When Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit and then sold him into slavery, they had no idea that their actions were paving the way for the temporal salvation of their family decades later. The measly twenty pieces of silver they accepted as payment for him revealed their complete ignorance of his worth and stood in stark contrast with their eventual desperate reliance on him (see Genesis 37:28; Genesis 50:15-21). Joseph would later reassure them, “It was not you that sent me hither, but God” (Genesis 45:8). Yet their salvation was not a result of their crime but of his mercy, freely given once he had the power to save them.
Many years later, the prophet Zechariah wrote a parable about a rebellious flock who misvalue a shepherd sent to them by God. In the parable, the shepherd asks them to pay him whatever they think he’s worth. In response, the flock gives him “thirty pieces of silver,” an amount so far off the mark that God responds with sarcasm: “A goodly price that I was prised at of them.” The shepherd casts aside the money, throwing the coins “to the potter in the house of the Lord” (Zechariah 11:12-13).
Matthew saw a fulfillment of this prophecy in the treachery of Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’s apostles. “What will ye give me?” he asks the chief priests, in exchange for delivering Jesus to them. They agree on a price of thirty pieces of silver, exactly the amount in Zechariah’s parable. But when he sees Jesus tried and condemned to death, Judas realizes how wrong he was. He tries to return the money, and when they refuse it, he throws it on the ground in the temple. The chief priests use the money to purchase a potter’s field for use as a cemetery, echoing the end of Zechariah’s parable. (See Matthew 26:14-16; Matthew 27:3-10.)
Every one of God’s children is priceless. There is not enough money in the world to measure their value, although people routinely try. Joseph was worth far more than twenty pieces of silver, as his brothers later learned. The thirty pieces given to Judas for betraying Christ were of negligible value compared with His infinite worth, as Judas demonstrated by discarding the money. Nephi lamented our tendency to misvalue things when he wrote, “the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to the body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet. Yea, even the very God of Israel do men trample under their feet” (1 Nephi 19:7).
Joseph’s enslavement prefigures the Savior’s Atonement. Like Joseph, the Savior was sold for a small amount of silver. Like Joseph, He was betrayed by someone close to Him. That betrayal set in motion the very events through which He would save all of God’s children, including His betrayers. Like the temporal salvation offered by Joseph, the Savior’s redemption is freely given, a gift motivated by love.
Jesus understands the value of a human soul. “The worth of souls is great in the sight of God,” He declared to Joseph Smith. “For behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him” (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10-11).
Today I will remember the incalculable worth of a soul. I will avoid the errors of Joseph’s brothers and of Judas by treating everyone around me as priceless, worthy of my attention, compassion, and respect.
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