A coat, and two dreams
1 Jacob lived in the land of his father’s travels, in the land of Canaan. 2 This is the history of the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. Joseph brought an evil report of them to their father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a tunic of many colors. 4 His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him. 5 Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him all the more. 6 He said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: 7 for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves came around, and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8 His brothers asked him, “Will you indeed reign over us? Will you indeed have dominion over us?” They hated him all the more for his dreams and for his words. 9 He dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, “Behold, I have dreamed yet another dream: and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.” 10 He told it to his father and to his brothers. His father rebuked him, and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to the earth before you?” 11 His brothers envied him, but his father kept this saying in mind.
A father's favoritism and a boy's tactlessness make a household combustible, and the dreams are true and are told in the worst possible way.
This is the history of the generations of Jacob — and the first name in the section is Joseph. The last of the book's eleven divisions opens, and it runs to the end.
Three causes of the disaster are laid out in three verses, and the responsibility is shared.
The first is Joseph's. He is seventeen, working with the sons of the two servant wives, and Joseph brought an evil report of them to their father. Nothing suggests the report was false. What it makes him is the boy who tells.
The second is Jacob's, and it is the gravest. Israel loved Joseph more than all his children — and made it visible. The tunic is described with a term whose sense is uncertain; the English translations divide between many colors, long sleeves, and an ornamented robe. What is not uncertain is its function: it was not work clothing. In a household where eleven sons went out with the flocks, one of them was dressed in something that said he did not have to.
Jacob had watched his own father prefer his brother and had spent twenty years in exile because of it. He does the same thing to his own sons and does it more openly.
The third is the brothers'. They hated him, and couldn't speak peaceably to him. The phrase describes a house in which civility has failed — not a quarrel but a settled coldness, and it is stated before Joseph has dreamed anything.
Then the dreams, and they are true. The narrative treats them throughout as revelation, and every element is fulfilled twenty years later in Egypt.
But he tells them. The first — sheaves in a field bowing to his sheaf — he tells to the brothers who already cannot speak civilly to him, and their reply is exactly the offense taken: Will you indeed reign over us? The second — sun, moon and eleven stars — he tells to everyone, and this time his father objects: Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to the earth before you?
A dream from God, told twice, by a favored seventeen-year-old, to the people it puts underneath him. Genesis does not say the telling was wrong and it lets the reader watch what it does. Joseph will spend a great deal of the rest of his life learning to keep things to himself, and the man who eventually stands before Pharaoh begins by saying It is not in me Genesis 41:16.
The closing verse splits the family's response with precision: His brothers envied him, but his father kept this saying in mind. The brothers hear a claim to rule. Jacob rebukes him publicly and privately files it away — the same man who once heard an oracle that the elder would serve the younger and tried to bless the elder anyway.
The imagery of the second dream is worth marking. Sun, moon and stars bowing is not a family scene; it is the language of the heavens paying homage, and this book has already used sun and moon as made things appointed to rule and to mark time Genesis 1:16.
settled What this mark means