‘And Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son for many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted, and he said, “For I will go down to the grave (sheol) to my son mourning.” And his father wept for him.' And the Medanites sold him into Egypt, to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of his bodyguard.'
The contrast is striking and deliberate. On the one hand the grief-stricken father mourning for the dead son for a long time, unable to be comforted, and on the other the son sold without thought, in moments, into the hands of an Egyptian officer. So does the writer bring out the evil of what was done.
“Tore his clothes -- put sackcloth on.” A regular method of demonstrating great grief and emotion. The writer stresses the prolonged grief of the father. This must surely have torn at the hearts of even the hardest of the sons. For try as they will they cannot comfort him. They had not known not what they did. How many times did they wish that they could bring Joseph back again? We may do things in the emotion of a moment that we regret for a lifetime.
“Daughters”. Probably, along with Dinah, mainly the wives of his sons.
“I will go down to sheol with my son mourning.” Sheol is the world of the departed, connected with the grave. It is always a shadowy world, a vague world of semi or non existence in shadowy form. There is no real doctrine of the afterlife in the Pentateuch.
So do we say goodbye to Jacob for some long time. We leave him grieving and recognise that he will continue grieving and broken hearted while the story goes on.
“Medanites.” Part of the Midianite confederation (see on Genesis 37:25). It was probably Joseph who became aware of the different skeins in the Midianite group, a mixture of Ishmaelites and Medanites. He had the chance to communicate with them and knew exactly which of them had sold him. He had cause to know.
“Potiphar.” Possibly an abbreviation of Potiphera (compare Genesis 41:45) but not the same person. The latter means ‘he whom Re has given', which would be a popular name. It is quite clearly Egyptian.
“An officer of Pharaoh, captain of his bodyguard.” The word for ‘officer' is ‘saris'. It eventually came to mean eunuch (LXX has eunouchos here), but is here used in its earlier use as a court officer. As ‘captain of his bodyguard' he is someone in close touch with the Pharaoh. Very few were in close touch with Pharaoh for he saw himself as a god and stood aloof and unapproachable.
“Pharaoh.” The title of the king of Egypt. It derives from the Egyptian term for ‘great house' and originally signified the palace and court of the king. The first use of it for the king himself is around 1450 BC, but without an individual name attached, as here and in Exodus. Thus we may see the use here as being probably the work of Moses, changing an original ‘king of Egypt' into the more modern title. It was only in the early first millennium BC that an individual name began to be attached to the title. This minor detail helps to authenticate the narrative.