Genesis 37:27
Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content. Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.
After thrusting Joseph into a dark pit, his brothers were eating when they saw a company of Ishmaelites approaching.
Judah, beginning to regret what had been done, proposed selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites for money, for a small sum, rather than killing him or leaving him to perish in the pit, arguing that he was their brother and their own flesh and that in this way Joseph could be removed entirely from them.
They chose sale over murder both because he was their brother and because they wanted to stop his dreams and his rise to power, to prevent his becoming greater than themselves and to put his dreams where they could no longer trouble them and could never be fulfilled.
All the brothers agreed and were content with Judah's proposal, drew Joseph up out of the pit, and heartlessly sold him as a slave despite his desperate pleas for compassion.
Though some felt pity, fear of the others kept them silent; they hardened their hearts, thinking they had gone too far to turn back and fearing Joseph would tell their father how they had treated him.
Their appeal to kinship spared Joseph from immediate death but still betrayed him into slavery and took him from his home.
Simeon and Levi were the most guilty of the brothers in the crime of selling Joseph, and their violence against Joseph together with the Shechemites is connected with Jacob's prophecy that they would be divided and scattered among Israel.
God overruled the very course they took to prevent his greatness to bring about what they meant should never happen: by being sold into Egypt Joseph gained dominion over them and became a savior to his father's family, yet that good outcome did not lessen the guilt of the brothers and their crime remained culpable.
The sale illustrates Christ, who was sold to His bitterest enemies by one of His own disciples.
As part of Joseph's story, the verse shows one who was virtuous and marked by goodness and strength of purpose yet was maligned, persecuted, and treated like a criminal, whose suffering for doing right did not mean God had forsaken him, for God gave him signal victories.