Joseph Sold by His Brothers

Joseph, seventeen years old, is Jacob’s favorite son, and Jacob makes him a coat of many colors. His brothers hate him, all the more because he tells them his dreams: their sheaves bow down to his, and then the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bow down to him. One day Jacob sends him to see how his brothers are doing as they pasture the flock. He finds them at Dothan. “Behold, this dreamer cometh,” they say, and they plot to kill him. Reuben talks them out of it: they strip off his coat and throw him into an empty pit. Then, at Judah’s suggestion, they sell him for twenty pieces of silver to a caravan of merchants headed for Egypt. They dip the coat in the blood of a goat and send it to their father. Jacob, inconsolable, believes a wild beast has devoured his son. In Egypt, Joseph is sold again, to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh.