Joseph and His Coat of Many Colours

Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colours. His brethren saw the coat and understood what it meant, and they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. Then the boy dreamed -- of sheaves in the field that bowed to his sheaf, and of the sun and the moon and eleven stars making obeisance to him -- and he told his brothers, and they hated him yet the more. When his father sent him out to Dothan to see whether it was well with them, they saw him afar off and said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. Reuben talked them out of killing him, so they stripped him of the coat and cast him into a pit that was empty, with no water in it. Then Judah saw a caravan of Ishmeelites bound for Egypt, and they sold their brother for twenty pieces of silver. They dipped the coat in the blood of a goat and carried it home, and Jacob knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him -- and he refused to be comforted.

In Egypt Joseph was sold to Potiphar, and the LORD was with him, and he was made overseer over all his master's house. When his master's wife accused him falsely, he was thrown into the king's prison -- and the LORD was with him there too. He interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and baker, and asked only that the butler remember him; but the butler forgot him, and two full years went by. Then Pharaoh dreamed of seven fat cattle devoured by seven lean, and of seven full ears of corn swallowed by seven withered ones, and no man in Egypt could interpret it. They brought Joseph hastily out of the dungeon, and he shaved himself and changed his raiment and stood before the king, and said, It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace. Seven years of plenty, he told him, and then seven years of famine -- so let Pharaoh find a man discreet and wise to store up grain against the hunger.

Before that day was out Joseph wore the king's ring and a gold chain, rode in the second chariot, and heard them cry before him, Bow the knee. He was thirty years old. Through seven plenteous years he gathered corn as the sand of the sea, until he left numbering; and when the famine came it was over all the face of the earth. And ten brothers came down from Canaan to buy bread, and bowed themselves before a governor they did not recognize -- and Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed of them. He tested them, bound Simeon, sent them back for Benjamin, and hid his silver cup in the youngest one's sack. When Judah stepped forward and offered to be a bondman in the boy's place, Joseph could not refrain himself. He cried, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And he told them what he had come to understand across twenty-two years: Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.