Joseph is the favorite of Jacob’s twelve sons, the sons who would later become the patriarchs of God’s people. His brothers became jealous of him and grew to hate him. They hated him even more for the dreams he told. When Joseph, at the instructions of the father, went to visit his brothers in the fields, they conceived a plot to kill him. However, one of the brothers, Reuben, intervened and suggested instead that Joseph be thrown down a dry well, hoping to give him back to their father later. The other brothers agreed to Reuben’s suggestion because they did not want to have the blood of their own brother on their hands. Perhaps they remembered what happened to Cain. Eventually Joseph is either sold to Ishmaelites on their way to do business in Egypt or discovered in the well by Midianites and sold for 20 pieces of silver to traders on their way to Egypt. The father is later told that his son has died from an attack by animals and is given back, as proof, the famous multi-colored coat stained with goat’s blood. Joseph should have ended up in obscurity as a slave in Egypt but, thanks to his ability to interpret dreams, he was to win the favor of the Pharaoh and become the chief minister in Egypt and ultimately the savior of his own people from famine – a famine which Joseph had foretold. The story of Joseph prepares us for the coming of Jesus. Jesus, too, was a man of ‘dreams’, with a vision of life which was rejected by many close to him. He, too, was sold into the hands of enemies only to become the savior of his own people. Both Joseph and Jesus are, in the words of Psalm 118, the “stone rejected by the builders that became the keystone.”
-Living Space-