Page:PracticalCommentaryOnHolyScripture.djvu/131

 were all  tending  their  flocks,  some  of  them  committed  a most wicked crime. Joseph, being  shocked  and  angry,  told  his  father, on his  return  home,  what  he  had  seen. From that  time  forward, his brothers  hated  Joseph,  and  could  not  speak  to  him  kindly. Joseph had  once  a remarkable  dream  which  he  thus  related  to his  brothers: “Hear  my  dream : I thought  we  were  binding  sheaves in the  field,  and  my  sheaf  arose,  as  it  were,  and  stood,  and  your sheaves, standing  about,  bowed  down  before  my  sheaf.”  His brothers replied:  “Shalt  thou  be  our  king? Or shall  we  be  subject to  thy  dominion?”  And  they  hated  him  more  than  ever. Joseph also  dreamed  that  the  sun,  the  moon  and  eleven  stars worshipped him. His father  rebuked  him,  saying:  “What  meaneth this dream? Shall I,  and  thy  mother,  and  thy  brethren,  worship thee upon  the  earth?”  But  Jacob  thought  within  himself  that perhaps God  had  destined  Joseph  for  great  things.

One day,  when  the  sons  of  Jacob  had  gone  with  their  flocks to Sichem,  Jacob  said  to  Joseph:  “Go  and  see  if  all  things  be well  with  thy  brethren  and  the  cattle!”  He  obeyed,  and  went in search  of  them. When they  saw  him  afar  off,  they  said:  “Behold, the  dreamer  cometh. Let us  kill  him  and  cast  him  into some old  pit,  and  we  will  say  some  evil  beast  hath  devoured him; and  then  it  shall  appear  what  his  dreams  avail  him.” Reuben, the  eldest  of  the  brothers,  hearing  this,  sought  to  deliver Joseph out  of  their  hands,  and  said  to  them: “Do  not  take  away his life,  nor  shed  his  blood,  but  cast  him  into  this  pit.”  This he said,  because  he  wished  to  restore  the  boy  to  his  father.