Who brought Joseph into Egypt?

What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.

How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction

This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.

Genesis 37 narrates Joseph's transfer to Egypt with two incompatible threads woven through a single chapter, and the seam between them surfaces precisely at the question of who carried him down. In one thread Judah persuades the brothers to sell Joseph to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their spice-laden camels (37:25-27); in the other, Midianite traders draw Joseph up out of the pit (37:28a). The composite verse 37:28 awkwardly fuses both: "Then Midianite merchants passed by; and they drew Joseph up out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, and they brought Joseph to Egypt." Here the Midianites are the subject who draw and sell, while the Ishmaelites are the buyers who transport — two distinct groups transacting in a single clause. Then 37:36 introduces a further spelling: the Masoretic Text reads *ha-Medanim* (with daleth) rather than *ha-Midyanim* of 37:28, saying "the Medanim sold him in Egypt to Potiphar." This form is widely regarded as a near-synonymous variant spelling of "Midianites" — the Septuagint and most modern translations simply render "Midianites" — and the proposal that it points to a separate people descended from Medan (Gen 25:2) is one suggestion among others rather than established fact. Genesis 39:1 in turn says Potiphar "bought him from the Ishmaelites." Within a few verses the selling agent is named Midianite (or Medanite) and Ishmaelite, and the narrator does not reconcile the two.

The standard harmonization treats "Midianite" and "Ishmaelite" as overlapping ethnonyms for one Transjordanian caravan, citing Judges 8:24, where Gideon's Midianite enemies are said to wear gold earrings "because they were Ishmaelites." Keil and Delitzsch, Archer, and Mathews all argue on this basis that one caravan is being described under two broad labels for desert traders. The lexical observation is genuine: the terms can blur as generic designations for nomadic merchants. But this does not absorb the data of 37:28 itself, where Midianites and Ishmaelites are not equated but set in a buyer-seller relation: the Midianites "drew Joseph up... and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites." One party sells, the other buys; identifying them collapses the verse into the Midianites selling Joseph to the Midianites.

The source-critical reading, set out clause by clause by E. A. Speiser in the Anchor Bible and refined by Friedman, Baden, and Carr, resolves the chapter into two narratives. In the J version Judah proposes selling Joseph; the brothers sell him directly to Ishmaelites, who carry him to Egypt — cohering with 39:1's "Ishmaelites." In the E version Reuben tries to save Joseph by having him thrown into a waterless pit, intending to return for him; Midianite traders pass by, pull Joseph out unbeknownst to the brothers, and carry him off. This explains why Reuben, not Judah, returns to the empty pit and rends his clothes (37:29-30), and why Joseph can later say he was "stolen" out of the land of the Hebrews (40:15) rather than sold. The two threads account for otherwise puzzling features: two would-be protectors (Reuben in E, Judah in J), two accounts of how Joseph left the pit, and the oscillation of the selling agent. The brothers' deception of Jacob with the bloodied coat (37:31-33) reads most naturally on the J line, where they actively disposed of him.

The overlapping-ethnonym defense neutralizes the crudest form of the objection but not the structure of the text. The principal weight of the source-critical case rests not on the *Medanim*/*Midyanim* spelling — which can plausibly be a stylistic variant — but on the doublet of rescuers and removals, the alternation of named agents across the J-coherent (Ishmaelite/Judah) and E-coherent (Midianite/Reuben) strands, and the narrative inconsistencies these resolve. A single synonym cannot iron out two would-be rescuers and two accounts of how Joseph left the pit. Speiser's analysis has held for over half a century, and the critical consensus has scarcely moved. The doublet is the data; the sources are the explanation.

Where the critical reading lands: a compositional doublet — the Midianite/Ishmaelite alternation, together with the double rescue, marks the J/E seam, only superficially eased by the overlapping-ethnonym argument.