Joseph’s brothers must have very sore backs by now. Since they first came to Egypt looking for food they have repeatedly bowed low, even prostrated themselves before their brother. They hated his prophetic dreams, but they cannot escape their fulfilment.

It was one thing, in fulfilment of Joseph’s dreams, for his brothers to bow down before him; quite another thing for Judah to prostrate himself before his brother Joseph and offer himself up in place of Benjamin.

Just as Judah had left his personal seal and staff with his daughter-in-law Tamar (Gen 38), so Joseph now leaves his cloak with Potiphar’s wife. But how different Joseph is to his brother! Just as when his brothers stripped his cloak off him and threw him into a pit, so now, Joseph is an innocent victim.

Jacob had spent his whole life, even from the womb, grasping, scheming and striving. After having finally escaped from Laban, after twenty years of toil (Gen 31:38, 41) and mutual trickery in exile, he prepares himself for re-entering the promised land.

What God had said to Abraham (15:1), he says to his son Isaac. The life of faith involves fearing God rather than people, recognising that he is powerful enough to overcome every obstacle to the fulfilment of his promises.

The sign of the Abrahamic Covenant, the sign of circumcision, was “in your flesh” (Gen. 17:13), where it simultaneously marked God’s extraordinary promise and Abraham’s complete impotency.

Sin is personified by God as a beast crouching at the door, seeking, presumably, to overpower Cain. Just as Adam was tasked with ruling over the beasts of the field, so Cain must rule over sin. In the very next verse it is Cain who rose up against his brother, himself acting with animalistic violence.