Descendants of Jacob
The Descendants of Jacob
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A Broken Family
These are the descendants of Jacob:
At seventeen, Joseph shepherded the flock with his brothers. He assisted the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, and Joseph reported bad things about them to their father.
Israel loved Joseph more than all his other sons because he was born when Jacob was old. Jacob made him an ornate tunic. When Joseph’s brothers realized their father loved him more than all of them, they hated him and couldn’t speak kindly to him.
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The story of Jacob’s descendants begins with the family already shattered by favoritism and jealousy. The rivalry between Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, and his unloved wife, Leah, continued with their sons.1 Only a few years had passed since the massacre at Shechem and the family’s renewal at Bethel.2 Benjamin was still a toddler, but at seventeen, Joseph could now assist his brothers with tending the flock.
Joseph disapproved of how Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher behaved while away from their father. So he reported this to Jacob. Whether or not their behavior warranted the bad report, the older brothers certainly viewed Joseph as a tattletale they couldn’t trust. Their resentment grew to hatred when Jacob made Joseph a special ornate tunic.3 The only other occurrence of this term in Scripture is in 2 Samuel 13:18–19, where it describes a garment worn by royalty!
The tunic clearly singled Joseph out as Jacob’s favorite. But Joseph’s brothers didn’t hate him because of the tunic itself. They hated him because they knew their father cared more about Joseph than about the rest of them put together.
Joseph’s Dreams
One night, Joseph had a dream. When he told his brothers, they hated him all the more.
“Please listen to this dream I had! We were binding together sheaves of grain out in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up! Then your sheaves also stood up, surrounded my sheaf, and bowed down to it!”
His brother responded, “So you think you’ll reign over us? You think you’ll rule us?” Then they hated him all the more because of his dreams and his words.
Then Joseph had another dream and told his brothers about it, “I had another dream! The sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me!”
But this time he told his father, as well as his brothers. His father scolded him, “What kind of dream is that? Will your mother, your brothers, and I really bow down before you?” Though his brothers were jealous of him, his father pondered the matter.
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The hatred Joseph’s brothers felt toward him deepened when he told them about two dreams he had. In the first, they tied stalks of harvested grain together into bundles called sheaves. The sheaf Joseph tied together stood up, and his brothers’ sheaves bowed down to it. In Joseph’s second dream, the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him.
People throughout the ancient Near East believed dreams contained omens and messages from the gods, and they held those who could interpret dreams in high esteem.4 Joseph’s dreams needed no interpretation. His entire family would bow down and honor him. Since Rachel had died, the moon probably refers to Leah as the family matriarch. The very idea of bowing down to their spoiled brat of a little brother infuriated Joseph’s brothers.
Although Joseph’s second dream clearly involved even his father bowing down to him, Joseph told Jacob about it. Jacob scolded his son for what sounded like extreme pride. Whether Joseph spoke out of pride or just naïveté, Scripture doesn’t say. But despite the scolding, Jacob proved his spiritual awareness by allowing for the possibility the dreams were real. Like Mary after she scolded a young Jesus, Jacob pondered the matter, wondering what it might mean.5
Conspiracy
Now his brothers took their father’s flock to find pasture near Shechem. Then Israel told Joseph, “Come. Your brothers have taken the flock near Shechem, and I’m going to send you to them.”
“Yes, I’m here,” Joseph replied.
“Please go make sure everything is well with your brothers and the flock. Then report back to me.”
So Jacob sent Joseph from the valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around the fields and asked, “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for my brothers. Please, do you know where they’ve taken the flock?”
“They’re no longer here,” the man replied. “I heard them talk about going to Dothan.” So Joseph followed after his brothers and found them near Dothan.
When they saw him coming while he was still a ways off, they conspired to kill him. “Look. Here comes the lord of dreams. Come on! Let’s kill him and throw him in a cistern. We’ll just say a wild animal ate him. Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams.”
During the dry summer months, shepherds regularly moved their flocks around to find fresh pasture. This could take them quite a distance from home. Jacob’s oldest sons took the flock to Shechem, but for some reason, Joseph didn’t go with them. Shechem seems like a risky choice after the atrocities Simeon and Levi committed there.6 Yet it’s not the Canaanites who posed a threat.
Jacob wanted to know how his sons and his flock fared, so he sent Joseph to find out and report back. Neither Jacob nor Joseph suspected the depth of the brothers’ hatred. The tension rises during Joseph’s protracted journey. His brothers had left Shechem and taken the flock further north to Dothan. It would have taken Joseph four to five days to reach them.7 But they saw him first.
With callous sarcasm, Joseph’s brothers conspired to ensure “the lord of dreams” remained a lord only in his dreams.8 They would never bow down to him if he was dead. So far from home, they could kill him without anyone ever knowing. And they intended to do just that.
Joseph Sold
But Reuben heard and saved Joseph from them. “We must not take his life! Shed no blood. Just throw him into this cistern in the wilderness, but don’t attack him.” Reuben wanted to rescue him and return him to his father.
When Joseph reached his brothers, they stripped off his ornate tunic, which he wore. They threw him in the empty cistern. There was no water in it. Then they sat down to eat.
When they looked up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels carrying aromatic gums and resins. They were traveling down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, “How does killing our brother and covering his blood benefit us? Let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites! Let’s not harm him ourselves. After all, he’s our brother, our own flesh and blood.”
His brothers agreed with him. So when the Midianite traders passed by, the brothers lifted Joseph out of the cistern and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. Then the traders took Joseph to Egypt.
When Reuben returned to the cistern, Joseph wasn’t there. So Reuben tore his clothes. Then he returned to his brothers and cried, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn to now?”
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When Reuben heard his brothers’ plan, he convinced them not to kill Joseph. Instead Reuben suggested throwing him in a cistern, a deep pit dug out to hold rainwater. This cistern had run dry, so they could leave Joseph there to die without directly killing him themselves. Reuben secretly intended to rescue Joseph. He didn’t share his brothers’ violent tendencies.6 Yet though he succeeded in saving Joseph’s life, Reuben’s plan would ultimately fail.
When Joseph arrived, his brothers grabbed him, pulled off his tunic, and threw him in the cistern. Then Reuben went off on some errand, likely looking for a chance to get to Joseph alone. But the others sat down to a meal, showing how little they cared about their brother’s suffering.
While they ate, a merchant caravan approached on its way from Gilead to Egypt.9 This gave Judah an idea. Why not sell Joseph to the traders? They could get rid of him once and for all, remain innocent of bloodshed, and even make a profit off the deal. His brothers agreed, and they made the deal. The merchants forcefully took Joseph away to Egypt.
When Reuben returned, he went straight to the cistern. But he arrived too late. Joseph was gone. Reuben tore his clothes as a sign of mourning. He returned to his brothers distraught, no longer caring if they knew he had tried to trick them. It seems Reuben and the others already mistrusted each other. Instead Judah had taken over leadership of the brothers. It was Judah’s plan that prevailed.
Mourning for Joseph
Then [Joseph’s brothers] took Joseph’s tunic, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the tunic in the blood. They sent the ornate tunic to their father. “We found this. Please look to see whether it’s your son’s tunic.”
Jacob recognized it. “It’s my son’s tunic! A wild animal has eaten him! Joseph has surely been torn apart!” Then Jacob tore his cloak and covered his loins in sackcloth. He mourned for his son a long time. All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “I’ll go down to my son in the underworld still mourning.” And his father wept for him.
Though the brothers didn’t kill Joseph, they covered up his disappearance by faking his death. They took his special tunic, dipped it in goat’s blood, and sent it to Jacob, probably in the hands of a servant. They claimed to have found the tunic, and they sent it to Jacob because it resembled Joseph’s. They wanted Jacob to think Joseph never reached them and they didn’t know he’d ever left home.
Of course, they knew full well the tunic belonged to Joseph and Jacob would recognize it. Jacob concluded a wild animal had attacked Joseph on the road, exactly what the brothers expected.10 But they didn’t expect the long years during which their father remained inconsolable. After the traditional period of mourning, Jacob’s children tried to comfort him, but he would have none of it. He vowed to continue mourning until the day he died.
Rachel was gone. Joseph was gone. Nothing remained of Jacob’s beloved wife except little Benjamin.11
Joseph in Slavery
In Egypt, the Midianites sold Joseph to Potiphar, one of the pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the palace guard.
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While Jacob mourned for Joseph, Joseph was alive and being sold as a slave in Egypt. The Midianites traders sold him to a high-ranking official, the pharaoh’s captain of the palace guard. The favored son became nothing more than a piece of property. God had given him dreams of his family bowing down to him. But now it seemed impossible he would ever even see them again.
- See Rachel.
- See Vengeance; Restoration.
- The exact nature of this tunic is debated. The traditional “coat of many colors” is based on early translations. Other guesses include that it was unusually long or had ornaments sewn into it. See Kidner, Genesis, 192; Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas, Bible Background Commentary, Genesis 37:3; Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 351.
- Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas, Bible Background Commentary, Genesis 37:5–11; see Genesis 40:5–23; 41:1–41; Daniel 2:1–48.
- Luke 2:41–51.
- See Vengeance.
- Walton, “Genesis,” 122.
- See Sarcasm
- The merchants are called both Ishmaelites and Midianites. Either both groups were working together or, as Judges 8:22–24 suggests, “Ishmaelite” became a general term for caravan traders. Hamilton, Book of Genesis: Chapters 18–50, 423.
- Genesis 37:20.
- See Jacob's Favorite.