²⁹ When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes. ³⁰ He returned to his brothers, and said, ‘The boy is gone; and I, where can I turn?’ ³¹ Then they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood. ³² They had the long robe with sleeves^[a] taken to their father, and they said, ‘This we have found; see now whether it is your son’s robe or not.’ ³³ He recognized it, and said, ‘It is my son’s robe! A wild animal has devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.’ ³⁴ Then Jacob tore his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son for many days. ³⁵ All his sons and all his daughters sought to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and said, ‘No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.’ Thus his father bewailed him. ³⁶ Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.

Psalm 28

Prayer for Help and Thanksgiving for It

Of David.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell^[a] and committed them to chains^[b] of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgement; ⁵ and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; ⁶ and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction^[c] and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;^{[d] 7} and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless ⁸ (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), ⁹ then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement ¹⁰ —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and wilful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,^[e]