Fill Their Bags With Grain

Preventing a Famine in the Land

One of the greatest stories of the Jewish people goes like this. There was once a family living in Palestine at risk of starvation. A terrible drought reigns, the crops fail, and the animals are withering. Hope perks up when they hear that there is grain nearby, stockpiled by a rich and powerful nation.

They hatch a plan. The aged patriarch, who presides over his often unruly eleven sons and sole daughter with uneven success, sends the sons to get grain, laden with goods for a potential exchange. He knows that the family has been chosen by God to fill the earth and is still smarting from the loss of his favorite son years before, so he sends only ten of them, keeping the baby of the bunch at home.

The ten brothers arrive in the rich country, and after cowering before an intimidating figure in charge of the whole country’s grain supply, they get the grain and return home with it. They get it in abundance, and even free of charge.

After much more intrigue, with many poignant and beautiful plot twists, the story tells how the whole family is united, even the missing twelfth son, who, unbeknowst to his brothers who had previously betrayed him and sold him into slavery, had become the great man they met.

The story of Joseph and his brothers truly is one of the greatest stories of the Jewish people. But it is also one of the greatest stories of the human race. It belongs to all of us now. It is one of the many treasures that the Jewish people have brought to humankind. We should all be grateful that the people of Israel managed to survive, and, as promised to Abraham, went on to bless the whole earth. They got grain when they needed it, and because of that, they lived and the whole human family benefited.

Mr. Netanyahu, with a simple decree you can be like Joseph. You can open the gates and let in the trucks to Gaza. Not in a trickle, which will only cause looting and violence as desperate people fight over scraps. But in marvelous abundance. Israel was once saved by a generous gift of grain. The whole human family looks on in horror at the famine now unfolding in Gaza. You can lift it. Be like Joseph—save starving people in Palestine. Be like Joseph—and save Israel as well.

John Durham Peters teaches and writes about how how we live in the middle of things on earth. These things in the middle are often called media!