Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

(ii) ¹² After this, when his brothers had gone to pasture their father’s sheep in Sh’khem, ¹³ Isra’el asked Yosef, “Aren’t your brothers pasturing the sheep in Sh’khem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” ¹⁴ He said to him, “Go now, see whether things are going well with your brothers and with the sheep, and bring word back to me.” So he sent him away from the Hevron Valley, and he went to Sh’khem, ¹⁵ where a man found him wandering around in the countryside. The man asked him, “What are you looking for?” ¹⁶ “I’m looking for my brothers,” he answered. “Tell me, please, where are they pasturing the sheep?” ¹⁷ The man said, “They’ve left here; because I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dotan.’” Yosef went after his brothers and found them in Dotan.

¹⁸ They spotted him in the distance, and before he had arrived where they were, they had already plotted to kill him. ¹⁹ They said to each other, “Look, this dreamer is coming! ²⁰ So come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these water cisterns here. Then we’ll say some wild animal devoured him. We’ll see then what becomes of his dreams!” ²¹ But when Re’uven heard this, he saved him from being destroyed by them. He said, “We shouldn’t take his life. ²² Don’t shed blood,” Re’uven added. “Throw him into this cistern here in the wilds, but don’t lay hands on him yourselves.” He intended to rescue him from them later and restore him to his father.

(iii) ²³ So it was that when Yosef arrived to be with his brothers, they stripped off his robe, the long-sleeved robe he was wearing, ²⁴ and took him and threw him into the cistern (the cistern was empty; without any water in it). ²⁵ Then they sat down to eat their meal; but as they looked up, they saw in front of them a caravan of Yishma‘elim coming from Gil‘ad, their camels loaded with aromatic gum, healing resin and opium, on their way down to Egypt. ²⁶ Y’hudah said to his brothers, “What advantage is it to us if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? ²⁷ Come, let’s sell him to the Yishma‘elim, instead of putting him to death with our own hands. After all, he is our brother, our own flesh.” His brothers paid attention to him. ²⁸ So when the Midyanim, merchants, passed by, they drew and lifted Yosef up out of the cistern and sold him for half a pound of silver shekels to the Yishma‘elim, who took Yosef on to Egypt.

²⁹ Re’uven returned to the cistern, and, upon seeing that Yosef wasn’t in it, tore his clothes in mourning. ³⁰ He returned to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I go now?”

³¹ They took Yosef’s robe, killed a male goat and dipped the robe in the blood. ³² Then they sent the long-sleeved robe and brought it to their father, saying, “We found this. Do you know if it’s your son’s robe or not?” ³³ He recognized it and cried, “It’s my son’s robe! Some wild animal has torn Yosef in pieces and eaten him!” ³⁴ Ya‘akov tore his clothes and, putting sackcloth around his waist, mourned his son for many days. ³⁵ Though all his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, he refused all consolation, saying, “No, I will go down to the grave, to my son, mourning.” And his father wept for him.

³⁶ In Egypt the Midyanim sold Yosef to Potifar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, a captain of the guard.

¹¹ For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning: that we should love each other ¹² and not be like Kayin, who was from the Evil One and murdered his own brother. Why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. ¹³ Don’t be amazed, brothers, if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We, for our part, know that we have passed from death to life because we keep loving the brothers. The person who fails to keep on loving is still under the power of death. ¹⁵ Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

¹⁶ The way that we have come to know love is through his having laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers!