NOTES for Gen 37:3-4

Envy is one of the most widespread human sins. Jealousy is the same, since it too is envy, envy of another person's love. The tenth commandment of the Decalogue forbids envy. And not without reason, but because envy destroys the house. It is directed toward such destruction. When a person envies something, he always envies another person's house; this is the meaning of the tenth commandment. And this is no surprise: a house is not simply a dwelling. It is a spiritual space. A space in which relationships are built, binding together those who live in the house. Relationships of love, binding the members of the household. The envious person does not always understand this, but if he does understand it, the responsibility is all the greater.

When envy is directed toward what belongs to a person, that is not yet so terrible. Though it is still bad. It is bad because, refusing to build his own house, the envious person dreams of someone else's. He wants to become the master of the house, pushing out those who created that house. And this is a spiritual catastrophe above all for the envious person himself, because by doing this he renounces his own house. He renounces responsibility for his life before God. For that very life which God gave to him and to him alone so that he himself would build his own house.

But it is still worse if a person envies someone else's relationships. Someone else's love. Here it is no longer simply another person's house, another person's living space. Here it is another person's soul. Love always presupposes the joining of souls. Not an emotional or intellectual joining, but a vital one. In the Bible, the soul is not a structure, but a process, a stream. A stream of life. And love is two streams merging into one. Directed by the will of those whom love joins together.

And the envious person intrudes into this stream in order to change its course. To redirect it toward himself. Regardless of the desire of those who live in it. By force, cunning, manipulation - by any means, but in such a way as to become the center himself. This kind of envy is the most terrible; it strikes at the very heart of relationships, destroying them or at least trying to destroy them.

Taken to the end, envy can even make the envious person a murderer, wanting at any cost to pull everything toward himself. But the most terrible thing is that in doing this the envious person also destroys his own spiritual life: he no longer has either strength or time left for relationships with God. In killing the one he envies, he kills himself. Not physically, true, but spiritually. But such a death is still more terrible, because it is irreversible. And even the resurrection at the end of time can become for such a murderer a resurrection of condemnation.