Teach Your Children
Are You Ever Jealous? Joseph’s Brothers Were
LET’S talk about what it means to be jealous. Have
you ever found it hard to like a person because others said that he is
good, handsome, or smart? *— Well, that is what can happen when you are jealous of someone.
Jealousy can occur in a family if parents favor
one child over another. The Bible tells about a family in which jealousy
caused a big problem. Let us consider the trouble it led to and the
lesson we can learn from what happened.
Joseph was the 11th son of Jacob, and Joseph’s
half brothers were jealous of him. Do you know why?— It was because
their father, Jacob, favored Joseph. For example, Jacob had a beautiful
striped coat made for Joseph. Jacob especially loved Joseph “because he
was the son of his old age” and the first child by his beloved wife,
Rachel.
The Bible says that ‘when Joseph’s brothers saw
that their father loved him the most, they hated Joseph.’ Then one day
Joseph told his family that in a dream, all of them bowed down to him,
including his own father. “His brothers grew jealous of him,” the Bible
says, and even Joseph’s father scolded him for telling about such a
dream.
Some time later, when Joseph was 17, his brothers
were many miles away caring for the family’s sheep and goats. So Jacob
sent Joseph to see how his brothers were. Do you know what most of them
wanted to do when they saw him coming?— They wanted to kill him! But two of them, Reuben and Judah, did not want to.
When some merchants passed by on their way to
Egypt, Judah said: “Let us sell him.” So they did. Then they killed a
goat and dipped Joseph’s coat in its blood. Later, as they showed the
coat to their father, he cried out: ‘A vicious wild beast must have
eaten Joseph!’
In time, Joseph came to be favored by Pharaoh,
Egypt’s ruler. This was because with God’s help he was able to explain
the meaning of two of Pharaoh’s dreams. The first was of seven healthy
cows followed by seven sick ones. The second dream was of seven healthy
ears of grain and then of seven shriveled ones. Both dreams, Joseph
said, meant that there would be seven years of good harvests followed by
seven years of famine. At Pharaoh’s direction, Joseph was put in charge
of storing up food in the years of plenty to prepare for the famine.
When the famine came, Joseph’s family, who lived
many miles away, needed food. Jacob sent Joseph’s ten older brothers to
Egypt to get food. They came before Joseph, but they did not recognize
him. Without revealing who he was, Joseph tested his brothers, and he
learned how sorry they were for having treated him so badly. Then Joseph
told them who he was. How they hugged one another and rejoiced!
What can you learn about jealousy from this
Bible story?— Jealousy can lead to big trouble, even causing a person to
want to hurt his own brother! Let us read Acts 5:17, 18 and Acts 7:54-59
and see what jealousy caused people to do to Jesus’ disciples.— After
reading this, can you see why we must be careful about becoming
jealous?—
Joseph lived to be 110 years old. He raised
children, who bore him grandchildren, and then he had
great-grandchildren. We can be sure that Joseph often taught them to
love one another and to avoid giving in to jealousy.
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