My Brother's Keeper

After Cain slew Abel, “the Lord said unto Cain: Where is Abel, thy brother?” Cain’s response is well-known: “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Moses 5:34) Clearly Cain had not been a keeper to his brother, but in fact had been exactly the opposite. The word keeper, according to the 1828 Webster Dictionary, is defined this way: “One who has the care, custody or superintendence of any thing.” Though not all siblings are meant to have “custody” over their brothers, I think the word “care” here always applies: brothers and sisters in particular should feel a responsibility to care for one another. Subsequent stories in the Bible show us by example what it means to be and to not be our brother’s keeper. For example, Joseph’s brethren certainly showed us an example like Cain’s. They said to each other about Joseph, “Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” Eventually, though, they didn’t go as far as Cain but instead “sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver” (Genesis 37:20, 28). They were not the kind of keepers they should have been, many years later they lamented this: “We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us” (Genesis 42:21). Judah showed a positive example of being their brother’s keeper when he protected Benjamin at this time, saying, “For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever. Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren. For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me?” (Genesis 44:32-34) He was willing to give his life for his brother, a total change from how he had treated Joseph. Joseph, also, was his brothers’ keeper as he forgave and nourished them, telling them, “Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life…. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance” (Genesis 45:5, 7). Joseph showed them what it meant to truly care for one’s family.

               There is another example of a brother’s keeper in the beginning of the book of Exodus. After Moses was born, his mother hid him for as long as she could to save his life, and then she sent him down the river. We read, “And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.” This was Miriam, the sister of Moses, and she must have been very young. Knowing how much her mother loved this new baby, she likely followed him to see what she could do to care for him as he floated away. I imagine her walking along the river bank, always keeping him in sight, until she suddenly came to the place where the daughter of Pharaoh was. She could have run away at that time frightened, but her concern for her brother was greater than any fear she had. Once she saw that the daughter of Pharaoh might care for the baby, she inserted herself and said, “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?” That then allowed the mother of Moses still help nourish the child when he was very young, and Miriam indeed may have saved Moses’ life. She truly was her brother’s keeper, even at a young age, and stands in stark contrast to Cain.

               As I thought about these stories, I wondered what I can do to help my own children to better care for their own siblings. My youngest at age six is perhaps the best at this, and the other day when I was going to the elementary school for “birthday tables” for her older brother (once a month the parents go and have lunch with kids that have a birthday that month), she wrote a little card for him telling him that she loved him and gave it to me, unsolicited, to hand him at lunch that day. I was amazed at her thoughtfulness. But some of my other children do not usually have that kind of loving attitude towards their siblings, and I often struggle to know how to help them treat one another with more kindness. But perhaps this story of Miriam and Moses gives us at least one clue. I have to think that their mother, Jochebed, showed great love to that little infant. That must have been a big part about what inspired Miriam to then herself show great love towards Moses, even to the point of putting herself at risk by approaching Pharoah’s daughter. As we strive to show love to each of our children, especially those who get in trouble the most, we can hope that it will inspire their siblings to do the same.