Designating a family member as the middleman creates dissension.
After all the hoopla with the coat and the dreams, Joseph’s brothers went back to work in the pasture, taking care of their father’s flocks. Jacob told Joseph to go check on his brothers and to bring back a report.
Now I don’t know if Joseph enjoyed being a tattletale, or if he simply was trying to please his father and maintain his role as the favored son. Either way, it wasn’t smart of Jacob to put Joseph in the position of being the middleman. No siblings want their 17-year-old brother (who, by the way, wasn’t sent out to work with them) running back to daddy with a report of how they’re doing their job.
Can we just take a moment and acknowledge that Jacob wasn’t a wise father? Surely it didn’t escape his attention that Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him, that they would barely speak to him. Sending Joseph out to check on his brothers and report back was simply asking for more trouble.
Apparently, the brothers weren’t where they were supposed to be because Joseph ended up wandering around the fields looking for them. A man who had overheard the brothers planning to move locations pointed Joseph in their direction. Now maybe Joseph should’ve returned to Jacob with that information, but instead, he took off after his brothers, which ended up being an almost-fatal mistake because his brothers were angry enough to kill him (more about that tomorrow).
When we designate a middleman in order to gain information about others, we risk miscommunication, manipulation, dissension, jealousy, and broken relationships. In family relationships, the middleman often is played as a pawn. Today, the scenario between Jacob, Joseph and the brothers would likely be called triangulation—using one person to communicate to another. It’s a sign of a dysfunctional family, particularly one that is narcissistic.
I’ve learned that when triangulation occurs, it’s best to step out of the triangle. Maybe if Joseph had been a little older, a little wiser, or had more courage, he would have removed himself from the triangle his father created.
I wonder how different this story might have been if Jacob had gone to check on his sons instead of sending Joseph. Perhaps that would have opened the door to reconciliation.
But as we will see in this series, Jacob’s role in designating Joseph as a middleman cost him years of grief and almost cost Joseph his life.
This was fascinating thinking about the middleman. I did not know the technical term triangulation. That article was also interesting. Stepping out of the triangle can be harder than you think when old patterns are set and no one even notices the triangle. Deep thoughts.