Then there passed by Midianites, merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.
Read Chapter 37
Caesarius of Arles
AD 542
Upon seeing Joseph, his brothers discussed his death; just as when the Jews saw the true Joseph, Christ the Lord, they all resolved with one plan to crucify him. His brothers robbed Joseph of his outside coat that was of divers colors; the Jews stripped Christ of his bodily tunic at his death on the cross. When Joseph was deprived of his tunic he was thrown into a cistern, that is, into a pit; after Christ was despoiled of human flesh, he descended into hell. Afterward Joseph is lifted up out of the cistern and is sold to the Ishmaelites, that is, to the Gentiles; when Christ returns from hell, he is bought by all nations at the price of faith. Upon the advice of Judah, Joseph is sold for thirty pieces of silver; Christ is sold for the same amount upon the counsel of Judas Iscariot. Now in different translations Joseph is not written as sold at the same price, for some say it was twenty pieces of silver and others thirty. This spiritually signifies that Christ was not to be believed an...
Let us observe a great mystery: for Joseph twenty pieces of gold were given, for the Lord thirty pieces of silver. The servant was sold at a higher price than the Master. To be sure people are wrong in fixing the price of the Lord, because the One who is sold is beyond human evaluation. Let us consider this mystery with more attention. For the Lord the Jews offered thirty pieces of silver; for Joseph the Ishmaelites offered twenty pieces of gold. The Ishmaelites bought the servant at a higher price than that paid by the Jews for the Master. The first worshiped in Joseph the image of Christ; the latter only had contempt for the reality itself that was in Christ. Therefore the Jews offered a lower price for Christ, because they estimated the passion of the Lord to be cheap. But how is it possible to estimate the passion of the Lord to be cheap, when it is the price for the redemption of the entire world? Listen to the apostle, who demonstrates that to us by saying, “You were bought at a ...
Of silver. Some have read, thirty pieces of gold or silver. (St. Ambrose, c. 3.)
The price was trifling: twenty sicles would be about £2 5s. 7½d. English. The Madianites and Ismaelites jointly purchased Joseph. (Haydock)
What an unlawful contract! What baleful profit! What illicit sale! The one who caused the same birth pangs as yourselves, the one so dear to your father, the one who came to see you, who never did you the slightest wrong, you endeavored to sell—and sell to savage people traveling down to Egypt. What unlawful frenzy! What dreadful malice! I mean, even if you did this out of fear of the dreams, convinced that they would certainly come to pass in every detail, why did you attempt the impossible and give evidence by what you did of your hostility toward God, who had foretold this to Joseph? If, on the contrary, you give no credence to the dreams but consider them nonsense, why did you do what brought you everlasting defilement and caused your father irreparable grief? But what excess of passion—or rather, of a bloodthirsty intention! You see, when someone is obsessed with some improper exploit and becomes intoxicated with improper designs, he does not keep before him the unsleeping eye; he...
