IT WAS NOON WHEN JOSEPH arrived in Dothan, where his brothers were tending their flocks. In the meadows there were a number of stone cisterns, which were used for gathering and storing water during the rainy season.
Simeon was the first to see him. “Look, here comes the dreamer,” he said. “Now is our chance: let’s kill him and throw him into one of these pits and say that a wild beast ate him. Then we’ll see what good his dreams have done him.”
The brothers all nodded in approval. Some of them laughed bitterly. (Judah, the only one whose hatred hadn’t reached the boiling point, was in a different meadow, tending to a newborn lamb.)
As Joseph caught sight of them in the distance, he smiled. He was happy to arrive, and he thought they would be happy too. He couldn’t parse the angry faces as he drew near. Simeon and Levi ran up and pinned his arms behind him. Someone was shouting, and before he knew it, his coat was torn off, then his tunic, and someone was hitting him in the face, and his mouth was bleeding. They were dragging him by the feet now. His head bumped along the ground. There were shouts and hoots all around him. Then he was falling. His right shoulder slammed against a wall, he lay stretched out on a rock, his head ached, there was a burning in his shoulder, suddenly the light dimmed, and he was alone in the shadows.