OK, You Hate Your Brother; But Would You Wish to Kill Him?

(1) Now Jacob was settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan. (2) This, then, is the line of Jacob: At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers, as a helper to the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. And Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father. (3) Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons—he was his “child of old age” The expression ben zequnim is used here as a category label; it seems to denote a special, favored status. and he had made him an ornamented tunic. meaning of Heb. uncertain. (4) And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him. (5) Once Joseph had a dream which he told to his brothers; and they hated him even more. (6) He said to them, “Hear this dream which I have dreamed....(8) His brothers answered, “Do you mean to reign over us? Do you mean to rule over us?” And they hated him even more for his talk about his dreams. (9) He dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another dream: And this time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” (10) And when he told it to his father and brothers, his father berated him. “What,” he said to him, “is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow low to you to the ground?” (11) So his brothers were wrought up at him, and [but] his father kept the matter in mind.

(2) והוא נער AND HE, BEING A LAD — His actions were childish: he dressed his hair, he touched up his eyes so that he should appear good-looking (Genesis Rabbah 84:7). (3) את בני בלהה WITH THE SONS OF BILHAH — meaning that he made it his custom to associate with the sons of Bilhah because his brothers slighted them as being sons of a hand-maid; therefore he fraternised with them. (4) את דבתם רעה THEIR EVIL REPORT — Whatever he saw wrong in his brothers, the sons of Leah, he reported to his father:

As the Joseph sequence progresses, the themes of tale-bearing and dreams are both cited as the cause for the brothers' hatred.

Prof. Alan Levenson: "The brothers' hatred becomes so extreme that they decide to kill him, but do Joseph's provocations merit such an extreme response? Being a privileged, preening, grandiose tattle-tale is not admirable, but does it deserve enslavement or death by exposure?"

(20) Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we can say, ‘A savage beast devoured him.’ We shall see what comes of his dreams!”

(9) Recalling the dreams that he had dreamed about them, Joseph said to them, “You are spies, you have come to see the land in its nakedness.”

(16) Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older one was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. (17) Leah had weak eyes; Rachel was shapely and beautiful. (18) Jacob loved Rachel; so he answered, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”

(31) Seeing that Leah was unloved, יהוה opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. (32) Leah conceived and bore a son, and named him Reuben; for she declared, “It means: ‘יהוה has seen” my affliction’; it also means: ‘Now my husband will love me.’” (33) She conceived again and bore a son, and declared, “This is because יהוה heard that I was unloved and has given me this one also”; so she named him Simeon.

How did the wives feel about Jacob's preference? Their sons, who were old enough to be aware of his preference, probably were aware of this too. How did they feel about this?

(1) Looking up, Jacob saw Esau coming, with a retinue of four hundred. He divided the children among Leah, Rachel, and the two maids, (2) putting the maids and their children first, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last. (3) He himself went on ahead and bowed low to the ground seven times until he was near his brother. (4) Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept. (5) Looking about, he saw the women and the children. “Who,” he asked, “are these with you?” He answered, “The children with whom God has favored your servant.” (6) Then the maids, with their children, came forward and bowed low; (7) next Leah, with her children, came forward and bowed low; and last, Joseph and Rachel came forward and bowed low.

(1) נגש יוסף ורחל JOSEPH AND RACHEL STEPPED NEAR — In the case of all the others the mothers approached before the children, but in the case of Rachel, Joseph came in front of her. He said: “My mother is a beautiful woman: for fear that this wicked man will set his fancy on her I will stand in front of her and prevent him from gazing at her.....” (Genesis Rabbah 78:10).

Prof. Alan Levenson: "Had Joseph been the most ingratiating younger brother...he still needed to overcome all of his older brothers' knowledge that their father loved the departed Rachel more than their mothers...and that when confronting a potentially deadly situation, Jacob chose to protect Rachel and Joseph above all.

While the causes of the brothers' hatred for Joseph in Genesis 37 are detailed plainly enough, they do not exhaust the fraught background, which careful readers should not neglect."