Joseph is often described as a snotty little upstart, a gossip and tattletale who brings an evil report about his brothers back to his father. I think that misses the whole tone of the story. Joseph is the “foreman” of his brothers (at the age of 17!), a younger son elevated above his brothers. He is, as one of my students put it, “chief shepherd.”

If Joseph is a tattletale, we also miss just how crude and violent his brothers were. Think about their track record: They envy their father’s favorite, intend to kill him, sell him into slavery, and then lie to their father for years about it. This is not merely a sin against Joseph but a horrible sin against their father. Reuben, we discover later, sleeps with his father’s concubine, and Simeon and Levi slaughter the peaceable, circumcised people of Shechem.

This is a violent, deceptive, cruel bunch. Yet commentators spend their time criticizing Joseph ?