Joseph, Sold by His Brethren
Genesis 37-50, a portrait of Christ, as the early church read it
The longest single story in Genesis is the story of Joseph, and the early church read it as a portrait of Christ drawn centuries in advance. The father's beloved son is sent to his brothers; they hate him, strip him, and sell him for pieces of silver; he descends into a pit and then a prison; he is raised up to the right hand of the throne, given a new name, and set over all the land, so that the very brothers who sold him must come and bow before him for bread. And then, instead of vengeance, he forgives them and saves them alive: "ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good." Tertullian and Cyprian in their own words below, with a plain restatement.
The Fathers' words are verbatim and attributed (Tertullian and Cyprian, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, public domain; selected from the running prose, footnote apparatus omitted). The box marked "In plain terms" is our own restatement, never the Fathers' words.
Genesis 37:28 · KJV…and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.
"Joseph likewise was a type of Christ… in this, that he suffered persecution for the cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from His brethren after the flesh, the Jews."
Tertullian"We see that the Lord Himself was deserted by His brethren, and was betrayed by him whom He Himself had chosen among His apostles; that also in the beginning of the world it was none other than a brother who slew righteous Abel… and the youthful Joseph was sold by the act of his brethren."
Cyprian of CarthageThe wound that opens Joseph's story is the wound the Fathers saw first: he is betrayed and sold by his own brothers, "for twenty pieces of silver," as Christ was betrayed by one of His own for thirty (Matthew 26:15). Cyprian sets it in a long, sad line, Abel slain by a brother, Joseph sold by his brothers, Christ deserted and handed over by His own people and His own apostle. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11). The rejection by kin is not incidental to the story; it is the first mark of the type.
Genesis 41:41-43 · KJVAnd Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt… and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.
The one cast into the pit is lifted to the right hand of the throne. The rejected brother is given a new name, robed, and set over everything, until "every knee" bows before him, the very picture Paul would use of the risen Christ: "God also hath highly exalted him… that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Philippians 2:9-10). And from that throne Joseph becomes the one source of bread for a starving world; there is no life apart from going to him. The despised son now holds, in his hands, the lives of all who once despised him, including his brothers.
Genesis 45:4-5; 50:20 · KJVI am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt… be not grieved… for God did send me before you to preserve life… ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good… to save much people alive.
Here the type reaches its height, and it is mercy. The brother with absolute power over those who betrayed him uses it not to avenge but to forgive and feed them: "be not grieved… God did send me… to preserve life." It is the cross in advance, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34), and the same providence Joseph names, "ye thought evil… but God meant it unto good", is the providence that turned the worst crime in history into the salvation of the world. And there is a tender forward look in the scene where the brothers finally recognize the one they sold and weep: a foreshadow of the day Israel will "look upon me whom they have pierced, and… mourn" (Zechariah 12:10), and find not a judge but a brother who says, do not be grieved.
Where this stands among the traditions
Joseph is not quoted as a type in the New Testament the way Jonah or the bronze serpent are, yet the parallels are so many and so exact, the beloved son, the betrayal by brothers, the silver, the descent, the exaltation to the right hand, the bread for the world, the forgiveness, that the church read him typologically from very early on, and Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant have done so ever since. Two fair cautions belong here. First, typology can be overdrawn; the Fathers themselves sometimes pressed every detail (Tertullian even reads Joseph's "unicorn" blessing as the shape of the cross), and the sober center is the cluster of clear parallels, not a one-to-one code for every verse. Second, the modern critical reading treats the Joseph narrative simply as a wisdom tale or a Diaspora court story about a Hebrew who rises among foreigners; that is not false as far as it goes, but it misses what the church saw, that this account of a rejected brother who becomes a rejected people's savior is shaped, by the same Author who shaped history, like the gospel itself. The drift to resist is reading it as merely a moving family saga and missing the One it quietly portrays: the brother we sold, exalted to the throne, holding out bread and saying, "be not grieved." (See the binding of Isaac, Esther and providence, and whom they pierced.)
Patristic text from Tertullian, Against Marcion (III.18), and Cyprian of Carthage (Epistle), in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain); the line "in Joseph He was sold into slavery" is from the early treatise On the Glory of Martyrdom (Cyprianic appendix). Selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; Genesis 37 at BibleHub.