What Does Genesis 37:25 Mean?

Then they sat down to eat. And looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing gum, balm, and Myrrh, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. The brothers eat their meal while Joseph is in the pit. The normality of the eating: the capacity to take out food and sit and consume it while their brother calls out from the hole they put him in: is the chapter's sharpest picture of moral numbness. They are not stunned into silence; they eat. The meal is not interrupted by guilt. It is interrupted by commerce.

The caravan of Ishmaelites from Gilead is the providential element that changes the outcome. They are merchants carrying luxury goods: gum, balm, and myrrh: the same products that Jacob's sons will bring to Egypt as gifts in Genesis 43. They are on a known trade route from Gilead to Egypt, a route used by Ishmaelite traders throughout the Bronze Age. Their appearance at precisely this moment: while the brothers are eating and Joseph is in the pit and no permanent decision has been finalized: is the providential timing that Genesis presents without comment. The caravan is not miraculous; it is commercial. But its timing is exact.

The identification of the traders as Ishmaelites: descendants of Abraham through Ishmael: creates a resonant irony. The descendant of Abraham's covenant line will be sold by his brothers to the descendants of Abraham's other line. The family God chose passes its most important son into the care of the family God displaced. The Ishmaelites are kin; they are not enemies. They purchase Joseph as a business transaction and carry him to Egypt as cargo. The universal significance of what they are transporting is invisible to them entirely.