The acts of God and restorative justice in the Joseph story

Abstract

This article presents the narrator’s and the characters’ contesting views on the “acts of God” in the Joseph story (Genesis 37, 39–50) through the interpretive framework of Ricoeurian narrative theology, along with psychoanalytic theories, such as repression and Nachträglichkeit. After presenting the different static views on the acts of God by the narrator, Joseph’s butler, and Joseph’s brothers, the article offers a psychoanalytic reading of the gradual change in Joseph’s view on the acts of God. It argues that (1) Joseph’s delayed emotional reactions to his traumatic experience of being sold into slavery by his brothers are triggered by his subsequent encounters with them, which eventually lead to his radical resignification of his past traumatic experiences and misfortunes as the saving acts of God and (2) the restorative justice achieved between Joseph and his brothers at the end culminates in another insight on the “acts of God” as a form of transformative, healing power.