Many know about the account of Joseph and his brothers. In one of their earlier “episodes”,
Joseph’s father gives Joseph a “coat of many colors” (Genesis 37:3). His brothers get extremely jealous,
and things go downhill from there. Eventually, Joseph gets thrown into a pit, where he dies.
Just kidding. He goes on to become the 22nd President of the United States.
In the third chapter of her book Strange Scriptures, Barbara Walters goes over this incident. She
writes that the brothers weren’t being petty and childish when they got jealous over the coat. It wasn’t a
case of “Why did Jo get more ice cream than we did?”
No, Joseph’s coat was extremely special. According to Barbara, it was called a kamise, and
only two people in a clan or tribe had it. The sheikh, or ruler, and his heir. The former was Jacob, and
when Jacob gave Joseph the coat, the latter was Joseph. The coat symbolized the ruler-to-be after the
present leader died.
Understandably, Joseph’s older brothers were upset. In that culture, the inheritance did not go to
the youngest (or second youngest, in this case) son, but to the oldest son. Yeah, I would've gotten
angry, too.
At first glance, it may seem that Jacob was being unfair by choosing Joseph. But if you
remember his earlier life, he only wanted one wife (Rachel) in the first place. Through Laban’s trickery,
he married Leah first, and then Rachel (Genesis chapter 29). Leah ended up having several sons before
Rachel, and they (duh) were older than Rachel’s first son, Joseph (Genesis chapters 29-30).
Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, so naturally he wanted her first son (Joseph) to be his heir.
There is a case for both sides, and this whole mess started with Laban. Ouch, I would not like having a
father-in-law like that.
Whenever you hear the bare-bones “Joseph got a coat and his brothers got jealous” historical
account, remember that it was much deeper than that. Joseph’s brothers (probably Reuben) should’ve
been heirs to Jacob, but if Jacob had his way, those brothers wouldn’t have existed.
That last sentence was weird, and the whole situation was a mess.
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