Catholic Commentary
Reuben's Grief at the Empty Pit
29Reuben returned to the pit, and saw that Joseph wasn’t in the pit; and he tore his clothes.30He returned to his brothers, and said, “The child is no more; and I, where will I go?”
Genesis 37:29–30 depicts Reuben's anguished discovery that Joseph has been removed from the pit, leading him to tear his clothes in mourning and lament his failure of responsibility as the eldest son. His phrase "the child is no more" establishes a linguistic refrain that echoes throughout the Joseph narrative, binding together moments of discovery, parental refusal, and eventual confession.
Reuben finds the pit empty and is left only with torn clothes and the question he cannot answer: if I intended to save my brother, where do I go now?
Genesis 37:29 — "Reuben returned to the pit"
The narrative's timing is deliberately ambiguous: we are not told where Reuben had gone during Joseph's sale (Gen 37:25–28 focuses entirely on Judah and the Ishmaelite traders). Ancient Jewish tradition and many patristic commentators speculated that Reuben had withdrawn to fast and do penance for his earlier sin against his father (Gen 35:22), intending to use the rescue of Joseph as a form of atonement. Whether or not that tradition is historically reliable, the narrator uses Reuben's absence as a structural device: the eldest son, the one with both the authority and the stated intention to protect Joseph (v. 22), simply was not there at the decisive moment.
"He tore his clothes" (וַיִּקְרַע אֶת-בְּגָדָיו, wayyiqraʿ et-begādāyw) is a formal gesture of mourning and distress found throughout the Hebrew Bible (Job 1:20; 2 Sam 13:31; 2 Kgs 19:1). The tearing of garments externalizes an interior rupture — grief so overwhelming it breaks through the skin of ordinary behavior into visible, bodily lamentation. Reuben does not yet know whether Joseph is dead or sold; he knows only that his plan has failed and that Joseph is gone. His mourning is, at this moment, ambiguous: it is grief for Joseph and simultaneously a first confession of his own failure of responsibility.
Genesis 37:30 — "The child is no more; and I, where will I go?"
Reuben's words are among the most psychologically acute in Genesis. The Hebrew הַיֶּלֶד אֵינֶנּוּ (hayyeled einennû) — "the child is not" or "the child is no more" — will echo with devastating irony later in the narrative. Jacob uses almost identical language when refusing to send Benjamin to Egypt: "his brother is dead, and he alone is left" (Gen 42:38), and the brothers themselves will quote Reuben's precise phrase back to Joseph when they stand before him in Egypt, confessing their crime (Gen 42:13, 32). The phrase thus becomes a kind of refrain of guilt threading through the entire Joseph story.
"And I, where will I go?" is not a logistical question but an existential one. As the firstborn (Gen 29:32), Reuben bears covenantal responsibility for his brothers and especial accountability before his father. His question anticipates Jacob's reaction (v. 35) and acknowledges that he cannot face his father. There is no place he can go that is not defined by this failure. Guilt has made the whole world inhospitable.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers, beginning with St. John Chrysostom and developed richly by St. Augustine and Origen, read Joseph consistently as a type (figura) of Christ: the beloved son sent by his father, stripped of his robe, cast into a pit, sold by his brothers for silver, and yet ultimately the instrument of salvation for those who betrayed him. In this typological frame, Reuben's discovery of the empty pit resonates with a different kind of "empty pit" — the empty tomb. The grief of those who come expecting death and find emptiness is transformed: what appears as annihilation is, in God's providence, the first movement of salvation.
Reuben's torn garments foreshadow the tearing of the Temple veil (Matt 27:51) and the stripping of Christ's garments at the crucifixion (John 19:23–24), events that the Church reads as the visible rupture of the old order in the face of divine self-offering. His anguished question — "where will I go?" — echoes in Peter's anguished question after the Resurrection: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" (John 6:68), though with an opposite valence: Peter's question is an act of faith, Reuben's an act of despair.
Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to these verses.
The Joseph Typology in the Fathers and the Catechism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§128–130) affirms that the Old Testament contains "types" — persons, events, and institutions — that genuinely prefigure the realities of the New Covenant. Joseph is among the most fully developed of these types. St. Ambrose (De Joseph Patriarcha) saw in the empty pit a figure of the sealed tomb: "the grave held him not, just as the pit could not contain Joseph." Origen (Homilies on Genesis, Hom. XV) observed that the brothers' discovery of Joseph's absence from the pit prefigures the disciples' discovery of the empty tomb — both scenes feature witnesses who expect to find death and instead find an inexplicable absence that must be interpreted.
Reuben and the Examination of Conscience. The question "where will I go?" is, in Catholic moral theology, a model of what the tradition calls timor servilis — fear-based conscience — as opposed to the timor filialis (filial fear) that leads to repentance and return. Reuben's paralysis contrasts with the later conversion of all the brothers (Gen 42:21–22; 44:16), who eventually confess their guilt before Joseph and receive reconciliation. The Catechism (§1781) teaches that a well-formed conscience does not paralyze but orders one toward reparation. Reuben's cry is the raw first moment before that process begins.
Co-responsibility and the Failure to Act. Catholic social teaching, rooted in the tradition from St. Thomas Aquinas to Gaudium et Spes (§30), stresses that sins of omission — the failure to exercise legitimate authority for the protection of the innocent — carry real moral weight. Reuben's grief is inseparable from his absence at the decisive moment. He intended the good but did not remain to accomplish it.
Reuben's question — "where will I go?" — is the voice of anyone who has failed to protect someone entrusted to their care and now cannot imagine facing the consequences. Contemporary Catholics encounter this moment in the examination of conscience: the parent who was not there, the friend who knew and said nothing, the leader who intended to act and was absent when it mattered. The Catholic tradition does not leave Reuben — or us — at the pit's edge. The same Joseph narrative that begins with this paralyzed question ends with Joseph's declaration: "It was not you who sent me here, but God" (Gen 45:8). The empty pit is not the final word; it is the beginning of a providential story that requires us to remain present to the unfolding rather than flee into guilt.
Practically: when you discover you have failed someone, resist the temptation to frame your failure as the whole story. Bring the torn garments — the real, visible grief — to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The confessional is the place where "the child is no more" becomes "I have found my lost son" (Luke 15:24).
Commentary