Dinah, and Joseph Sold into Egypt

So Israel, keeping away from his brother’s home, sent his company ahead to Salem, a town of the Shechemites, and pitched his tent there on a piece of ground he had bought. Hamor, a Horite prince, ruled that town. His son Shechem violated Dinah, Jacob’s daughter by Leah. When Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, found this out, they killed every male in the town by a trick, and so took terrible revenge for the wrong done to their sister. The sons of Jacob plundered the town and carried off all the spoil. Jacob is said to have been greatly displeased with these doings. Soon afterward, at God’s direction, he went to Bethel and built an altar to God there. Then he pitched his tent in part of the territory belonging to the tower of Gader. Rachel died in childbirth, and the boy she bore was called Benjamin. Isaac died at the age of a hundred and eighty. [a]

Esau, meanwhile, was very wealthy, and had taken wives from the nation of the Canaanites. I do not think that in a work as short as this one I am called on to list his descendants; anyone curious about them can turn to the original. After his father’s death, Jacob stayed on in the place where Isaac had lived. His other sons would at times go away from him with the flocks to find pasture, but Joseph and little Benjamin stayed at home.

Joseph was much loved by his father, and for that reason his brothers hated him. Their dislike had a further cause: his frequent dreams seemed to show that he would be greater than all of them. So when his father sent him to look over the flocks and visit his brothers, it seemed to them a fitting chance to do him harm. As soon as they saw their brother, they plotted to kill him. But Reuben, whose mind shuddered at the thought of such a crime, opposed their plan, and Joseph was let down into a pit. Afterward, persuaded by Judah, they turned to milder measures and sold him to merchants on their way to Egypt. And these handed him over to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s governors.