Hey, welcome back.
Thanks for being with us on this Tuesday
as we continue through Genesis,
moving into kind of a new era of the story,
the latter part.
This is really kind of the late part of Genesis
that we begin here.
And that shifts the focus primarily to Joseph,
though as we’ve seen throughout the book,
there are some side nine stories.
We do have some moments where we leave that narrative
and go do something else briefly.
But for the most part,
we’re going to center on Joseph
and what happens to him.
And we picked that story up today
in the first verse of chapter 37.
Remember that Joseph is now the second youngest
of the brothers.
He is one of the two favored brothers
as he was born to Jacob’s favorite wife
to Rachel.
And we see again the kind of role
that favoritism plays in the story.
We saw a little of this in the past
with Isaac and Esau,
Isaac, Jacob and Esau.
Here we kind of run into those themes again.
So let me just read for a little bit
and we’ll talk it through.
Jacob settled in the land where his father lived
as an alien, the land of Canaan.
This is the story of the family of Jacob.
Joseph, being 17 years old,
was shepherding the flock with his brothers.
He was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpha, his father’s wife.
And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.
Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any of his children
because he was the son of his old age
and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.
But when his brothers saw that their father loved him
more than the others,
they hated him
and they could not speak peaceably to him.
Now, the Bible doesn’t share our cultural things
about kind of a spoiled brat,
but as you read this,
you might get a little bit of that vibe.
Here’s a young boy,
17 in this case,
so not a child,
but he rats on his brothers.
He tells the father,
I don’t think they did a good job in the field.
He brought a bad report of them.
It doesn’t say whether they deserved it or not,
but sort of implied that maybe he’s spying on them, keeping tabs.
He sort of tells on them to use,
again, that childhood language.
And then we get told right out,
Israel loved Joseph more than the others
because he was the son of his old age
and he gave him a gift that identified him.
And Michael,
the gift,
historically,
you know this gift as the multicolored robe, the rainbow robe,
the coat of many colors.
The interesting part is that it is a word in Hebrew
that we’ve lost.
We do not know what it means.
It seems clear that it’s a garment
because of what happens later,
but coat of many colors is as good a guess as anything, I suppose,
a long robe with sleeves,
sure.
The truth is we don’t know
and it’s not a detail that we should worry about,
but just so you’re aware,
coat of many colors is a traditional reading,
but it’s no more accurate than anyone else’s guess.
Yeah, I’m not gonna belabor the point here,
but let’s just quickly survey what we know.
He’s telling on his family members,
Joseph is.
We know that the text explicitly tells us outright
that his father is noticeably showing
that he loves Joseph more than his brothers
and we know that this has soured the relationship so deeply
that they can’t even speak peaceably to him.
They can’t even muster words
that are amicable.
And the reality is that the text,
as Genesis tends to do,
it doesn’t spend a whole lot of time telling us
Joseph’s backstory, you know, it doesn’t care about the 16 years before this.
We just get kicking off the bat right away
with the firm knowledge.
It’s clear that everyone in the family that he’s preferred,
he has this gift that demonstrates that fact visibly
in front of all of them.
And of course, we know that later,
it’s going to be an important sign
of what the brothers do to him.
But the reality here,
friends, is the text is telling us what we need to know
about Joseph to start the story of Joseph.
And these are the details that it chooses to tell us.
Yeah, it’s a lot to cover.
In four verses, we have loved more than the others,
hated by the others,
can’t speak to him,
favored with some sort of gift,
the possibility of
insulting his brothers by
essentially telling his father bad things about them.
And so none of this sets up for a good family relationship.
And
we can easily read this and sort of think,
oh, this is sibling stuff.
I don’t think I’m giving away any of the story here.
We’ll see tomorrow.
They try to kill him.
I mean, when the Bible says they hated him,
that’s a literal word in this case.
That isn’t how we might say to our own sibling,
I hate you sometimes.
You know,
there is deep,
deep division and conflict here and it
spills over into their relationships.
And so that’s important.
As we move to the next part of the story,
we introduce a very powerful theme in Joseph’s story
and the rest of the book of Genesis
and that is the idea of dreaming.
I’ll read it and then we’ll talk about it.
Once Joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers,
they hated him even more.
He said to them,
listen to what I dreamed.
There we were binding sheaves in the field
and suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright
and your sheaves gathered around it
and bowed down to my sheaf.
And his brother said,
are you indeed to reign over us?
Are you indeed to have dominion over us?
So they hated him even more
because of the dreams and his words.
So,
Jacob doesn’t, or I’m sorry, Joseph doesn’t do himself any favors here.
He goes to his brothers,
he said, hey, I had this great dream,
you should hear it.
Your stuff all bowed down to me.
You bowed down to me.
Essentially, that’s easily how the dream is interpreted.
That’s how his brothers interpreted it.
You know, even if you dreamt that,
it probably doesn’t speak well of his wisdom
as the youngest brother.
I mean, I had a younger brother
and when younger brothers say things like that,
they get punched.
You know, that invites a beating on yourself.
In this case, much worse than that.
But again,
the Bible doesn’t come out and say it,
but the flavor here is maybe a little bit of arrogance,
maybe a little bit of spoiledness,
possibly also just some being naive,
but he’s not helping himself in these relationships.
Yeah, so what we had with Jacob and his brother
was this threat, this fear that Esau would come after him
and would cause physical harm.
Here in the next generation in Israel’s own family,
as we now have him called,
we see that the threat of violence
is actually, as this story progresses,
going to be very clearly not just a threat,
but the thing that was once a fear of what might happen
is now very much present and alive
within the family itself.
There’s a kind of unhingedness to this story,
which is essential to understand at the beginning.
This Clint is an example,
Park Salons, I think of one of those children’s stories
that we have in like every children’s Bible.
You’ve got a story with Joseph
and he’s wearing this very beautiful coat.
What kids really never understand
is when you get to the latter part of this story
and Joseph is doing these really strange things to his brothers.
When the tables flip,
and maybe I’m giving away too much,
I don’t think I am.
I think most of us know this story
where we know that he’s going to inherit
a lot of power over his brothers.
He’s gonna do some things that seem pretty exacting
and that’s because of this.
I mean,
very clearly there’s some tit for tat.
There’s some jealousy that is maybe even intentional.
That’s reading into the text,
but there’s maybe some ways in which this is being,
this flame is being fanned.
And the text doesn’t give us a why Joseph does it.
Maybe he is spoiled,
maybe it’s a personality thing.
Maybe he’s his father’s son
and this is sort of the next step.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree source situation.
Whatever it is,
Clint,
it is very clear
that the divisions that have been made
inside this family unit,
we saw it within the wives in some of the previous stories,
is very clearly passed to the brothers themselves.
And this is the central conflict
that drives the story forward from this point on.
Yeah, there is a wedge that is developing
between Joseph and the brothers.
We’ll see it really expressed tomorrow
in that part of the story.
And then we will circle around late in the book of Genesis
to see it at work again from the other side of the fence,
really, from Joseph’s perspective.
Here, I do want to say a word.
I want you to be on the lookout
for the role that dreams will continue to play in this story.
The Bible doesn’t go out of its way at this point
to say much about it,
but Joseph seems to have a divine gift
in that he dreams of things that will come to pass.
This was commonly understood to be a way
that God communicated in that day and age.
Sometimes we still think like that,
but it was thought that God would give prophetic dreams
to people and then bless them
with the ability to sort of interpret them.
Now, there’s no real interpretation here.
Actually, these dreams sort of interpret themselves.
And what they hold in common
is that Joseph stands in the middle
and the world, in the next case,
bows down to him,
his brothers bow down to him.
But throughout this story,
dreams are going to be a significant part
of not only what gets Joseph in trouble,
but what gets him out of trouble
and ultimately what helps him rise to prominence
and to survival in his situation.
So let me just finish out this passage, verse nine.
He had another dream,
told it to his brothers,
saying, look, I had another dream.
The sun,
the moon,
and 11 stars were bowing down to me.
Just if you’re keeping track,
he also has 11 brothers, right?
When he told this to his father and to his brothers, his father
rebuked him and said to him,
“What kind of dream is this that you’ve had?
Shall we indeed come,
I and your mother and brothers,
and bow to the ground before you?”
So his brothers were jealous of him,
but his father kept the matter in mind.
So whether this rebuke leads
to part of the next piece of the story, it’s unclear,
but it is significant
that even Jacob joins in sort of chastising him here.
Like, look,
you’re going too far.
The sun and the moon,
you are at the center now,
and everyone is bowing down to you,
not just your brothers.
And notice that he says your mother and I,
which is interesting because we saw the death
of his mother yesterday in those stories,
but that family language,
are we all going to bow down to you?
Why don’t you just,
you need to sort of keep that quiet.
Let’s nip this bowing down to you, talking to Bud.
Now,
it’s possible that this is taken by the brothers
as a sign that,
“Oh yeah, dad’s sick of this kid too.”
Dad gets it,
dad understands what we’re dealing with.
It’s not clear,
it’s never stated explicitly,
but you have to wonder.
So then verse 11,
“So his brothers were jealous of him,
and his father kept the matter in mind.” The brothers,
we will see explicitly tomorrow
what this dream passage means to the brothers
in the way that they talk about him
and in their decision-making.
So, significant part of the conflict here
in this early introduction to the story
that we’ll see played out in the next couple of days. So, Clint, I think there’s two things
to point out here quick.
Just wanna make sure that we’re all on the same page,
because as we come to these dreams,
what’s at stake here,
if you do read this story as the younger brother who’s spoiled,
you might miss some of the significance
of how grand these claims are.
So just really quickly,
I just wanna point out here, verse eight,
notice this word,
dominion, that we have there,
right?
This idea of lordship or control.
I mean, this is a substantial kind of claim.
And then here, the claim that you were pointing out,
Clint, that sort of the straw that breaks the camel’s back,
the idea of bowing down,
that you’re going to be subservient to,
and the idea that even his father would be.
Remember how in the previous stories,
right,
we have seen how Jacob,
or now Israel, usurped his brother’s role as the eldest,
and in doing so,
he inverted what we would have expected,
but still remains the one who God blesses.
Here, we have another younger sibling.
In fact,
there are far many,
there are quite a few brothers
actually ahead of him in line to receive the blessing.
So not only is this one claiming
that he’s going to have the blessing,
he’s going a step further,
and even causing this substantial question,
wait a minute, are you suggesting that even your father is going to bow down to you?
I mean, that is an inversion even beyond
what we’ve seen in the story.
So we have good reason as readers here
to actually appreciate, and maybe even side
with this family here.
Like this young man has gotten a little out of control.
His sense of grandeur has gone too far.
So while the text is not in any way going to morally
give a pass to any of the characters for their actions,
either the ones that have happened already
or the ones that will happen in the future,
there is some empathy,
I think, that is inherent in the text.
I mean, you’re not told explicitly,
“Hey, look,
they have good reason to hate him,”
but clearly there are reasons.
And note that the brothers who he sort of reports to
are the eldest and they are sons of Leah,
right?
And remember that Leah was the one
who was the first wife who Jacob clearly didn’t want.
I mean, that was explicit.
So you have not only the rivalry of the brothers,
you have the rivalry of the wives,
which passes down to this generation.
So the grandeur, the idea that Joseph is having all of
dominion over these people,
the idea that they’re all bowing down to him,
this is really not just insult and injury to the brothers.
It’s sort of putting your foot on the neck
of the same conflict that’s existed
in the relationships of the mothers,
right?
So this is a long-standing kind of feud
that he’s really pouring gas on.
And I think,
once again, the text doesn’t moralize it,
but it does make it clear that this is where
all of these strong feelings are coming from.
Yeah, so maybe just two quick things
as we bring this passage to a close.
And the first is that I think most of us,
if we are in a family where we have siblings,
there’s probably been going back and forth
through at some point about the favorite.
The young one is spoiled,
is kind of the old saw,
or maybe the older one got away with murder,
or whatever it is.
But here, that’s a real thing.
And when it’s a real thing,
it does damage to relationships.
And Joseph doesn’t diminish it.
He leans into it, whether on purpose
or just by nature of sort of having been coddled,
we’ll see tomorrow maybe an indication
that he does get treated differently.
We certainly know that he gets this gift.
And so it does damage,
and it creates a situation that is volatile.
Secondly,
just want to point out,
and I’m speculating here,
so don’t take this as fact.
But Jacob himself is affiliated,
he’s associated with dreams.
He’s had dreams.
Remember,
he dreamt when he was fleeing to Laban’s house.
He knows that God speaks in dreams.
And it’s interesting what he does.
It is possible that he hears
sun, moon, and 11 stars,
and notice how he responds.
Shall I,
your mother and brothers?
It is possible that he’s interpreting sun, moon,
and 11 stars as people in the family.
He’d be the sun,
mom would be the moon,
and the 11 stars,
of course, the 11 brothers.
So it is likely that Jacob understands
explicitly what this dream means,
and that he is sort of offended by it
as the one who would assume he’s the sun.
And it even makes it perhaps more troubling to him,
or more offensive to him.
It’s not that he can’t discern the dream.
It is possible that he discerns it very well,
and that makes it even more troubling to him.
So just a possibility there.
Because it is very interesting that he adds the mother,
and that he so
easily equates 11 stars and 11 brothers.
So just a question mark that may be in play.
Another thing to point out here,
Clint, is notice how the brothers respond here.
Verse 11, “His brothers are jealous.”
I mean, we’ve already been told that they hate him,
can’t speak peaceably to him,
but now they’re even jealous, we’re told.
But look at this,
“His father kept the matter in mind.” Now,
that is saying a lot,
and saying nothing at all,
right?
What does it mean that he kept it in mind?
Clearly,
he’s asking this pointed question,
but there’s a sense in which the text is letting onto us,
and this isn’t a thing quickly forgotten.
And not only is Israel going to remember this,
but it’s going to come back around
as the dreams keep coming in the story.
So the thing remembered by Israel
is the thing that we the readers should remember
as we move forward in the story, because of course,
as those of us
who have seen this story before,
we know that this is not just a prophecy inciting conflict,
it is also foreshadowing,
and the text is letting us in on that.
Yeah, so we will see what happens,
we’ll see what develops.
Again, tomorrow, I think a story
that you’re well acquainted with,
but there may be some things in it that are new,
certainly some things that are troubling,
some things that are heavily influential in Joseph’s story.
So hope you can be with us tomorrow.