Joseph Is Sold by His Brothers

Context

Jacob, whom this chapter also calls Israel, had settled with his family in Canaan, where his own father had lived as a foreigner. His household included many sons, all under the authority of the same father. Yet this was not a peaceful family. Jacob’s favor toward Joseph was impossible to hide, and Joseph’s dreams raised a question his brothers could not bear: could the brother they resented one day stand above them? The story turns on what they do with that resentment when they are far from home.

Story

Joseph was seventeen years old when he tended his father’s flocks with several of his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Afterward, Joseph brought their father a bad report about them.

Israel loved Joseph more than his other children because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age. He gave Joseph a distinctive robe. His brothers saw what that gift revealed: their father favored Joseph. They hated him and could not speak to him peacefully.

Then Joseph had a dream and told his brothers about it. In the dream, they were all binding bundles of grain in a field. Joseph’s bundle stood upright, while the bundles belonging to his brothers gathered around it and bowed down.

His brothers immediately understood what the dream suggested. They asked whether Joseph really expected to reign over them and rule them. Because of the dream and the way he spoke about it, their hatred grew even stronger.

Joseph later had another dream. This time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. When he told his father and brothers, his father rebuked him. Was Joseph saying that his father, his mother, and all his brothers would bow before him?

His brothers were jealous, but his father kept the matter in mind.

Some time later, Joseph’s brothers took their father’s flocks to graze near Shechem. Israel sent Joseph from the valley of Hebron to see whether his brothers and the flocks were well and to bring back a report.

Joseph reached Shechem but could not find them. A man found him wandering in the fields and asked what he was looking for. When Joseph explained that he was searching for his brothers, the man told him that they had moved on toward Dothan. Joseph followed and found them there.

His brothers saw him while he was still far away. Before he reached them, they began plotting to kill him.

“Here comes that dreamer.”

They planned to kill Joseph, throw him into a pit, and claim that a wild animal had devoured him. Then, they said, they would see what became of his dreams.

Reuben heard the plan and intervened. He urged his brothers not to take Joseph’s life or shed his blood. Instead, they could throw him into a pit in the wilderness. Reuben intended to return later, rescue Joseph, and bring him safely home to his father.

When Joseph arrived, his brothers seized him and stripped off the special robe their father had given him. Then they threw him into an empty pit. There was no water in it.

Leaving Joseph there, the brothers sat down to eat. As they ate, they saw an Ishmaelite caravan approaching from Gilead. The camels were loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh to be carried into Egypt.

Judah proposed a different course. Killing their brother and concealing his blood would gain them nothing, he argued. They could sell him to the traders instead. Joseph was, after all, their own brother and their own flesh. The proposal was accepted.

As Midianite merchants passed by, Joseph was pulled from the pit and sold to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. The traders carried him toward Egypt.

When Reuben returned to the pit, Joseph was gone. He tore his clothes in grief and distress. Returning to his brothers, he cried out that the boy was gone and asked what he could do now.

The brothers then prepared a deception. They killed a young goat, dipped Joseph’s robe in its blood, and sent the robe to their father. Rather than explaining what had happened, they asked Jacob to examine it and decide whether it belonged to his son.

Jacob recognized the robe. He concluded that a wild animal had devoured Joseph and torn him to pieces. Believing his son was dead, Jacob tore his own clothes, put on sackcloth, and mourned for many days.

All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said he would continue mourning until he went down to the grave to join his son. Joseph’s father wept for him.

While Jacob mourned in Canaan, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, and captain of the guard.

What We Learned

• Jacob’s visible favoritism intensified the division within his family, although it did not excuse the brothers’ cruelty toward Joseph.
• Resentment grew into increasingly destructive choices: hostile speech became a murder plot, the sale of a brother, and deception toward a grieving father.
• Reuben intended to rescue Joseph, while Judah prevented his murder but proposed selling him. Limiting one evil is not the same as fully protecting someone from harm.
• The brothers tried to defeat Joseph’s dreams by removing him, but the chapter ends without resolving those dreams or determining his future.
• Their deception spread suffering beyond Joseph. Jacob and the entire household were drawn into grief because the brothers refused to tell the truth.