all to believe I am pampered, vain, and prideful, parading in my splendid attire before the world, I wear this coat because it is a gift, indeed splendid because it was woven using yarn of my father's love. Should I not wear it because it might create someone's envy? If I fear not to wear it, others wishing to never like me will find different reasons to hate me. So I please my father with his gift, no matter how much it's splendor may displease my brothers.
Bystander: Goodness will always be faulted, deprecating it especially for God's creation.
Dan: I judge you as unworthy, knowing the world regards you as the victim of our father's indulgence, marking you with blemishes you will never overcome.
Joseph: Befalling you until your last days, you will continue to judge, being the serpent straddling the way, the viper with venomous words, begetting sadistic pronouncements, striking out to all unseen, hoping your slithering voice convinces others of your truths. You paint on my blemishes, decorating evil on them with the venom of your hatred, knowingly to worsen their manifestations for others to see.
Dan: You should know to be your brother's keeper, protecting your siblings from intrusion by other's personally adjudicated justice, from judgment by archaic wisdom, disturbing other's truths to live by. Reliable keepers can trust what security to warrant, what to conceal from other's knowing.
Joseph: You may hide your thoughts and deeds from father's knowing, but wake up to acknowledge God sees all, He being the one to fear most, forgetting about me, one insignificant and despised, but never ignore His commandments, His justice being eternal, His laws lasting forever, believing Him as joy's only source.
Dan: I fear father with little fear of God, one I never hear or see. My fear is greater for our household god who I see each day, but knowing he cannot speak, never shaming me, unable to ever making me humble, I fear him little, dreading only his gaze when captive in his presence.
Joseph: Would I gain your love if I were my brother's keeper, guarding your secrets as well as your welfare, doubting I could measure up to your wishes, being already tarnished by envy for my father's indulgence in me?
Dan: You are right. Being a wuss, so you will remain.
Joseph: Why must envy foster dislike, sometimes activating it to hatred?
Dan: You should adopt the ways of youth, forgetting the truths you could covet later, and enjoy youthful temptations while you can, knowing how fleeting they are, settling on you for only moments.
Joseph: I could try your suggestions, but innate voices block my way, telling me to heed the indwelling spirit, counseling me to prepare for some directed purpose, deemed to be important but as yet unknown.
Dan: You need some inner voices telling you to go for it, for all you can get, hearing voices all people hear, responding to urgings for delighting us all.
Joseph: Maybe I should wait until older to heed temptation's entreaties, dismissing their pleadings for now, avoiding my conscience's badgering to confess and repent.
Dan: Youthful ones always have time to confess, repent and change their ways, waiting until wisdom matures to teach them the lasting truths. You can become one of us now, but you may suffer father's sorrow. Join the new generation, trusting the passing one has seen its day.
Joseph: I have been instructed in the way I should go, honoring my father, loving him almost like my Heavenly Father, learning little about relationships with my siblings except to be my brother's keeper, waiting patiently until the day I could become a father. Have you learned to be your brother's keeper?
Dan: We brothers look out for each other. It goes without saying even though it has never been tested.
Joseph: Beware. God creates circumstances for people's testing, giving them opportunities to seize for good or evil, to further His plans despite our choices, to continue His kingdom building with the decisions we make. I renew God in my life through every circumstance He delivers to my feet, heeding all His instructions to the Holy Spirit, convicting me to witness and testify to the beauty and goodness of His creation, to obey His perfect will. I know what I must do.
Bystander: You can't attribute favoritism for Joseph to the love Jacob had for his best-loved wife or for being someone special as a last-born son, created by chance to be one amiable and obedient, never usual virtues for one born last to aging parents, fatigued from disciplining others coming before. God's prerogative, owing to His grace, selects and prepares some, ordaining them with virtues to participate with Him, acting out circumstances in roles He plans for them. No one but God knows His plan for choosing Joseph, making his brother's enmity necessary for its successful completion, for Him to mark Joseph as one of His beloved sons.
Joseph: The Lord called me from the womb, making mention of my name, preparing my reward to be with Him, instructing me in the way I should go, choosing me to insure the covenant for His people, but for reasons hidden, perhaps waiting for someday to know. In the meantime He sends me visions, never telling me why, perhaps to foretell something I should know. Are these visions for my private viewing or should I reveal them to others, risking their displeasure, branding me some idiot deluded by apparitions of unreality, picturing me a fool reveling in pride, seeing things no one else witnesses? I must ask my father who has dreamed unusual encounters, defying human explanation, outside of common sense, beyond anything reason can explain. When you had visions or dreams did you give them any importance?
Jacob: You must be careful. People can die for visions, inspirations committed to their soul, while others may only be ridiculed. I have suffered neither with none being thought to boast my pride, reporting none to embellish my standing. Visions justifying a person's demise seldom accomplish any good. Those viewed as delusions become fodder for derision. Have you one perplexing you, waiting to be described, looking for an explanation, sending you to me for advice?
Joseph: I don't know why this one came, appearing for reasons unknown, mysteriously choosing me to be its recipient. I awakened to God's calling, beckoning me to see the beginning of a glorious day, revealing a vision, pictured showing me flooded with living water, water cascading from fountains drenching me with life-enriching water, from geysers sending it skyward, returning to soak my soul, sustaining me with life's essence, streaming to nourish all life below, to sustain its goodness, as all life bowed down in my vision, bubbling with sacrifices in homage to its streams of life, giving back tokens of the life-sustaining water.
Jacob: Water for enrichment of life, for its essential being, comes only from God, yet you seem to be saying you will assist Him in its provision. Do you mean to say this?
Joseph: I report nothing but what my vision was. Being one simple in thought, how could I have reasoned this to happen? If this was contrived for nothing good to happen, it was not assisted by me. Never knowing if this was meant for good, fearing it will abuse some other's pride, I confide in no one but you, seeking your opinion if anyone might profit from it's knowing.
Jacob: I see how no one could believe there is any harm in your vision other than this being an opportunity for new circumstances to determine your life. Visions without words, speechless in giving directions, could be commands from God, ordering you to heed their entirety, unlike hearing His words to direct your life.
Dan: (overhearing the conversation, aside) What good could come from our brother, conceived from seeds withered from age, having exhausted their vigor and virtue long before, leaving little to bless any new creations, suffering from lack of direction and wallowing in a father's indulgence. Judah must hear of this vision and tell us if we should be concerned. We can also ask Reuben who knows how to test father best. I tire of brother's imaginations and how they endeavor to try us.
Bystander: The brothers must hear Joseph's dream, believing they come for a purpose, fixing his vision in their memory, embedding it for a yet to be revealed reason, trusting Dan's hearing is by someone's intention, allowing the narrator some discretion to say who told whom. Before anything could be written Joseph told of ano
ther vision, one coming in a dream.
Joseph: I woke to remember another dream, more mysterious than the first, but I tell others it's content to help me with its meaning. With the world shrouded in darkness I saw light coming from the sun, moon and eleven stars, bowing down with revelations for me to hear, bearing promises of truths never seen, telling me to be patient, for I will become one despised and rejected--a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief as others turn their backs on me and look the other way, uncaringly crushing me for their sins. Oppressed and treated harshly, fear directs me to say no more, quelling my voice, speaking nothing more to fuel incentives for other's hatred?
Dan: A time comes when the serpent must strike, inflicting an enemy with its venom, arousing brethren to danger, threats of someone usurping their freedom, dooming us to servitude, bridling our freedom, stifling our free will.
Jacob: Joseph's first vision could have been enough, showing our never-ending need for truths to replenish our languishing souls, to restore life-sustaining living water and who cares