Genesis 37:25
And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.
After thrusting Joseph into the pit to be left to die of hunger, his brothers sat down to eat bread while he remained trapped there, showing their callous indifference to his suffering. While they ate they lifted up their eyes and saw a company of Ishmaelite traders approaching with camels, traveling from Gilead beyond Jordan toward Egypt carrying spicery and balm and myrrh and other merchandise. The caravan's arrival gave Judah the chance to propose selling Joseph as a slave into Egypt rather than leaving him to die, and the brothers agreed, drew Joseph from the pit, handed him to the traders, and had him taken away from his father's home.
The brothers had first purposed to kill Joseph and then settled on sale to get rid of him, intending to keep him from becoming greater than themselves, to prevent his ruling over them, and to make his dreams impossible. God overruled the very course they pursued to bring about what they meant never should happen, so that by being sold into Egypt Joseph became the saviour of his father's family, and that outcome did not lessen his brothers' guilt. Joseph's rejection and suffering foreshadow Christ, whose enemies likewise sought to prevent His authority, yet whose death made Him the Redeemer of the world, without excusing their crime. In further parallel, Christ like Joseph was sold by one of His own disciples for a small sum into the hands of His bitterest enemies, rejected and hated because His righteous life rebuked sin, then made Redeemer of mankind, Saviour of the fallen race and ruler over the whole world, while the crime of His enemies remained just as heinous as though God's providential hand had not controlled events for His own glory and the good of man. Joseph's experience shows one maligned and persecuted despite virtue and goodness, whose suffering did not mean God had forsaken him, for God gave him victories even while he appeared to suffer for doing right.