the Lord. I was also a son, like your boy. Am I not also a father, like you, Lazarus? I was also beloved by my father, who grieved every day after my elder brothers sold me into slavery. But my story is not mine alone. The details of my story also prophesy of the life of Jesus, Messiah, Holy One of Israel. Jesus, whose name means ‘Salvation.’ Jesus, son of … Joseph. Come with me now and see what was, what is, and what is soon to come upon the earth.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Time is nothing. Walk.”
Clasping my arm and that of my son, Joseph the Dreamer pulled us after him through the curtain of refracted light.
I heard the sound of mocking. “Climb out if you can!” A group of rough-looking desert shepherds gathered around an empty cistern. Flinging dust at some pitiful creature trapped beneath them, they shouted:
“Come on, then!”
“Show us what you can do, dreamer of dreams!”
“We, your brothers, are stars who bow down to you!”
“We are sheaves of wheat who pay homage to you, O Prince!”
“Show us! Climb out if you can!”
“Free yourself if you’re so powerful.”
Samuel and I recoiled, holding back.
The Dreamer did not let go of us. “You must come. My brothers cannot see us. It is myself in the pit … as I was the hour my brothers stripped me of my father’s mantle and threw me naked down into the cistern.”
We had stepped from perfect peace onto the hard ground of the violent earth. I smelled the sweat of the young men around the pit. Their clothes smelled like sheep. The burning heat of the desert beat on my head. Faces were contorted with a gleeful rage as they hurled insults and sheep dung onto their young victim.
The Dreamer said, “These then, were my brothers. Rachel, the beloved, was my mother. But we were all sons of Jacob, grandsons of Isaac, great-grandsons of Abraham, who was the faithful friend of God.”
“May I speak?” I asked.
Joseph nodded. “They cannot hear you. They do not know we are watching.”
I whispered to the Dreamer, “What has this to do with Jesus, who was sent from heaven to earth as Redeemer of all Israel?”
Joseph the Dreamer replied in a sad voice, remembering, “What was done to me will be done to him by his brothers. Everything means something.” He inclined his head as the sons of Jacob left off their sport and left in a pack to eat their meal. Each of the sons of Jacob trampled on the beautiful coat their father had given his favored son.
“Listen to what they say,” the Dreamer instructed us.
“Let’s kill him,” said one, tearing meat from the bone with his teeth.
“Aye,” agreed another. “I’m for it.”
“There are lions in this place. Our old father will never know it was us.”
“We can say it was a lion. What do you say, Judah?”
The one they called Judah lifted his head from his meal. “Look! A caravan of Ishmaelites is approaching.”
The Dreamer explained to me and Samuel, “They were from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices. They carried the balm of Gilead for healing and myrrh for burial. Even these spices were a prophecy of what must come for Messiah.”
Judah stood and stretched, then said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our own flesh and blood.”
His brothers agreed.
The Dreamer drew us near as the sons of Jacob pulled the young man from the pit and sold him to foreigners for twenty shekels of silver. We watched as the caravan receded in the distance and the brothers slaughtered a goat. Then they dipped the coat of their innocent brother in the blood of the goat and carried it home to their aging father.
I shuddered as I heard the terrible wail of Jacob’s grief rising from the tent.
“My son! My son! My beloved son!”
The Dreamer lowered his chin and frowned as though the moment was fresh. “Oh! How my father, Jacob, wept! The grief of a father for his beloved son.” We stood on a hill above the encampment of Jacob. The keening of the old man resounded like waves crashing against the rocks.
“I will not be comforted,” Jacob cried. “In mourning I will go down to the grave with my son!”
So his father wept for him.1
As we listened to Jacob’s sobs, the