Why did Joseph’s brothers hate him?

Three steps, in the text’s own order

Genesis does not leave the brothers’ hatred vague. It builds it in three steps, and each one makes it worse.

The first is small. At seventeen, Joseph is out with the flocks beside the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, the two servant women who bore Jacob sons, and he carries tales home: “Joseph brought an evil report of them to their father” (Genesis 37:2). The text never says what he reported, or whether it was true. It only says he told.

The second is the favoritism. Israel loves Joseph more than all his sons and marks it with a robe, whatever that robe really looked like (see was it a coat of many colors?). The brothers “couldn’t speak peaceably to him” (37:4). The Hebrew has the word shalom in it: not one word of peace passed between them.

The third is the dreams, and here the text keeps score.

His brothers asked him, “Will you indeed reign over us? Will you indeed have dominion over us?” They hated him all the more for his dreams and for his words.

Notice the last phrase: for his dreams and for his words. Dreaming was not the offense. Telling was. After the second dream the text reaches for a new word: “His brothers envied him” (37:11). Hatred had turned into envy, and envy starts to make plans.

Why was Joseph Jacob’s favorite?

The text gives a short answer: Joseph was “the son of his old age” (37:3). But Benjamin was younger still, so age alone does not explain it. The longer answer is his mother. Jacob worked fourteen years for Rachel and “loved also Rachel more than Leah” (29:30). Rachel waited years for a child, and when Joseph finally came she said, “God has taken away my reproach” (30:23). She died on the road near Bethlehem giving birth to Benjamin (35:19), and Joseph, her firstborn, became the son his father could not stop protecting.

The brothers had seen their rank spelled out. On the day Jacob went to meet Esau, he lined up his household by how much he wanted to shield each one: “He put the servants and their children in front, Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph at the rear” (33:2). Every brother knew where he had stood in that line.

A family habit

Favoritism ran in this family. Jacob’s own parents split their love: “Isaac loved Esau, because he ate his venison. Rebekah loved Jacob” (25:28). That split ended in a stolen blessing and a brother who swore to kill him (see how Jacob took Esau’s blessing). Now Jacob repeated it with his own sons, and the sons repeated the anger.

Jewish tradition has not let Joseph off either. Rashi, the 11th-century commentator, read “he was a boy” as a hint that Joseph behaved like one, fussing over his hair and his looks. The text never excuses the brothers, but it does not paint Joseph as tactful.

Where the hatred led

At Dothan they see him coming and say, “Behold, this dreamer comes” (37:19). Murder is the first plan. Reuben talks them down to a dry pit, and Judah to a sale (see how much Joseph was sold for). Centuries later, Stephen summed up the whole affair in one line: “The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt” (Acts 7:9). The dreams themselves, and how they came true, are in what Joseph’s dreams were.