I. The reader of Gen. 34 and 35 and 37 and 38 will see that the ten older brethren of Joseph were “hard boys.” The sacred historian must have been quite willing to give this impression, else he would not have recorded Reuben’s incest with his father’s concubine (35: 22), nor Judah’s criminal connection with a supposed harlot who proved to be his own daughter-in-law (Gen. 38), nor the pitiless cruelty of Simeon and Levi when stirred up to revenge the dishonor done to their sister Dinah (Gen. 34). Especially do the worst elements of depraved character appear in their treatment of their younger brother Joseph. The narrative (Gen. 37) is brief; gives facts without comments; but _what facts_! Joseph was young and very simple-hearted. Up to the point where the history introduces him, he had been trained in a religious home――which seems scarcely to have been the case with the ten older sons. Their shepherd life took them into distant parts of the country, and seems practically to have removed them much of the time from home and its domestic influences. Unfortunately the domestic influences of that polygamous home were by no means so wholesome as a religious home ought to furnish. Envy and jealousy were stimulated into fearful strength. Joseph was sent to help the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Painfully impressed by their misdeeds, he reported them to his father. The special love of this aged father for Joseph, manifested in the “coat of many colors” (really a long tunic reaching to the wrists and ankles) occasioned more rankling jealousy. Finally, Joseph’s remarkable dreams which his simplicity related without apparently a thought of giving offense, brought their animosity to its climax. Soon Joseph is thrown into their power. They see him coming and conspire to take his life. “Come,” (say they) “let us slay him and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” We are not told which of them suggested this murderous purpose. Reuben, the eldest brother, was the first to protest. His plan was that they should cast him alive into some pit; and then in their absence he could take him out and return him safely to his father. They consented; stripped him of his new coat, and cast him into a pit without water. [These pits were dug in that poorly watered country for the sake of getting water for their cattle.] Then they sat down to eat bread, perhaps complimenting themselves that they had not murdered him, but had shown their power and for the present had put him out of their way. Manifestly their consciences were dead to that sense of guilt which a few years later forced them to say, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear” (Gen. 42: 21). Just then a caravan of Ishmaelites and Midianites came in sight, moving toward Egypt, and Judah came to the rescue with the proposition to take up Joseph and