Some of these journeys are undertaken with a parent.
#Short summary the journey back free
Each one tells a different story about what it means to grow up in the shadow of the Holocaust and then to find a way of breaking free of the residual darkness of childhood by making a physical and emotional journey back into the past, to the «home» of one’s ancestors: the «home» they were forced to physically leave. In a lesser known sequel, Joseph’s elder brother Judah disgraced himself further by having intercourse with his own widowed daughter-in-law, whom he mistook for a shrine prostitute (see Genesis 38:1-30).The Journey Home is an engrossing anthology of twenty essays. The brothers then nearly destroyed their own father by telling him a bare-faced lie about his favourite son being torn to pieces by a ferocious animal. So after stealing his expensive multi-coloured coat and keeping him barely alive at the bottom of a dry well, Joseph was sold to a caravan of merchants going down to Egypt. But while Reuben was away, Judah suggested that the brothers could make more money by selling Joseph as a slave to passing traders. He planned to rescue Joseph and return him to his father. The plan was to break his neck by throwing him into a deep well, and then to deceive their father into thinking he had been killed by a wild animal. In reality, they were a gang of thugs who indulged in theft, kidnap, grievous bodily harm and attempted murder.Īs soon as they spotted their seventeen-year-old brother who had been sent to visit them by their elderly father, they plotted to kill him.
What sort of men were the twelve sons of Jacob who became the forefathers of the Twelve tribes of Israel? We are accustomed to thinking of Joseph’s brothers as a lovable bunch of rascals who indulged in the Old Testament version of ‘laddish’ behaviour. Gen 37:36 On reaching Egypt in c.1683BC, Joseph is sold by the Midianite traders to Potiphar, captain of the Pharaoh’s palace guard. Gen 37:29-35 The brothers dip Joseph’s coat in blood, then trick Jacob into believing that Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. Gen 37:28 Joseph is ultimately sold on to some Midianite merchants and taken to Egypt (along The Way of the Sea) (see 5 on Map 42). Reuben - the eldest - had persuaded the brothers not to kill Joseph so they sell him to the Ishmaelites as a slave. Their camels are loaded with spices and resins (‘Balm of Gilead’). Gen 37:25-27 They see a group of Ishmaelite traders travelling from Gilead to Egypt (see 4 on Map 42). Gen 37:18-24 The brothers plot their revenge and throw Joseph into a dry well. Tel Dothan, where Joseph was sold as a slave (Daniel Ventura)
Today, the site of the city is marked by Tel Dothan, an impressive settlement mound on the plain west of the Palestinian town of Jenin. ĭothan was a thriving Canaanite city in Joseph’s day.
Gen 37:17 He finds them grazing the flocks on the fertile pastures near Dothan - on the plain between the hills of Samaria and the Mount Carmel range (see 3 on Map 42). Gen 37:14-16 Joseph, now aged seventeen, arrives at Shechem but the brothers have left. Gen 37:12-13 Joseph’s brothers take the family’s flocks to graze in the less arid hill country near Shechem (see 2 on Map 42, Genesis 12:16, Genesis 35:4 and the feature on Shechem in the previous section).
When he tells them about eleven stars bowing down before him, the eleven brothers are furious. Joseph dreams about his brothers’ sheaves of wheat bowing down to his sheaf, and when he tells his brothers, it fuels their jealousy. Gen 37:2-11 Jacob gives his favourite son Joseph an expensive multi-coloured coat. Gen 37:1 Jacob continues to live in Canaan, at Hebron (see 1 on Map 42 and the feature on Hebron in the previous section).
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