Loved by his father and hated by his brothers, Yosef tells them his dreams.
The story
Yaakov lives in the land of Canaan, where his father had lived. Yosef is seventeen and tends the flock with his brothers. He is a youth, and he is with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. Yosef brings their father a bad report about them. The Torah does not say what it was.
וַיָּבֵא יוֹסֵף אֶת־דִּבָּתָם רָעָה אֶל־אֲבִיהֶם
Bereshit 37:2
Israel, that is Yaakov, loves Yosef more than all his sons, because he is the son of his old age, and he makes him a special coat, a ketonet passim. The brothers see that their father loves him more than all his brothers. They hate him, and cannot speak peaceably to him.
וְעָשָׂה לוֹ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים
Bereshit 37:3
Yosef has a dream and tells his brothers, and they hate him more. In it, he and his brothers bind sheaves in the field. His sheaf rises and stands upright, and their sheaves gather round and bow to it. They ask whether he will really reign and rule over them, and hate him even more for his dreams and his words.
Yosef has another dream and tells his brothers: the sun, moon and eleven stars bow to him. When he tells his father and brothers, his father rebukes him, asking whether he himself, Yosef’s mother and his brothers will really come to bow to the ground before him. His brothers are jealous of him, and his father keeps the matter in mind.
His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and could not speak to him peaceably.
Words from the verse
כִּי־אֹתוֹthat it was him
דַּבְּרוֹto speak to him
לְשָׁלֹםpeaceably, without hostility
What it teaches: Guarding your tongue
Guarding against words that hurt a person, even when said behind their back.
Speech runs through this story: the bad report Yosef brings his father about his brothers, brothers who cannot speak peaceably to him and hatred that grows because of his words too. Guarding your tongue means taking care that your words, even about someone who is not there, do not add to hatred.
A question to sit with
Is there someone I find it easy to talk about, and hard to talk to?
Questions about the story
To whom did Yosef bring the bad report about his brothers?
To the brothers themselves
To their father
To his father’s wives
Answer
b. To their father
The Torah says Yosef brought the bad report to their father. The brothers and the father’s wives appear in the same verse, but the report went to the father.
According to the Torah, what did the brothers hate Yosef even more for?
The coat his father made him
Being the son of his father’s old age
His dreams and his words
Answer
c. His dreams and his words
After the first dream, the Torah says the brothers hated Yosef even more, for his dreams and for his words.
The lesson
Words, too, can deepen hatred between brothers.
For this week
This week, when you have a complaint about someone close, try saying it to them directly instead of talking about them to others.
From the sources
Rashi finds praise for the brothers in the very words said against them: “from their discredit we learn their praise.” In Rashi’s reading, the brothers could not speak peaceably to Yosef, but neither did they pretend: they did not speak “one thing with the mouth and another in the heart.”
The verses are from Miqra according to the Masorah (Wikisource, CC BY-SA 4.0), via Sefaria, without the cantillation marks. On this site the four-letter Name is written ה׳.
