Joseph’s Dreams

Jacob came to a happiness that few people have ever reached. He was richer than anyone else in that country, and he was both envied and admired for the virtues of his sons. They lacked nothing: they were great-hearted, strong for working with their hands and for enduring hardship, and shrewd in understanding as well. God watched over him with such providence, and took such care for his happiness, that he brought him the greatest blessings even out of what seemed the most sorrowful circumstances, and made him and his descendants the cause of our forefathers’ departure out of Egypt. It came about in this way. Jacob’s son Joseph, born to him by Rachel, was the son his father loved above all the rest, both for the beauty of his body and for the virtues of his mind, for he surpassed the others in good sense. This affection of his father stirred up the envy and hatred of his brothers. So did the dreams he saw and told to his father and to them, which foretold his future happiness — for people tend to envy even their nearest relatives such good fortune. These were the visions Joseph saw in his sleep.

It was the middle of harvest, and his father had sent Joseph out with his brothers to gather in the crops. He saw a vision in a dream, far beyond the ordinary appearances that come to us in sleep, and when he got up he told it to his brothers so that they could judge what it meant. He said that the night before he had seen his sheaf of wheat stand still in the place where he set it, while their sheaves ran to bow down to it, as servants bow down to their masters. They saw at once that the vision foretold that he would gain power and great wealth, and that his power would be set over them. But they gave Joseph no interpretation of it, as though they had not understood the dream. Instead they prayed that no part of what they suspected it meant would come true, and they hated him all the more because of it. But God, in opposition to their envy, sent Joseph a second vision, much more wonderful than the first. It seemed to him that the sun, taking with it the moon and the rest of the stars, came down to the earth and bowed down to him. He told this vision to his father — and, suspecting no ill will from his brothers, he told it while they were there too — and asked him to interpret what it meant. Jacob was pleased with the dream. Turning the prediction over in his mind, and guessing shrewdly and wisely at its meaning, he rejoiced at the great things it signified, because it announced his son’s future happiness: by God’s blessing the time would come when Joseph would be honored and thought worthy of homage by his parents and his brothers. He guessed that the moon and the sun stood for his mother and his father — the moon as the one who gives growth and nourishment to all things, the sun as the one who gives them form and their other powers — and that the stars stood for his brothers, since there were eleven of them, as there were of the stars that receive their power from the sun and moon. [a]

That was how Jacob judged the vision, and shrewdly too. But these interpretations deeply grieved Joseph’s brothers. They came to feel toward him as though he were some stranger who was to receive the good things the dreams foretold, and not a brother with whom they would probably share them — for as they had shared the same parents, so they should share the same happiness. They resolved to kill the boy. Once they had fully settled on it, and the harvest was in, they went off to Shechem, good country for feeding cattle and for pasture. There they fed their flocks without telling their father they had moved. He grew gloomy and suspicious about them, since he did not know how his sons were, and no messenger came from the flocks who could tell him how things really stood. So, being very afraid for them, he sent Joseph out to the flocks to learn how his brothers were and bring him word of them.