Joseph (a)

Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob and a boy with eleven brothers. His story is one Bernard Walton tells while working at Whit's End. Jacob gave Joseph a beautiful coat of many colors, and Joseph announced dreams in which his whole family bowed down to him. His jealous brothers threw him into a dry well, sold him to passing merchants for twenty pieces of silver, and let their father believe he was dead. As a slave in Egypt he rose to run the household of his master Potiphar, until a lie told by Potiphar's wife put him in prison. There he interpreted dreams, including Pharaoh's, and became second-in-command over all Egypt. When famine drove his brothers to him for grain, he tested them, revealed himself, and forgave them, saying God had sent him ahead to save their lives.