- JACOB'S
favorite son was Joseph. To show his love for Joseph, Jacob gave him a
coat of many colors. This made the other brothers very jealous of Joseph.
When Joseph was sixteen years old, he had a dream. He told his brothers
that he had dreamed that they were harvesting in the field, and that all
their sheaves of wheat came and bowed down to his sheaf.
His brothers said, "Shall you be ruler over us?" And they hated him
still more.
Joseph had another dream in which he saw the sun, the moon, and eleven
stars bow down before him and honor him.
One day as the brothers were pasturing their father's sheep, they saw
Joseph coming across the field. "Here comes the dreamer," they said to one
another. "Let us kill him, and see what becomes of his dreams!"
- Out of jealousy they
planned to kill him. But Reuben, the oldest, wishing to save Joseph's life,
said, "Let us not kill him, but throw him into a pit." So they took off
his coat of many colors and threw him into a pit.
Judah, one of the brothers, happened to see a caravan passing by on the
way to Egypt; and he said, "What good will it do us to kill our brother?
Let us sell him to these merchants instead! "
The others agreed. So they lifted Joseph up out of the pit and sold him
to the merchants for twenty pieces of silver. The merchants took Joseph to
Egypt.
Then the brothers killed a young goat. They dipped Joseph's coat in the
blood and took it to their: father. "See what we have found," they said.
"Is this Joseph's coat?"
"It is my son's coat! Some wild beast has torn him to pieces," cried
the father. And weeping and mourning for his son, he refused to be
consoled.
Joseph sold by his brothers is like Jesus Christ who was sold by Judas,
one of His apostles, for thirty pieces of silver.
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