Spying in the Bible 3 - 1900 BC to 1876 BC

Joseph and His Many-Colored Cloak and Dagger Story

Joseph was Israel’s favorite son because he was the oldest son of his favorite wife, Rachel. To show his favoritism, Israel gave Joseph an ornate robe of many colors when he was seventeen years old, making his older brothers jealous. To make things worse, Joseph then told his brothers he had a dream that they would all bow down to him and serve him. This made them so angry that they wanted to kill him, but decided to sell him as a slave into Egypt instead to at least make some money off of getting rid of him. This happened in c. 1899 BC, which was during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, when Sesotris I was Pharoah.

The Egyptian Middle Kingdom occurred between c. 2040 – c. 1750 BC, which corresponds to the first half of the Middle Bronze Age and encompassed the time between the First and Second Intermediate Periods. The Middle Kingdom was known for expansion of trade outside the kingdom. This expansion of trade also served to open up their borders and let more and more foreigners in, such as Joseph. The Middle Kingdom consisted of the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Dynasties, but the Twelfth Dynasty is considered by later Egyptians to have been one of the greatest, when very powerful Pharaohs ruled from c. 1991 to c. 1802 BC. By the time Joseph was thirty years old, around c. 1886 BC, he had worked his way up into employment in the Egyptian government, so he would have been in the service of one of the powerful twelfth dynasty Pharaohs. The story of how Joseph’s family, and therefore the Israelites, came to live in Egypt in c. 1876 BC has the first definite, explicit mention of spying in written history and it gives some interesting, and historically significant, information on the state of espionage in the world, at that time.

Seven years after Joseph’s promotion in the Egyptian government, there was a severe famine over the whole region and foreigners were coming to Egypt to buy grain, including Joseph’s brothers (Genesis 42:5-8,13-17).

So Israel’s sons were among those who went to buy grain, for there was famine in the land of Canaan also. Now Joseph was the governor of the land, the person who sold grain to all its people. So when Joseph’s brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground. As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended to be a stranger and spoke harshly to them. “Where do you come from?” he asked.

“From the land of Canaan,” they replied, “to buy food.”

Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected.” ...

But they replied, “Your servants were twelve brothers, the sons of one man, who lives in the land of Canaan. The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more.”

Joseph said to them, “It is just as I told you: You are spies! And this is how you will be tested: As surely as Pharaoh lives, you will not leave this place unless your youngest brother comes here. Send one of your number to get your brother; the rest of you will be kept in prison, so that your words may be tested to see if you are telling the truth. If you are not, then as surely as Pharaoh lives, you are spies!” And he put them all in custody for three days.

Ironically, the brothers bowing down to Joseph here fulfilled the dream he had that prompted them to sell him to slavery in Egypt in the first place. The first century Roman, Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus also records this event, but adds in some interesting details about Joseph claiming his brothers were from spies from several countries and that he put them in jail to interrogate them when he had the time (Antiquities of the Jews, Book II, Chapter 6).

[Joseph] refused to sell them corn, and said they were come as spies of the king's affairs; and that they came from several countries, and joined themselves together, and pretended that they were of kin, it not being possible that a private man should breed up so many sons, and those of so great beauty of countenance as they were, such an education of so many children being not easily obtained by kings themselves.... [Joseph] for the present put them in prison, as intending to examine more into their affairs when he should be at leisure.

An historically important implication of this story is that spying appears to have been well established and well known to everyone by this time because it was familiar not only to Joseph, who was in a government position, but also to his brothers, who were just regular civilians. This story also shows that many espionage tradecraft ideas were well developed by this time. For example, an intelligence gathering unit of agents, who may or may not represent the interest of the same nation is referred to as an agent net. Also, there are three categories for methods of infiltration of enemy lines, which are black (clandestine), grey (through a legal crossing point, but under false documentation), or white (legal). One common grey method, of which Joseph accused his brothers, is to use a “legend”, or synthetic identity (also referred to as an alias and cover story). Joseph then accuses his brothers of coming to “see where the land is unprotected” and as “spies of the king’s affairs” showing that the idea of targeted intelligence for military and political advantages.

Lastly, by imprisoning spies with plans to interrogate them, it shows the existence of the idea of counterintelligence, and getting the enemies’ plans out of their spies. Joseph’s plan to test their story by sending one of them back, while keeping the others in prison, would have also been the logical counterintelligence thing to do in his position. If they were agents from different countries, the ten countries whose spies were not released might have pressured the eleventh to send back an imposter as their youngest brother, thus attempting to rescue the left behind spy and guarantee continued access to Egypt. Joseph would have had enough time by then to interrogate the ten separately and look for inconsistencies in their stories. If the eleventh spy did not come back, then Joseph would still have had spies from ten of the eleven countries to interrogate and punish.