Joseph's Dreams: Favor, Revelation, and Rising Tension

¹ Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had resided, the land of Canaan.

² This is the account of Jacob. When Joseph was seventeen years old, he was tending the flock with his brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah, and he brought their father a bad report about them.

³ Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons, because Joseph had been born to him in his old age; so he made him a robe of many colors.

⁴ When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.

⁵ Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.

⁶ He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had:

⁷ We were binding sheaves of grain in the field, and suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to mine.”

⁸ “Do you intend to reign over us?” his brothers asked. “Will you actually rule us?” So they hated him even more because of his dream and his statements.

⁹ Then Joseph had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”

¹⁰ He told his father and brothers, but his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream that you have had? Will your mother and brothers and I actually come and bow down to the ground before you?”

¹¹ And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept in mind what he had said.