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Friday, January 24, 2025

Joseph's dreams of power and ascendancy -- 37th chapter in GENESIS (Torah)

First book of the Pentateuch

Genesis 37: 1 - 10 narrative

of Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel

CEB Study Bible (Common English

translation, published 2013)

Jacob lived in the land of Canaan

where his father was an immigrant.

This is the account of Jacob's

descendants.  Joseph was 17 years old

and tended the flock with his brothers.

While he was helping the sons of

Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives,

Joseph told their father unflattering

things about them.  Now Israel loved

Joseph more than any of his other sons

because he was born when Jacob was

old.  Jacob had made for him a long

robe [ in the Septuagint Greek: a

many-colored robe ].  When his

brothers saw that their father loved him 

more than any of his brothers, they hated

him and couldn't even talk nicely to him.

Joseph had a dream and told it to his

brothers, which made them hate him even

more.  He said to them, 'Listen to this dream

I had.  When we were binding stalks of grain

in the field, my stalk got up and stood

upright, while your stalks gathered around

it and bowed down to my stalk.'

His brothers said to him, 'Will you really 

be our king and rule over us?'  So they hated

him even more because of the dreams he

told them.

Then Joseph had another dream and described

it to his brothers, "I've just dreamed again,

and this time the sun and the moon and

eleven stars were bowing down to me.'

When he described it to his father and brothers,

his father scolded him and said to him,

'What kind of dreams have you dreamed?  Am

I and your mother and your brothers supposed to 

come and bow down to the ground in front of

you?'  His brothers were jealous of him,

but his father took careful note of the matter.

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