredibly striking.
... Which is one of many reasons why, although I absolutely love The Prince of Egypt, I will never forgive that movie for this:
