Abraham’s Family · c. 1898 BC
Chapter 12
Joseph’s Dreams
Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a tunic of many colors.
For parents
In this chapter Joseph’s brothers plan to kill him and throw him into a pit, and he is sold as a slave (Genesis 37:18–28). The second half (Genesis 38) tells how the Lord put Judah’s sons Er and Onan to death, Onan for refusing to give his brother’s widow, Tamar, a child. Later Tamar sat by the road with her face veiled. Her father-in-law, Judah, thought she was a prostitute, and she became pregnant by him. He ordered her burned before he learned the truth. It is told softly and without detail. Parents may want to read it first, or read it together.
lived in the land of , the land where his father had traveled. This is the story of Jacob’s family. was seventeen years old, and he was taking care of the flocks with his brothers, the sons of his father’s wives and . Joseph brought their father a bad report about them.
Joseph’s father, , loved him more than all his other children, because Joseph was born when Israel was already old. He made Joseph a coat of many colors. His brothers could see that their father loved Joseph more than all of them, and they hated him. They couldn’t say a friendly word to him.
Once Joseph had a dream. He told it to his brothers, and they hated him all the more. “Please listen to the dream I had,” he said to them. “We were out in the field, tying up grain into bundles. Then my bundle rose and stood up tall, and your bundles came all around it and bowed down to mine.”
His brothers said to him, “Are you really going to be king over us? Are you really going to rule over us?” His dreams and the things he said made them hate him even more.
Then Joseph had a second dream, and he told his brothers about that one too. “Look,” he said, “I’ve had one more dream. The sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.”
When he told it to his father as well as his brothers, his father scolded him. “What kind of dream is this?” he said. “Will your mother and I and your brothers really come and bow down to the ground in front of you?” His brothers were jealous of him. His father, though, kept thinking about what Joseph had said.
Joseph’s brothers had gone to take care of their father’s flocks near . Israel said to Joseph, “Your brothers are taking care of the flocks near Shechem, aren’t they? Come, I’m going to send you to them.”
“Here I am,” Joseph said.
“Go and check that your brothers are all right, and the flocks too,” his father said. “Then come back and tell me.” So Israel sent him off from the valley of , and Joseph went to Shechem.
A man found him wandering in the field. “What are you looking for?” the man asked.
“I’m trying to find my brothers,” Joseph said. “Please, do you know where they’re keeping the flocks?”
The man said, “They’ve gone from here. I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to .’” Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan.
They spotted him a long way off. Before he got to them, they made a plan to kill him. “Look, here comes that dreamer!” they said to one another. “Come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these pits. We’ll say a wild animal ate him. Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!”
But when heard this, he stepped in to save Joseph’s life. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. “Don’t kill him. Throw him into this pit out here in the wilderness. Just don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this so that he could rescue Joseph from them and take him back to their father.
So when Joseph got to his brothers, they pulled off his coat, the coat of many colors he had on. Then they took hold of him and threw him into the pit. The pit was a hole dug in the ground to hold rainwater, but this one was empty. There was no water in it.
Then they sat down to eat. Looking up, they saw a caravan, a long line of traders and camels, coming from . They were on their way down to . Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, sweet-smelling tree gums used for medicine and perfume.
said to his brothers, “What do we get out of it if we kill our brother and keep it a secret? Let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites instead, and keep our hands off him. He’s our brother, after all, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers listened to him.
Some traders came by, and they pulled Joseph up out of the pit. They sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. Then the traders brought him to Egypt.
When Reuben came back to the pit and saw that Joseph wasn’t there, he tore his clothes in grief. He went back to his brothers. “The boy is gone!” he told them. “What about me? Where can I go now?”
Then they killed a young goat and dipped Joseph’s coat in its blood. They took the coat of many colors to their father and said, “We found this. Look at it and see whether it’s your son’s coat or not.”
He recognized it. “It’s my son’s coat!” he said. “A wild animal has eaten him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces!”
Jacob tore his clothes and put on sackcloth, the rough cloth people wore when they mourned. He grieved for his son for a long time. All his sons and all his daughters came to comfort him, but he would not be comforted. “No,” he said. “I will be mourning for my son until I go down to him in .” And his father wept for him.
In Egypt, meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph to . He was one of ’s officials, the captain of the guard.
Around that time Judah left his brothers. He went down to visit Hirah, a man from the town of . There Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He took her as his wife and slept with her.
She became pregnant and had a son, and Judah named him Er. She became pregnant again and had another son, and she named him Onan. Then she had a third son and named him . Judah was at Chezib when she had him.
Judah found a wife for Er, his oldest son. Her name was . But Er was wicked in the ’s sight, so the Lord put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s widow and do your duty as her . Give your brother a child who will count as his.”
But Onan knew that the child would not count as his. So whenever he slept with his brother’s widow, he made sure she would not become pregnant, so that he would not give his brother a child. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord put him to death too.
Then Judah told Tamar, his daughter-in-law, “Stay a widow and live in your father’s house until my son Shelah is grown up.” He said this because he thought, “Shelah might die too, the way his brothers did.” So Tamar went and lived in her father’s house.
A long time later Judah’s wife, Shua’s daughter, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he went up to , where his sheep were being sheared. His friend Hirah from Adullam went with him. Someone told Tamar, “Your father-in-law is on his way up to Timnah to shear his sheep.”
So she took off her widow’s clothes. She covered herself with a veil, wrapped herself up, and sat down by the gate of Enaim, on the road to Timnah. She did this because she saw that Shelah was grown up, but she still had not become his wife.
Judah saw her and thought she was a , because she had covered her face. He went to her by the road and said, “Please, let me sleep with you.” He didn’t know she was his daughter-in-law.
“What will you give me if you sleep with me?” she asked.
“I’ll send you a young goat from the flock,” he said.
“Will you give me a pledge, something I can keep until you send it?” she asked.
“What pledge should I give you?” he said.
“Your and your cord, and the staff you’re holding,” she said. He handed them over and slept with her. She became pregnant with his child.
Then she got up and went away. She took the veil off and dressed in her widow’s clothes again.
Judah sent the young goat with his friend Hirah to get back the pledge from the woman, but Hirah couldn’t find her. So he asked the men there, “Where is the prostitute who was by the road at Enaim?”
“There has been no prostitute here,” they said.
So Hirah went back to Judah and said, “I couldn’t find her. And the men who live there said, ‘There has been no prostitute here.’”
Judah said, “Let her keep the things, or we will be laughed at. After all, I did send her this young goat, and you couldn’t find her.”
About three months later, word reached Judah: “Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has behaved like a prostitute. What’s more, she’s going to have a baby because of it.”
Judah said, “Bring her out and burn her!”
When they brought her out, she sent her father-in-law a message: “The man who owns these things is the father of my baby.” She also said, “Please look closely. Whose seal and cord and staff are these?”
Judah saw that they were his and owned up to it. “She is more in the right than I am,” he said, “because I didn’t give her to my son Shelah.” He never slept with her again.
When it was time for her babies to be born, it turned out there were twins inside her. During the birth, one of them put out a hand. The midwife, the woman helping her give birth, took the hand and tied a scarlet thread on it, saying, “This one came out first.”
But the baby pulled his hand back in, and his brother came out first. “Why did you break out like that?” she said. So the baby who broke out was named , which means “breaking out”. After him came his brother, the one with the scarlet thread on his hand, and he was named Zerah, which means “scarlet” or “brightness”.