Genesis 37: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jacob lives in Canaan, and he loves his son Joseph more than his other sons and makes him a coat of many colors, and his brothers see that their father loves him more than them. Joseph tells his brothers and his father two dreams in which they bow to him, and his brothers hate and envy him. When Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers, they plot against him, strip off his coat, throw him into a pit, and sell him for twenty pieces of silver; he is taken to Egypt and sold to Potiphar. They dip the coat in goat's blood and send it to their father, who says a wild animal has eaten Joseph and mourns for him.

Claim by Claim

1. 37:1
   • Jacob dwelt in the land where his father had lived as a sojourner.
   • That land was the land of Canaan.
2. 37:2
   • What follows is the account of Jacob's family line.
   • Joseph was seventeen years old.
   • Joseph was shepherding the flock together with his brothers.
   • Joseph was a young man attending the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah.
   • Bilhah and Zilpah were his father's wives.
   • Joseph brought a bad report about his brothers to their father.
3. 37:3
   • Israel loved Joseph more than all his other sons.
   • The reason was that Joseph was a son of his old age.
   • Israel made Joseph a tunic; the term describing it is uncertain, meaning either an ornamented or long, sleeved garment or one of many colors.
4. 37:4
   • Joseph's brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers.
   • The brothers hated Joseph.
   • The brothers were unable to speak peaceably to him.
5. 37:5
   • Joseph dreamed a dream.
   • Joseph told the dream to his brothers.
   • His brothers hated him still more.
6. 37:6
   • Joseph said to his brothers that they should listen to this dream he had dreamed.
7. 37:7
   • Joseph said they were binding sheaves in the middle of the field.
   • Joseph said his sheaf rose up.
   • Joseph said his sheaf also stood upright.
   • Joseph said his brothers' sheaves gathered around.
   • Joseph said his brothers' sheaves bowed down to his sheaf.
8. 37:8
   • His brothers asked him whether he would indeed reign over them.
   • His brothers asked whether he would indeed rule over them.
   • The brothers hated him still more because of his dreams.
   • The brothers hated him still more because of his words.
9. 37:9
   • Joseph dreamed yet another dream.
   • Joseph recounted this dream to his brothers.
   • Joseph said he had dreamed another dream.
   • Joseph said the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to him.
10. 37:10
    • Joseph recounted the dream to his father and to his brothers.
    • His father rebuked him.
    • His father asked what this dream was that he had dreamed.
    • His father asked whether he, Joseph's mother, and Joseph's brothers would indeed come to bow down to the ground before Joseph.
11. 37:11
    • Joseph's brothers were jealous of him.
    • His father kept the matter in mind.
12. 37:12
    • Joseph's brothers went to pasture their father's flock at Shechem.
13. 37:13
    • Israel said to Joseph that his brothers were pasturing the flock at Shechem.
    • Israel told Joseph to come, and said he would send him to them.
    • Joseph answered his father, 'Here I am.'
14. 37:14
    • Israel told Joseph to go and see whether it was well with his brothers.
    • Israel told Joseph to see whether it was well with the flock.
    • Israel told Joseph to bring word back to him.
    • Israel sent Joseph out from the valley of Hebron.
    • Joseph came to Shechem.
15. 37:15
    • A man found Joseph.
    • Joseph was wandering in the field.
    • The man asked Joseph what he was seeking.
16. 37:16
    • Joseph said he was seeking his brothers.
    • Joseph asked the man to tell him where his brothers were pasturing the flock.
17. 37:17
    • The man said they had moved on from that place.
    • The man said he had heard them say, 'Let us go to Dothan.'
    • Joseph went after his brothers.
    • Joseph found them at Dothan.
18. 37:18
    • The brothers saw Joseph from a distance.
    • This was before Joseph came near to them.
    • The brothers plotted against him to put him to death.
19. 37:19
    • The brothers said to one another that this master of dreams was coming.
20. 37:20
    • The brothers said, come now, let us kill him.
    • The brothers said, let us throw him into one of the pits.
    • The brothers said they would say that an evil beast had devoured him.
    • The brothers said they would see what would become of his dreams.
21. 37:21
    • Reuben heard this.
    • Reuben rescued Joseph out of their hand.
    • Reuben said they should not strike him dead.
22. 37:22
    • Reuben told them not to shed blood.
    • Reuben told them to throw Joseph into that pit in the wilderness.
    • Reuben told them not to lay a hand on him.
    • Reuben said this in order to rescue Joseph from their hand.
    • Reuben intended to return Joseph to his father.
23. 37:23
    • Joseph came to his brothers.
    • The brothers stripped Joseph of his tunic.
    • The tunic was the ornamented one he was wearing.
24. 37:24
    • The brothers took Joseph.
    • The brothers threw him into the pit.
    • The pit was empty.
    • There was no water in the pit.
25. 37:25
    • The brothers sat down to eat bread.
    • They lifted their eyes and looked.
    • They saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.
    • The camels of the caravan were carrying gum, balm, and ladanum.
    • The caravan was going to bring these goods down to Egypt.
26. 37:26
    • Judah said to his brothers that there was no profit in killing their brother.
    • Judah spoke of covering up his blood.
27. 37:27
    • Judah said, come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites.
    • Judah said their hand should not be upon him.
    • Judah said Joseph was their brother and their own flesh.
    • His brothers listened to him.
28. 37:28
    • Midianite trading men passed by.
    • They drew Joseph up out of the pit; the text does not say whether the brothers or the Midianites did this.
    • Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver.
    • They brought Joseph to Egypt.
29. 37:29
    • Reuben returned to the pit.
    • Joseph was not in the pit.
    • Reuben tore his garments.
30. 37:30
    • Reuben returned to his brothers.
    • Reuben said the boy is gone.
    • Reuben asked where he himself could go.
31. 37:31
    • The brothers took Joseph's tunic.
    • The brothers slaughtered a male goat.
    • The brothers dipped the tunic in the blood.
32. 37:32
    • The brothers sent the ornamented tunic.
    • They brought it to their father.
    • They said, this we have found.
    • They told him to examine whether it was his son's tunic or not.
33. 37:33
    • Jacob recognized the tunic.
    • Jacob said it was his son's tunic.
    • Jacob said an evil beast had devoured him.
    • Jacob said Joseph had surely been torn to pieces.
34. 37:34
    • Jacob tore his garments.
    • Jacob put sackcloth on his loins.
    • Jacob mourned for his son many days.
35. 37:35
    • All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him.
    • Jacob refused to be comforted.
    • Jacob said he would go down mourning to his son in Sheol, the place of the dead.
    • His father wept for him.
36. 37:36
    • The Midianites sold Joseph into Egypt.
    • They sold him to Potiphar.
    • Potiphar was an official of Pharaoh.
    • Potiphar was chief of the guard.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

37:1

Canaan was the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, roughly modern Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. Jacob's father Isaac and grandfather Abraham had lived there as resident foreigners, people allowed to live and graze flocks in a country but holding no ancestral land rights in it.

37:2

"This is the family history of..." translates a formula that runs through Genesis (the King James has "these are the generations of"). It introduces a section, and here it heads the long account of Jacob's sons rather than a list of names. Bilhah and Zilpah were the servants of Jacob's wives Rachel and Leah, given to Jacob to bear children on their mistresses' behalf; their sons were Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher. Calling them "his father's wives" reflects the Hebrew, which uses one word for wife and secondary wife.

37:3

Israel is Jacob, he was given the second name in Genesis 32, and the narrative uses the two names interchangeably from here on. The Hebrew phrase behind "coat of many colors" is uncertain: it may mean a garment of colored cloth, or a long robe reaching to the wrists and ankles. Either way it was a luxury item, unsuited to fieldwork, and marked its wearer as favored rather than working.

37:5

Long ago, people believed dreams could show what would happen later. So a dream like this was big news in a family.

37:7

Sheaves are bundles of cut stalks of grain, stood on end in the field to dry after harvest. Bowing low to the ground was the gesture owed to a king or a superior, so the picture is one of the brothers submitting to Joseph as a ruler.

37:8

In this world dreams were widely believed to be genuine information about the future, not random images from the sleeper's own mind. The brothers are not mocking a daydream; they are treating the dream as a prediction and rejecting it.

37:9

Eleven stars matches Joseph's eleven brothers (ten older, plus Benjamin) with the sun and moon standing for his father and mother.

37:10

Rachel, Joseph's mother, has already died in Genesis 35, which is part of why Jacob treats the dream as absurd.

37:11

"His father observed the saying" does not mean Jacob obeyed it. To observe here is to watch and keep in mind, so Jacob files the dream away and keeps turning it over.

37:12

Shechem was a town in the central hill country, some fifty miles north of where Jacob was living. The brothers had taken the flocks a considerable distance to find pasture.

37:13

"Here am I" is a standard Hebrew way of answering a summons. It means "I am ready and listening," not "here is where I am standing."

37:14

Hebron lies in the southern hill country of Canaan, about twenty miles south of Jerusalem. Joseph's journey to Shechem was a walk of several days.

37:17

Dothan was about fifteen miles north of Shechem, on the caravan route that ran down toward Egypt.

37:19

The Hebrew is a mocking title, literally something like "the master of dreams" or "that dream expert."

37:20

A "pit" here is a cistern: a shaft dug or cut into rock to collect rainwater, often narrow at the top and wider below, so that anyone inside cannot climb out unaided.

37:21

Reuben was the eldest, so under the customs of the household he was the one their father would hold responsible for whatever happened to the group. That is part of what is at stake for him personally.

37:22

"Do not spill his blood" was a way of saying, "Do not kill him."

37:25

Ishmaelites were descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar, and the name was used broadly for nomadic traders of the desert margins. Gilead was the hill country east of the Jordan River, known for its aromatic resins. Balm and myrrh are gums bled from small trees and dried; with other spices they were carried to Egypt for use in perfume, medicine and the preparation of bodies for burial.

37:26

"Cover up his blood" is an idiom for concealing a killing. In Hebrew thought spilled blood that was not covered over cried out for justice against the killer.

37:27

"Our own flesh" means someone from your own family.

37:28

The text names both Midianites and Ishmaelites, and the Hebrew leaves it open whether these are two names for the same caravan or two groups involved in the sale, the ambiguity is in the original and translators have not resolved it. Twenty pieces of silver means twenty shekels weighed out, since coined money did not yet exist; this was the standard price for a male slave of Joseph's age.

37:29

Tearing one's clothes was the recognized public sign of grief, shock or horror, a visible announcement of disaster rather than a loss of self-control.

37:30

"The child is not" is a blunt Hebrew way of saying he is gone, with the same finality as saying he no longer exists. Reuben's second question is about himself: as the eldest he will have to face their father.

37:31

Blood on the robe is manufactured evidence. They do not lie outright to Jacob; they hand him the object and let him reach the conclusion himself, which is harder to catch them in later.

37:34

Sackcloth was a coarse, dark cloth woven from goat hair, worn next to the skin around the waist as the standard dress of mourning.

37:35

"All his daughters" is unexpected, since only one daughter, Dinah, is named in Genesis; the phrase may include daughters-in-law, or simply be a sweeping expression for the whole household. The word behind "the grave" is Sheol, the shadowy underworld where the Hebrews pictured all the dead as going, good and bad alike. Jacob means he will grieve until he dies.

37:36

Egypt was ruled by the Pharaoh, its king; the title is used here like a name. "Official" translates a word that elsewhere can mean a court eunuch but is also used generally for a royal officer. "Captain of the guard" means the head of Pharaoh's bodyguard, a position that also carried charge of the royal prison and of executions.