Read with Me
Genesis 37:5-11 (HCSB)
Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.”
“Are you really going to reign over us?” his brothers asked him. “Are you really going to rule us?” So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said.
Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and 11 stars were bowing down to me.”
He told his father and brothers, but his father rebuked him. “What kind of dream is this that you have had?” he said. “Are your mother and brothers and I going to come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Listen with Me
Joseph, in addition to having given a bad report about some of his brothers and getting them disciplined, was also unrestrained in his feelings of privilege. He clearly knew that he was his father’s favorite, and for that reason, the dislike his brothers had for him just bounced off. Their icy glares could not negate the warmth of his father’s doting relationship with him.
It was into that context that God sent Joseph two distinct dreams, both of which conveyed the same meaning. And, as Joseph himself would later declare (Genesis 41:32), when God repeats a dream, it indicates that the matter has been firmly established by Him, and it will happen.
In both dreams, the symbolism is very clear. In the first dream, Joseph’s sheaf of hay was surrounded by those of his brothers, which then bowed down to it. In the second dream, the sun, the moon and the stars, symbolizing Joseph’s father, step-mother and brothers all gathered around Joseph and bowed down to him. This clearly conveyed to all who heard the dream that at some point in the future they would all be expected to bow down to Joseph, a reality that even his father would not accept.
At the same time, Joseph honestly did not expect that to happen any time soon. He seems to have merely found the dreams interesting, and he shared them because of their peculiar character and their intensity. And after he shared them, he went on with his life.
But the meaning of the dreams continued to burn into the minds and hearts of Joseph’s brothers. Their anger did not manifest itself in flashes of rage. Instead, it burned inside them, and it took the form of an ever increasing irritation that was doomed to blow open before long.
Pray with Me
Father, jealousy and competition can so easily blow a family apart And the fact that such anger tends to seethe and boil behind the scenes for some time before exploding into action does not make it any less violent when the explosion occurs. It seems to me that the key source of angst among Joseph’s brothers was not that Joseph shared his dreams, but that there was a deep fear that they truly were from God, and that they might actually come true! Joseph already seemed to be leading a charmed life that they couldn’t seem to get ahead of, so an ascension to the kind of power and authority presaged by the dreams did not seem all that outrageous to them. Help me, Lord, to focus on my own relationship with You, and never allow jealousy over someone else’s success to derail my own progress with You. Amen.
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