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Joseph's Dream GENESIS 37
Years later Jacob and his family moved back to Canaan, the land where Jacob’s father had stayed. Jacob had twelve sons, named Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Joseph, and Benjamin. Joseph was very special to Jacob.
Jacob gave Joseph a beautiful robe. His older brothers were jealous of the
special attention their father gave to Joseph. "Listen," Joseph said to his brothers one day, "I had a very strange dream. We were binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, while all of yours gathered around me and bowed to me." He had another dream in which the sun and the moon and eleven starts bowed to him. "Who do you think you are?" his brothers asked him. "Do you think that you are better than all of us? Do you think that we will bow down to you?" Joseph’s dreams made his brothers even more jealous of him, but his father thought carefully about his sons dreams. One day Jacob sent Joseph to check on his brothers in the field. When they saw Joseph coming, they planned to kill him. Reuben, the oldest said, "Do not kill him. Just throw him in this well and leave him." Reuben planned to come back later and rescue Joseph. When Joseph came, they tore off his beautiful robe and threw him in the well. Some merchants came by and the brothers sold Joseph to them as a slave. When Reuben went to pull Joseph out of the well, he was gone. He was on his way to a land called Egypt, where merchants sold him to Potiphar, captain of the guard for the Pharaoh of Egypt. The rest of his brothers dipped Joseph’s beautiful robe in goat’s blood and took it back to their father. Jacob believed that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. Jacob mourned greatly for his son for many weeks.
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