The Coat and the Empty Pit

Jacob had made peace with his brother Esau, and now he lived in Canaan with a new kind of trouble: he loved one of his sons more than all the others.

That was Joseph, seventeen years old. Jacob made him a long robe with sleeves. Joseph told his father about the bad things his brothers did, and his brothers looked at that robe and hated him.

Then Joseph had a dream.

"Listen! We were tying up bundles of wheat in the field. My bundle stood up straight, and your bundles came around and bowed down to mine!"

(Wheat does not usually bow. This wheat did.)

"So you think you are going to be king over us?" the brothers said, and they hated him even more.

Then Joseph had a second dream. "The sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me!"

Even Jacob scolded him. "Are your mother and I and your brothers going to bow to the ground in front of you?" But he kept turning that dream over in his mind.

One day, when the brothers were away with the flocks, Jacob called, "Joseph! Go and see how your brothers are doing."

The brothers saw him coming, robe and all. "Here comes the dreamer!" they said. "Let's kill him and throw him into a pit. We'll say a wild animal ate him. Then we'll see what becomes of his dreams."

"No," said Reuben, the oldest. "Don't kill him. Just throw him into this pit." He meant to come back and rescue him.

So they pulled off Joseph's robe and threw him down into the pit. It was empty, with no water in it. Then they sat down and ate their lunch, while Joseph begged them from the bottom.

Along came a line of camels, traders carrying spices down to Egypt. Judah had an idea. "What do we get out of killing our brother? Let's sell him instead."

So they pulled Joseph up and sold him for twenty pieces of silver, and the traders led him away.

Reuben came back and looked into the pit. It was empty. He tore his clothes. "The boy is gone! What am I going to do?"

The brothers killed a goat, dipped Joseph's robe in its blood, and sent it to their father.

"It is my son's robe!" Jacob cried. "A wild animal has eaten him!" He wept for many days, and nobody could comfort him.

Joseph came up out of that pit alive, and years later the brother they sold would be the one who kept the whole family from starving. But Joseph was a boy with a fancy robe and a habit of telling on his brothers, and he would grow old and die in Egypt.

Down the years, God sent his people messenger after messenger, and they hated many of them the way Joseph's brothers hated Joseph. Still they waited for the one God had promised.

At last another son came, and at the river God's voice said, "This is my Son, whom I love." The leaders saw him coming and made plans to kill him. A friend sold him for thirty pieces of silver. Soldiers pulled off his clothes and threw dice for his robe. He died, and they laid him in a grave cut into the rock.

Reuben looked into an empty pit and cried. On the third morning, the friends of Jesus looked into an empty grave and heard an angel say, "He is not here. He has risen!"