What Does Genesis 37:29 Mean?

When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes. Reuben's return to the pit and the discovery of its emptiness is the chapter's most individually tragic moment. He had planned to come back and rescue Joseph: to pull him out privately, without the brothers knowing, and restore him to Jacob. He tore his clothes. The gesture of torn garments is the Old Testament's physical expression of acute grief, catastrophic news, or mourning. Reuben is not just frustrated; he is devastated.

The emptiness of the pit confronts Reuben with the failure of his partial intervention. He had the right intention and the wrong plan. He told the brothers "throw him in the pit" thinking he would retrieve Joseph later; but "later" became the window in which Judah proposed the sale and the caravan passed and the brothers made their decision. Reuben's absence at the critical moment: wherever he went while the others were eating and the caravan arrived: is the gap through which his rescue plan fell apart. He comes back to an empty hole and torn clothes and no brother.

The tearing of clothes without knowing what to do is the stance of helplessness before a fact that cannot be undone. Joseph is gone; Reuben could not stop it; there is no remedying it now. The question that immediately follows: "where shall I go?": is not geographical. It is the question of the firstborn who was responsible for his brother and has lost him. Among his brothers, in the hierarchy of the family, in the accounting that will eventually be made before their father: where shall I go? The answer he will live with is: nowhere good, for as long as the secret is kept.