Matthew Henry on Genesis 37:23-30
We have here the execution of their plot against Joseph. 1. They stripped him, each striving to seize the envied coat of many colours, Gen 37:23. Thus, in imagination, they degraded him from the birthright, of which perhaps this was the badge, grieving him, affronting their father, and making themselves sport, while they insulted over him. "Now, Joseph, where is the fine coat?" Thus our Lord Jesus was stripped of his seamless coat, and thus his suffering saints have first been industriously divested of their privileges and honours, and then made the off-scouring of all things. 2. They went about to starve him, throwing him into a dry pit, to perish there with hunger and cold, so cruel were t…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Genesis 37:29
Reuben returned unto the pit--He seems to have designedly taken a circuitous route, with a view of secretly rescuing the poor lad from a lingering death by starvation. His intentions were excellent, and his feelings no doubt painfully lacerated when he discovered what had been done in his absence. But the thing was of God, who had designed that Joseph's deliverance should be accomplished by other means than his.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 37:30
The child is not; and I, whither shall I go? - The words in the original are very plaintive, הילד איננו ואני אנה אני בא haiyeled einennu, vaani anah, ani ba!
John Gill on Genesis 37:30
And he returned unto his brethren,.... From the pit, and whom he suspected had took him and killed him, as was their first design, not being with them when they proposed to sell him, and did:
and said, the child is not; not in the pit, nor in the land of the living, but is dead, which is sometimes the meaning of the phrase, Jeremiah 31:15; he calls him a child, though seventeen years of age, because the youngest brother but one, and he himself was the eldest, and also because of his tender concern for him:
and I, whither shall I go? to find the child or flee from his father's face, which he could not think of seeing any more; whom he had highly offended already in the case of Bilhah, and n…
