Brotherly love and Father-in-law fondling

Genesis Chapters 37, 38

- Joseph the son of Rachel whom Jacob loved and lost in childbirth. Notice nothing much is said about his brother Baby Ben at this point.

- Jacob shows favor to Joseph in the gift of the multicolored coat, and the boy is a bit of a tattletale which neither of these things endear him to his other brothers.

- Joseph has a couple of dreams which evolve his family bowing down to him. Dear old Dad doesn’t take offense at the first dream, but when the second one includes him and Leah, he’s a little upset, but he remembers those dreams later.

- Jacob’s boys are off taking care of the flocks, moving them from place to place to feed. Jacob is aware something is going to happen, why? Dunno, but interestingly he sends Joseph to find his brothers and check if they are alright and report back to him.

- The brothers see Joseph coming from along way off and plan to kill him. Yes, I would agree with Jacob something is very wrong. This is Cain and Able 2.0, something is very wrong if the first thought that comes to your mind is your going to kill your brother. We sometimes talk about such things out of frustration, crudely joke about it, but they were pardon the pun, dead serious.

- Reuben has a plan to save the boy from his brothers. He is the one who tried to usurp Jacob’s authority by sleeping with Bilhah. He is the 'man with a plan' after all he wants to be the leader, he will also look good in Dad’s eyes if he saves the boy. The only problem like most people that think they can lead without GOD’s guidance or wisdom; they tend to fall short.

- He gets the brothers to agree to not kill him just yet, they strip him of his coat and throw him in a pit.

- Reuben takes off by himself think about the rest of his plan.

Meanwhile some Ishmaelites from Gilead come by, and Judah comes up with his own plan to make a little coin and sell his brother into slavery a win win situation.

- Reuben returns and his plans are all fouled up. They dip Joseph’s coat in lambs’ blood and return to tell dear ole dad the sad story. Baby Ben will soon take Joseph’s place as dad’s favorite. Meanwhile down in Egypt Joseph has a new forced labor job and a boss, Potiphar.

What we see out of all this that GOD is bringing his plan to fruition, there are also pieces of this story that whisper of the Messiah to come. 

Next, we will look at Judah and Tamar, it is not a coincidence that this follows because it was Judah’s plan to sell his brother and hopefully let someone else do the dirty work. Judah would learn the hard way first by taking a wife from the local people. If you remember his brothers had killed all the men of the city where Hamor was King, and the rest of the brothers were complicit in the plan, when it came to their sister Dinah and Shechem.

He would loose two of his own sons (because of their own wickedness) and be so protective of the third son that he was shown to be less righteous than his daughter-in-law Tamar. Judah was schooled in marriage, bad parenting, the loss of a child twice, the treatment of women and made to look less righteous than a woman, but not just any woman, a Canaanite woman, ouch! Correction can be painful.

Even in and through all this GOD is still working on Judah.

Next – Wanton Wife & Dreams, Dreams, Dreams