Joseph’s Dreams

In context

Joseph is seventeen, and Jacob makes him a tunic of many colors (Genesis 37:2–3). His dreams of bowing sheaves and stars make his brothers hate him more. Sent to check on them, Joseph walks from the valley of Hebron to Shechem, about fifty miles north, and on to Dothan (Genesis 37:14–17). There his brothers plot to kill him and throw him into an empty pit, and he is sold to traders for twenty pieces of silver. Reuben meant to rescue him, and Judah talked the others into selling him instead of killing him (Genesis 37:18–28).

Genesis 38 turns to Judah, and to grown-up matters. The Lord puts Judah’s sons Er and Onan to death for what was evil in his sight (Genesis 38:7–10). Er’s widow Tamar, kept from marrying the youngest son, disguises herself, and Judah takes her for a prostitute. When he orders her burned for being pregnant, she sends him his own signet, cord and staff, and he says, “She is more righteous than I” (Genesis 38:14–26). Behind it is a duty later written into the law: a dead man’s brother was to give his widow a son to carry on his name (Deuteronomy 25:5–6). Tamar’s son Perez became an ancestor of King David (Ruth 4:18–22), and Matthew names Tamar in the family line of Jesus (Matthew 1:3).