![]() Judah on this feels a better emotion arise in his mind, and proposes that instead of allowing Joseph to perish, they should sell him to the merchants, whose trade obviously from this embraced human beings as well as spicery. Having performed this evil deed, and while they were taking refreshment, the brothers beheld a caravan of Arabian merchants (Ishmaelites =Midianites), who were bearing the spices and aromatic gums of India down to the well known and much frequented mart, Egypt. A compromise was entered into, in virtue of which the youth was stripped of the distinguishing vestments which he owed to his father's affection, and cast into a pit. They began to devise means for his immediate destruction, which they would have unhesitatingly effected but for his half brother Reuben, who, as the eldest son might well be the party to interfere on behalf of Joseph. His appearing in view of his brothers was the signal for their malice to gain head. ![]() They were not at Shechem, but had gone to Dothan, which appears to have been not very far distant, pasturing their flock like the Arabs of the present day, wherever the wild country (ver. They had gone to Shechem to feed the flock and Joseph was sent thither from the vale of Hebron by his father to bring him word of their welfare and that of the flock. Jacob, however, was not aware of the depth of their ill will so that, on one occasion, having a desire to hear intelligence of his sons, who were pasturing their flocks at a distance, he did not hesitate to make Joseph his messenger for that purpose. Their aversion, however, was carried to the highest pitch when Joseph acquainted them with the two dreams that he had had, to the effect - the first, that while he and they were binding sheaves, his sheaf arose and stood erect, while theirs stood round and did obeisance to his the second, that "the sun and the moon and the eleven stars did him homage." These dreams appeared to indicate that Joseph would acquire preeminence in the family, if not sovereignty and while even his father rebuked him, his brothers were filled with envy (Ge 37:11). Their jealousy was aggravated by the fact that Jacob had shown his preference by making him a dress (פִּסַּיםכּתֹנֶת), which appears to have been a long tunic with sleeves, worn by youths and maidens of the richer class. This regard to virtue, and this manifestation of filial fidelity, greatly increased his brothers' dislike, who henceforth "hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him" (Ge 37:4). Joseph had reached his seventeenth year, having hitherto been engaged in boyish sports, or aiding in pastoral duties, when some conduct on the part of "the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives," seems to have been such as, in the opinion of Joseph, to require the special attention of Jacob, to whom accordingly he communicated the facts. He seems then to have stayed at Hebron with the aged Isaac, while his sons kept his flocks.ġ. Jacob at this time had two small pieces of land in Canaan, Abraham's burying place at Hebron in the south, and the "parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent" (Ge 33:19), at Shechem in the north, the latter being probably, from its price, the lesser of the two. ![]() The partiality evinced towards Joseph by his father excited jealousy on the part of his brethren, the rather as they were born of different mothers (Ge 37:2). Ge 41:46) under peculiar circumstances, as may be seen in Ge 30:22 on which account, and because he was the son of his old age (Ge 37:3), he was beloved by his father more than were the rest of his children, though Benjamin, as being also a son of Jacob's favorite wife Rachel, was in a peculiar manner dear to the patriarch. The elder son of Jacob and Rachel, born (B.C. Josephus), the name of several men in the Scriptures and Josephus, all doubtless after the first of the name, whose beautiful history is told at length in the Scriptures with inimitable simplicity. Yoseph', יוֹסֵŠ, containing, according to Ge 30:23-24, a two-fold significance, remover, from אָסִŠ, and increaser, from יָסִŠ, the latter favored by the uncontracted or Chaldaistic form Yehoseph', יהוֹסֵŠ, occurring only Ps 81:6 Sept. ![]()
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