Sensible Madness

Jacob and his 12 sons lived in Canaan. One of his sons, Joseph, was 17 and was something of a tattletale. Pissed off that their brother kept telling their father every time one of them did anything wrong, his brothers began to hate him. After Jacob gave Joseph a coat of many colors, his brothers hated him even more, despite the fact that with that many colors Joseph was going to have a hell of a time finding any clothes to match it, and he was just in for one fashion faux pas after another.

Not content to have his brothers merely hate him, Joseph started telling them about these dreams he was having. These dreams involved sheaves of wheat and the moon and stars and whatnot, but were all really just a thinly veiled prediction that Joseph’s entire family was going to end up bowing down before him, so maybe they should stop being so mean to him now. These dreams turned the run of the mill hatred of his brothers into murderous rage.

Later, Joseph’s brothers went off to Shechem to tend to their father’s flocks there. Jacob asked Joseph to go out and find out what they were doing wrong, and tattle on them. When Joseph got to Shechem, his brothers were nowhere to be found, but some random dude told him they had all gone to Dothan. So Joseph started for Dothan, probably already rehearsing how he was going to tell Jacob that his brothers weren’t where they were supposed to be.

Joseph’s brothers saw him coming from a long way off, and began to conspire against him. Lacking creativity, they decided to just kill him and throw him into a pit and tell their father that some nasty animal with big pointy teeth had killed him. Reuben, being the squeamish sort, said they shouldn’t actually kill Joseph, because he hated blood and really, wouldn’t it be better if they just threw him in a pit and left him for dead.

The other brothers agreed to Reuben’s request, took Joseph’s coat, threw him into a dry pit, and sat down for lunch. While there, they noticed some nomads on camels who were headed for Egypt with various trade goods. Seeing an opportunity to make some money, the brothers sold Joseph to the nomads for 20 pieces of silver.

Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was no longer there, and began to panic. Thinking fast, he took Joseph’s coat and dipped it in goat’s blood and brought it to Jacob. Jacob saw it, and with no further evidence jumped to the conclusion that Joseph had obviously been torn to pieces by some beast. Jacob went into deep mourning for his “dead” son, and pouted for many days. Meanwhile, the nomads sold Joseph to Potiphar, who was the captain of the guard for Pharaoh in Egypt.