I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 36-38 .

When I was growing up I was led to believe that when Joseph recounted his dreams he was being an arrogant, spoiled brat. That he understood the dreams the way that his brothers and his father did. The more often I read this the more convinced I am that Jospeh just found the dreams weird. He told the first one to his brothers because he was kind of excited about this strange, weird dream he had which seemed to him to be a portent of some kind. He told the second one to his father because his brothers had belittled him for the first one. Don’t get me wrong, I think the passage makes it clear that Joseph was spoiled. Part of me wishes that we knew what “bad things” joseph’s brothers did that he reported to their father, but tat is not in the story for us to form an opinion about Joseph’s character as a boy. That story is here to show us another reason why Joseph’s brothers resented him.  

At this point, Joseph’s brothers hated him.  This led them to do something they later regretted.  The oldest, Reuben, saw that this was a bad idea, but instead of talking his brothers out of it, he tricked them into doing something which he thought would allow him to save his brother.  Judah also did not want to kill his brother, but lacked the wisdom to see that they should return him to their father.  He did however have the influence over his brothers to get them to choose a different course of action.  This story is the first foreshadowing of when Jacob blesses his son and declares that Jacob, not Reuben, will be the brother who leads the family in the long run.