What Does Genesis 37:11 Mean?

When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, "The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?" Reuben's anguish at finding the pit empty is one of the chapter's most individualized emotional moments. He had planned to rescue Joseph secretly and restore him to his father. Now the pit is empty; Joseph is gone; the plan has proceeded without him. His cry: "the boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?": is the sound of a man whose good intention has been overtaken by events and who now faces his father with nothing to show for it.

The difference between Reuben's partial decency (he wanted to rescue Joseph) and Judah's pragmatic intervention (selling Joseph rather than killing him) represents two kinds of inadequate response to evil. Reuben's plan was better in intention but failed in execution: he was not present when the sale happened, and his absence meant his intention produced nothing. Judah's plan was worse in intention (profiting from the situation) but produced the outcome that ultimately serves God's purposes: Joseph alive, in Egypt, positioned for his providential rise. Neither brother acted rightly. Reuben's failure is more sympathetic; Judah's outcome is, under God's overruling, more consequential.

Reuben's question: "where shall I go?": is the question of a firstborn son who will have to face his father without the brother his father entrusted to the group. The question echoes forward to the brothers' repeated dread in the Egyptian chapters: how will they face their father when what he most loves and most fears for is at stake? The dread of Jacob's grief is the constant pressure on the brothers through the rest of Genesis. They will manage it by deception for twenty-two years, until the deception becomes unbearable in Egypt and the truth comes out in tears.