One reason that I wrote about Esther and am going to write about Joseph is because we, in today's culture, have to live like they did, surrounded on all sides by pagans and people who want to pull us away from what God would have us do.
Esther was queen in Persia, she had so much pressure on her to perform, and to perform the way the king wanted her to, or else she could die.
Joseph was a slave in Egypt, so he had to obey his master, no matter what he told him to do, or they might kill him.
And through all that, they both still followed where God lead them, and in both cases, God used them to protect his people.
When Joseph was 17 years old, he and his family lived in Canaan. Some of his brothers were the sons of Bilhah, one of Israel's wives, and some of his brothers were the sons of Zilpah, another of his father's wives. But Joseph was the son of Rachel, who was Israel's most loved wife, and she had given birth in her old age, making Joseph very much of a surprise.
And Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other children because of this, which made his brothers very jealous.
Israel made Joseph a coat of many colors, and gave it as a gift, making his brothers even more jealous.
One day, Joseph told his brothers of a dream he had had, where they had all been gathering wheat, and binding it into sheaves.
He told his brothers that their wheat had bowed down to his sheaf.
Angry, they asked "Are you going to be in charge of *us*?" And this just made them angrier at him.
And he dreamed another dream, where the stars and the moon and eleven stars bowed to Joseph.
This time, he told his father, who rebuked him, saying "So your mother and I and all your brothers are going to bow to you? I don't think so."
His brothers were envious of Josephs dreams, and hated him even more, but his father pondered what Joseph had said.
One day, Joseph's brothers had gone out with the sheep, and so Israel decided to send Joseph out to see how they were doing. He told him that his brothers had gone to Shechem.
So Joseph went and was wandering around the fields in Shechem, looking for his brothers, when a man found him and asked what he was doing.
When Joseph told him, the man said that he had overheard the boys talking about going to Dothan instead, so Joseph thanked the man and headed to Dothan.
When he was still pretty far away, Joseph's brothers saw him coming.
"Here comes the dreamer," they said to each other.
Now was their opportunity to get rid of Joseph forever, so they made a plan to kill him and blame his death on a wild animal.
Reubun, one of the brothers, heard what they were saying and knew better than to kill his brother, so instead he suggested that they throw him in a pit somewhere, planning to come and rescue him later.
Everyone agreed to this. So when Joseph was close enough, they attacked him, tore off his coat, and threw him in an empty pit.
After this, they sat down to eat their dinner. In the distance they saw some merchants that were headed to Egypt. So Judah, who I think was probably also trying to save his brother's life, thought that it was better that they sell Joseph to the merchants. Then, they would also have the money, there was no profit in just letting Joseph die in the wilderness.
During the planning of this, Reubun was somewhere else, perhaps he was keeping an eye on the sheep.
So they sold Joseph into slavery for twenty pieces of silver, which was only 10 less pieces of silver than what Judas sold out Jesus for.
When Reubun discovered the pit was empty, he became very upset. They tore up the coat of many colors and dipped it in the blood of an animal, so that when they brought it back to Israel, he would think that an animal had killed Joseph.
Which is exactly what he thought.
And so he cried for his dead (or so he thought) son for days, and refused to be comforted.
Meanwhile, Joseph was in Egypt, having been sold into the house of Potiphar, who was one of the Pharaoh's officers, and the captain of the guard.
Cheers!
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