The coat, and the pit
“Come now therefore, and let’s kill him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, ‘An evil animal has devoured him.’ We will see what will become of his dreams.””Genesis 37:20 · WEB
Jacob has twelve sons and makes no secret of which one he loves. The coat is the proof, worn daily in front of ten brothers who get nothing. Joseph is seventeen and not wise with it: he reports on them, and tells them his dreams, in which they bow to him. So when the chance comes, out in the fields far from their father, they throw him in a dry cistern, sit down to eat, and sell him to a passing caravan for twenty pieces of silver. Then they dip the coat in goat's blood and let their father draw his own conclusion. Genesis lays the whole thing out without excusing anyone — the father's favouritism, the boy's tactlessness, the brothers' cruelty. It is a family that has learned nothing in three generations. God will use it anyway.