[Gen. 37]
Israel's (né Jacob) youngest son Joseph is his favorite among twelve sons. Although Joseph is a bit of a pill. Out tending the flocks with some of his brothers, Joseph runs home to daddy with an "ill report" of their behavior; in another incident, he tells his brothers with what seems like mock innocence about a dream that suggests he'll eventually rule over them all.
(The dream's symbolism is decidedly unpoetic: the brothers have collected sheaves of wheat in the field. Joseph's sheaf rises up and stands, while the other sheaves gather around it and bow. --Come on, now: walking sheaves of wheat? Sounds like an animation exercise Walt Disney would have assigned his art staff in 1934.)
Joseph shares another dream with his family: this time, the dream is of the sun and moon and eleven stars bowing down before him. Joseph manages to piss off even his dad with this one. But I just want to know (a) what the sun is doing in the same sky with stars and the moon; and (b) what it means to see circular objects "bowing" from optical infinity.
Who has dreams like this, anyway? My dreams are always about being in high school again, but this time high school is being held at Burning Man, except Burning Man is taking place in the middle of the Tenderloin district; and my mom isn't dead anymore and she keeps popping in like everything's normal to ask if I'm ready for my Algebra test at the end of the week; only the Algebra test never comes because the dream narrative keeps twisting, garden-path-style, and some girl I have a crush on leads me into an underground complex where it seems increasingly clear that sinister people are following me.
I made all of that up, of course, but you must know what I mean. Dreams consist exclusively of crap that makes no sense and which goes rambling all over the place. But not for Joseph: he receives neat, static symbolism in his sleep about how he's going to rule over everybody. So be it.
Well, Joseph's brothers have ranged far afield tending the family flocks, traveling from Hebron back down to Shechem (where, the Bible seems to have forgotten, several cities would like to seek revenge for a certain massacre the Israel brothers recently perpetrated). Father Israel says to Joseph, go down and check on your brothers, then come tell me all's well.
A few days' travel later, as Joseph approaches his brothers, they say, Why look! It's our youngest brother Joseph coming! Let's throw him into a pit and leave him to die!
Which they do, over the lone protests of brother Reuben. Maybe Reuben feels guilty for sleeping with his father's concubine way back when, and wants to be a responsible family member now? Who knows.
(And what's with this pit? Well, I read that there were lots of them around, used to collect rainwater.)
Now, once Joseph is down in the pit his brothers start to have second thoughts about the whole thing. They realize that what they really should do is sell him into slavery and make some bank out of the deal. Lucky break for them: there are some Ishmaelites (Midianites, to be exact) passing by in the distance bearing goods down into Egypt. So they cash in their brother to the Midianites for 20 sheckels, then tear up the long-sleeved coat Joseph had gotten from his father, and splash it with goat blood to convince old-man-Israel that his youngest son was torn to death by wild animals.
There's no word in the Bible about Joseph's coat being particularly vivid. So is it the goat blood that makes his dreamcoat technicolor?
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