The Midianite Traders Who Regretted Ever Buying Joseph

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The Boy They Pulled From the Pit

The traders smelled money before they saw the boy. A caravan of Midianites crossing toward the balm country, camels loaded with resin and spice, and off the trade road they came upon the sons of Jacob resting near a dry cistern, breaking bread. From the mouth of the pit a voice was crying. When they hauled him up, they found a boy who doubled his own price at a glance. Soft hands. No rope scars. No slave brand. The kind of merchandise a market fights over.

One of the brothers said the boy was rebellious, thrown in the pit for insubordination. Better still. The Midianites leaned in. "Didn't you say you threw this boy in the pit because he was rebellious? What will you do with such an insubordinate slave now? Sell him to us. We are ready to pay whatever you ask."

The brothers wanted him gone more than they wanted silver. They named a low price, took the coins, and went back to their bread as though nothing at all had passed. And something in the traders had wanted this boy from the moment they saw the dust of the camp, a hunger none of them could have named, set in them by a hand they never once suspected, so that Joseph would be carried far from brothers who might yet have killed him.

Easy money. They bound his wrists loose, out of habit, and turned the camels north.

A Cry That Shook the Ground

They did not turn fast enough.

One of the brothers had not gone back to his bread. Simon. He came at them with his sword already drawn, and before a single trader could close a hand on a weapon he let out a cry so vast the ground moved under the camels. Hardened men, men who had buried caravan mates in the sand and never once flinched, went down where they stood. Blades slid out of open fingers. No one had told their knees to fold, and yet they were kneeling in the dirt, staring up.

Simon stood over them. "I am Simon, the son of the Hebrew Jacob," he said. He did not raise his voice now. He did not have to. "I destroyed the city of Shechem alone and unaided, and together with my brethren I destroyed the cities of the Amorites."

Then the oath, cold as a blade laid flat against the neck. "God do so to me and more also, if it be not true that all the Midianites, your brethren, united with all the Canaanite kings to fight with me, cannot hold out against me."

And the demand. "Now restore the boy you took from us, or I will give your flesh to the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field."

The traders climbed to their feet slowly, hands open, and looked at the soft-handed boy they had just counted out good coin for. Whatever they had bought, it was no simple slave. They never learned how the quarrel among the brothers ended, because they were already whipping the camels toward the hills, the boy still bound among the packs, Simon's oath riding out of the valley behind them.

The Road to Gilead Turned to Dread

The balm hills of Gilead lay ahead, and the traders should have been counting profit. Instead they kept turning to watch the road behind. A boy that fine, sold that cheap, by brothers that dangerous. The arithmetic stopped adding up.

What if the boy had never been a slave at all. What if he was a free Hebrew, stolen from a great house, and they were the fools now hauling the evidence across the desert. Jacob's sons had the look of men who would steal a person and haggle him away over lunch. And the price. No one lets good merchandise go that cheap unless the merchandise is poison.

Every league north the boy sat quiet on the camel, and the traders grew louder inside their own skulls. They had a warlord's oath sworn against them and a slave who might be a lord's stolen son. They had bought a curse and paid to carry it.

The Caravan on the Horizon

Then, dust on the ridgeline. A second caravan, Ishmaelites, the same men the sons of Jacob had marked earlier on the road. The Midianites had their door out.

Sell the boy on. Recover the coins, lose nothing, and hand the whole cursed business to someone else before Simon or Jacob or whatever unseen thing was steering this came looking for it. The deal was quick and nervous. The Ishmaelites paid exactly what the Midianites had paid, not one coin more, and for once in their trading lives the Midianites did not haggle. They took the silver, wheeled the camels, and would not look at the boy again.

Joseph went south with strangers, toward Egypt, toward the man all Egypt would one day bow to. Behind him the Midianite traders rode hard for Gilead, lighter by one slave, telling themselves they had come out even. They never learned that they had carried a ruler of nations across the desert and sold him off for the price of a single nervous afternoon.