were all tending their flocks, some of them committed a most wicked crime. Joseph, being shocked and angry, told his father, on his return home, what he had seen. From that time forward, his brothers hated Joseph, and could not speak to him kindly. Joseph had once a remarkable dream[1] which he thus related to his brothers: “Hear my dream : I thought we were binding sheaves in the field, and my sheaf arose, as it were, and stood, and your sheaves, standing about, bowed down before my sheaf.” His brothers replied: “Shalt thou be our king? Or shall we be subject to thy dominion?” And they hated him[2] more than ever. Joseph also dreamed that the sun, the moon and eleven stars worshipped him. His father rebuked[3] him, saying: “What meaneth this dream? Shall I, and thy mother, and thy brethren, worship thee upon the earth?” But Jacob[4] thought within himself that perhaps God had destined Joseph for great things.
One day, when the sons of Jacob had gone with their flocks to Sichem[5], Jacob said to Joseph: “Go and see if all things be well with thy brethren and the cattle!” He obeyed, and went in search of them. When they saw him afar off, they said: “Behold, the dreamer cometh. Let us kill him and cast him into some old pit, and we will say some evil beast hath devoured him; and then it shall appear what his dreams avail him.” Reuben, the eldest of the brothers, hearing this, sought to deliver Joseph out of their hands, and said to them: “Do not take away his life, nor shed his blood, but cast him into this pit.”[6] This he said, because he wished to restore the boy to his father.
- ↑ Dream. This was a supernatural dream, not an ordinary one.
- ↑ They hated him . His brothers envied him, first, for the preference shown him by their father, as exemplified by the gift of the beautiful coat; secondly, they hated him for having revealed their misdeeds to Jacob; and, lastly, their hatred of him was increased by the fact that Joseph’s dreams seemed to foreshadow that he would one day rule over them.
- ↑ Rebuked. Jacob scolded him for repeating his dreams to his brothers, and tried to remove the idea from his mind that these dreams meant anything.
- ↑ Jacob. He pondered over the meaning of Joseph’s dreams. He suspected that they had been sent by God, and that God destined Joseph for something great. But he did not reveal his thoughts to Joseph, for fear of making him vainglorious.
- ↑ Sichem. Jacob, as we have seen, had property at Sichem. From Hebron to Sichem was a distance of fifty-five miles.
- ↑ Pit. A deep pit walled in, in which rain-water was collected, and which was then covered over with a stone. At the time that Reuben made his proposal, it was dry.
