Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other children. The boy was the son of his old age, the firstborn of Rachel, the woman he had worked fourteen years to make his wife. The other sons had been born to Leah and the handmaids while Jacob waited and labored for the woman he truly wanted. But Joseph came from love, from the wife who had been worth every year of service, and the old man poured his affection on the boy without restraint.
He made him a coat of many colours. The garment was a mark of favor, a public declaration that this son was special, this son was chosen, this son would receive what the others could only watch from a distance. The brothers saw the coat and they hated him. They saw the way their father looked at him and they hated him more. The words of peace could find no place in their mouths when they spoke to him. Joseph wore the favor of his father like a target on his back, and the arrows were already being sharpened.
Then Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him yet the more.
The Dream of the Sheaves
“Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed. For behold, we were binding sheaves in the field. And lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright. And behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.”
The brothers understood the meaning before Joseph finished speaking. Sheaves of grain bowing down. Eleven sheaves surrounding one. Their sheaves making obeisance to his sheaf. The dream was a picture of authority, a vision of the younger ruling over the older, the son of the beloved wife exalted above the sons of the unloved. The coat of many colours had already declared their father’s preference. The dream declared something larger, something that reached beyond the tents of Jacob and into the purposes of God.
“Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?”
The questions dripped with scorn. The brothers could not speak peace to Joseph, and his dream gave them fresh fuel for their hatred. They saw a spoiled boy boasting about visions of grandeur. They saw a younger brother who had done nothing to earn his place being elevated above those who had worked and fought and bled for the household. They saw the future Joseph described, and they resolved that it would never come to pass.
The Second Dream
Joseph dreamed another dream, and he told it to his brothers and to his father. The first dream had not been enough. The second dream expanded the vision, reaching beyond the fields of grain to the heavens themselves.
“Behold, I have dreamed a dream more. And behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.”
This time the meaning was even clearer. The sun and the moon and the eleven stars. His father and his mother and his eleven brothers. All of them bowing down to him. The sheaves had been a picture of his brothers. The stars were a picture of his entire family, the whole household of Israel bending before the son of Rachel.
Jacob heard the dream and rebuked him. “What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?”
The old man’s voice was sharp, but something else stirred beneath his words. The Scripture says his brethren envied him, but his father observed the saying. Jacob had been a dreamer once. He had slept on a stone at Bethel and seen a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending. He had heard the voice of the Lord speaking promises over him. He knew that God sometimes spoke through dreams, that the visions of the night could be the word of the Lord in disguise. He rebuked Joseph with his mouth, but in his heart he kept the dream alive, turning it over like a stone in his hand, wondering what the Lord was saying through the boy.
The Brothers in the Field
The hatred of the brothers grew like a weed in tilled soil. They could not speak peaceably to Joseph. They could not look at the coat of many colours without their blood growing hot. The dreams hung in the air between them, a promise of a future they could not accept. The boy who had done nothing to earn his place was telling them that they would one day bow before him. The sheaves and the stars were a declaration of supremacy, and the brothers were not willing to bend the knee.
Then the day came when the brothers went to feed their father’s flock in Shechem, the same fields near the city that Simeon and Levi had emptied of life. Jacob sent Joseph after them to see if all was well and to bring back word. The boy set out from the valley of Hebron, walking north toward the place where his brothers had made the name of their family a stench among the Canaanites. He wore the coat of many colours. He carried his father’s concern. He walked toward a meeting that would change everything.
He found them in Dothan. The brothers saw him coming from a distance, the coat of many colours bright against the brown hills, and their hatred crystallized into a plan. “Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him. And we shall see what will become of his dreams.”
The words were a direct challenge to the vision. The brothers would kill the dreamer, and the dreams would die with him. No sheaves would bow. No stars would make obeisance. The future that Joseph had seen would be buried in a pit in the wilderness, and the brothers would never have to kneel before the son of Rachel.
But the dreams were from God. And the plans of men, no matter how carefully laid, could not overturn what the Lord had spoken. The pit awaited Joseph, but so did Egypt. The brothers would strip him of his coat, but they could not strip him of his destiny. The sheaves would bow. The stars would make obeisance. The dreamer would be exalted. And the brothers who sought to kill him would one day stand before him, hungry and afraid, bowing down to the one they had betrayed.
