Dinah and Joseph
A most fortuitous end for brother and sister.
After Dinah's home was built on the choicest land in all of Egypt, she visited Joseph on her patio overlooking a valley dotted with olive trees and manzanitas.
“How did you forgive the brothers?” she asked.
Joseph opened his mouth to answer, but she raised a hand to stop him. “After they sold you … for twenty pieces of silver … their own flesh and blood … almost bringing our father’s head down to the grave.” Her voice broke. Tears welled in her eyes. “And almost bringing my head down, too.”
He started to speak again but she cut him off. “Because I can’t forgive them, Joseph! I can’t! Simeon ripped away Shechem, the only man who ever loved me. He ripped away any chance of marriage for me. And my hatred for him and the others … Joseph … it has … it’s become part of me, like part of my body, like it’s attached … like it’s … me.”
This time Joseph didn’t try to speak. He merely sipped cool water from a red clay cup.
Dinah leaned forward, her voice low and raw. “Do you know I haven’t spoken with Simeon in over twenty years? Do you know how many nights I’ve dreamed of punching him in the face and gouging out his eyes and smashing him and smashing him and smashing him?!?” Her chest heaved. “Do you know?”
They sat in silence as the setting sun cast a rose glow over the hills of blond grasses.
Joseph said softly, “It felt like a part of my body, too. I tried to cut it off, put it behind me, but it kept reappearing. Then, when Pharaoh placed the signet ring on my finger, when I had the power, when I realized I could punish Potiphar and make him feel the pain and loneliness I’d felt for all those years … I almost did it.”
Dinah leaned in, and with taut lips said, “Oh, I would have so wanted to….”
“He was right there, Dinah, standing in front of me, the tables perfectly reversed, me with all the power, me with the ability to make things right, and just before I acted, something hit me. It was like a feeling, like a presence, a wave of … I think, guilt. I thought about God. I wondered what he would want me to do. Instantly I knew revenge wasn’t it. hat night I told Asenath and she reminded me of what I had taught her about our God: vengeance was his, not mine.”
Dinah slumped in her chair.
Joseph exhaled. “That moment humbled me, Dinah. It showed me how much I was like them. How easily I could become a Simeon. And I realized I needed forgiveness, too.”
Dinah’s mouth softened. Her lips parted. She held her breath.
Joseph’s voice was steady. “It helped me see them differently. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were young, brash, ruled by instinct, by jealousy.” He hesitated. “And maybe even more than that, I saw how God used their betrayal to bring me here, to refine me in the cold of that dungeon, to show me the depths of my discouragement, to bring me to power. Once I saw God’s hand in my life, the hatred… it just disappeared. It was gone.”
Dinah’s voice wavered. “But they did it to you. They caused all those years of pain. How could you just forgive them?”
“I chose to,” Joseph said simply. “And that gave me the power. I hold the power now, not them.” He paused, then added, “And you, my dear sister, you need to take the power back. Don’t let them own you anymore.”
A month later Joseph hosted a birthday party at his Goshen home. All the family attended, including Simeon and Dinah.
Simeon had tried to apologize before. This time, she let him speak. He approached humbly, head bowed, hands clasped awkwardly. He offered no long speech, just a simple, heartfelt apology.
When their brief exchange ended, Dinah stepped forward, arms lifted. They hugged, and she felt Simeon’s tears on her neck.
No trumpets blared. No heavens opened. The interaction was not the centerpiece of the celebration. But they had spoken. They had hugged. The appendage was excised. All that remained was a scar.
And the scar would always be there.
After everyone had gone home, Dinah walked onto Joseph’s patio alone. Something felt different. Her steps were lighter. Her shoulders softer. She didn’t know it, but her bronze eyes sparkled like they had when she was a sixteen. She gazed into the night sky and thought of Abraham’s promise of descendants. I am one of those stars, she thought. I am a member of God’s family, destined to be a blessing to the world.
Over the horizon, the crescent moon rose, a mere sliver, laid on its side, like a sideways grin. She laughed softly and whispered, "Thank you, God."
Joseph lived to see his 110th year. His final words to his family were, "I am about to die. But one day, God will come to your aid and take you up out of this land. He will take you into the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And when he does, you must carry my bones up from this place and take them to the land of Canaan."
The story of Joseph's bones would unfold across generations.
Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites became exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.
Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. We must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and join our enemies if war breaks out.”
So, they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. With harsh labor in brick and mortar, the Egyptians built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.
In time, Joseph’s son, Mannaseh died. Then his son also died.
Around this time, after years of animosity and fear, Pharaoh did the unthinkable: He ordered the death of every Hebrew boy on the delivery stool.
But one Hebrew mother showed shrewdness and creativity. She didn't want her son to die so she hid him. When she could hide him no more, she coated a papyrus basket with tar and pitch, placed the child in it, and placed it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
When Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to draw it out. She opened it and saw a crying baby. Her heart went out to him saying, “This is one of the Hebrew babies.”
Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and named him Moses, which in Hebrew sounds like ‘drew out.’
And just like that, a Hebrew was back in the house of Pharaoh.
Just like that, the circle of Joseph to Moses was complete.
Both men knew the height of Egyptian power.
Both men knew obscurity and darkness. One by a dungeon. The other by the desert.
Both men were called by God. One through a Pharaoh. The other through a bush.
Joseph marched God’s people into Egypt.
Moses marched God’s people out of Egypt.
The night before the march to the Promised Land, Moses traveled to a Hebrew home in what had now become the ghetto of Goshen. In that home, in some dark corner of a room, or perhaps in a hole dug into the ground, he collected some bones. They were white and chalky by now, but they were special bones—the bones of Joseph.
What did Moses think when he looked at that brittle skeleton? Did he get goosebumps? He’d grown up hearing about this remarkable man.
Now Moses would carry these bones into a desert, far away from Pharaoh's palace, far away from soft beds and platters of meat. He would be led by a pillar of fire, parting seas as he went, drowning the greatest army on earth, climbing a fiery mountain to see God, then carrying down stone tablets engraved with ten commandments.
But Moses would not bury Joseph’s bones in the Promised Land. He never made it.
But the bones did. They were carried by his successor, Joshua. And Joshua would bury those bones in the most remarkable of places, the most unexpected of places: Shechem.
Shechem—the very place where Dinah's life had unraveled.
Shechem—the land Jacob had bought generations earlier with a hundred pieces of silver from Hamor.
Shechem—the soil that brought together trauma and triumph, brother and sister, pain and forgiveness.
In that dirt their lives and stories intertwined—roots driving deep, twisting and turning, crossing paths in the darkness. That ground had seen pain. It had soaked up tears. It held the weight of betrayal, loneliness, and loss.
But Joseph’s bones brought something else. They brought forgiveness, they brought redemption. And now, pain and peace lay side by side, buried together in the land where it all began.