Joseph's Dreams

¹Jacob lived in gthe land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan.

²These are the generations of Jacob.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought ha bad report of them to their father. ³Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was ithe son of his old age. And he made him ja robe of many colors.1 ⁴But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

⁵Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. ⁶He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: ⁷Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, kmy sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and lbowed down to my sheaf.” ⁸His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

⁹Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” ¹⁰But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and myour mother and your brothers indeed come nto bow ourselves to the ground before you?” ¹¹And ohis brothers were jealous of him, pbut his father kept the saying in mind.

Joseph Sold by His Brothers

¹²Now his brothers went to pasture their father's flock near qShechem. ¹³And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” ¹⁴So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word.” So he sent him from the Valley of rHebron, and he came to Shechem. ¹⁵And a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” ¹⁶“I am seeking my brothers,” he said. “Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” ¹⁷And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to sDothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at sDothan.

¹⁸They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them tthey conspired against him to kill him. ¹⁹They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. ²⁰Come now, ulet us kill him and throw him into one of the pits.2 Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.” ²¹But when vReuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” ²²And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him”—wthat he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father. ²³So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, xthe robe of many colors that he wore. ²⁴And they took him and ythrew him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

²⁵Then they sat down to eat. And looking up they saw a zcaravan of aIshmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing bgum, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. ²⁶Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it cif we kill our brother and conceal his blood? ²⁷Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and dlet not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers listened to him. ²⁸Then eMidianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and fsold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels3 of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.

²⁹When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he gtore his clothes ³⁰and returned to his brothers and said, “The boy his gone, and I, where shall I go?” ³¹Then they took iJoseph's robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. ³²And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, “This we have found; please identify whether it is your son's robe or not.” ³³And he identified it and said, “It is my son's robe. jA fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.” ³⁴Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. ³⁵All his sons and all his daughters krose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, lI shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him. ³⁶Meanwhile mthe Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, nthe captain of the guard.

Traditions and Commandments

¹pNow when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes qwho had come from Jerusalem, ²they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were rdefiled, that is, unwashed. ³(For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly,1 holding to sthe tradition of tthe elders, ⁴and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.2 And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as uthe washing of vcups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.3) ⁵And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to sthe tradition of tthe elders, wbut eat with rdefiled hands?” ⁶And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you xhypocrites, as it is written,

y“‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

⁷in vain do they worship me,

teaching as zdoctrines the commandments of men.’

⁸You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

⁹And he said to them, “You have a fine way of arejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! ¹⁰For Moses said, b‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, c‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ ¹¹But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)4— ¹²then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, ¹³thus dmaking void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

What Defiles a Person

¹⁴And he called the people to him again and said to them, e“Hear me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵fThere is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”5 ¹⁷And when he had entered gthe house and left the people, hhis disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸And he said to them, “Then iare you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, ¹⁹since it enters not his heart jbut his stomach, and is expelled?”6 (kThus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰And he said, l“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. ²¹For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, mmurder, adultery, ²²coveting, wickedness, deceit, nsensuality, oenvy, pslander, qpride, rfoolishness. ²³sAll these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

The Syrophoenician Woman's Faith

²⁴And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.7 And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. ²⁵But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. ²⁶tNow the woman was a uGentile, va Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷And he said to her, “Let the children be wfed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and xthrow it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's ycrumbs.” ²⁹And he said to her, “For this statement you may zgo your way; the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Jesus Heals a Deaf Man

³¹aThen he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to bthe Sea of Galilee, in the region of the cDecapolis. ³²And they brought to him da man who was deaf and dhad a speech impediment, and they begged him to elay his hand on him. ³³And ftaking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and fafter spitting touched his tongue. ³⁴And glooking up to heaven, hhe sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵dAnd his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶And iJesus8 charged them to tell no one. But jthe more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷And they were kastonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Job Laments His Birth

¹After this Job hopened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. ²And Job said:

³i“Let the day perish on which I was born,

and the night that said,

‘A man is conceived.’

⁴Let that day be darkness!

May God above not seek it,

nor light shine upon it.

⁵Let gloom and jdeep darkness claim it.

Let clouds dwell upon it;

let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶That night—let thick darkness seize it!

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;

let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷Behold, let that night be barren;

let no joyful cry enter it.

⁸Let those curse it who curse the day,

who are ready to rouse up kLeviathan.

⁹Let the stars of its dawn be dark;

let it hope for light, but have none,

nor see lthe eyelids of the morning,

¹⁰because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb,

nor hide trouble from my eyes.

¹¹“Why mdid I not die at birth,

come out from the womb and expire?

¹²Why did nthe knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

¹³For then I would have lain down and been quiet;

I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

¹⁴with kings and counselors of the earth

who orebuilt ruins for themselves,

¹⁵or with princes who had gold,

who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶Or why was I not as a hidden pstillborn child,

as infants who never see the light?

¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling,

and there the weary are at qrest.

¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together;

they hear not the voice of rthe taskmaster.

¹⁹The small and the great are there,

and the slave is free from his master.

²⁰“Why is light given to him who is in misery,

and life to sthe bitter in soul,

²¹who tlong for death, but it comes not,

and dig for it more than for uhidden treasures,

²²who rejoice exceedingly

and are glad when they find the grave?

²³Why is light given to a man whose vway is hidden,

whom God has whedged in?

²⁴For my sighing comes xinstead of1 my bread,

and my ygroanings are poured out like water.

²⁵zFor the thing that I fear comes upon me,

and what I dread befalls me.

²⁶I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;

I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

Released from the Law

¹Or do you not know, brothers1—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? ²For ea married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.2 ³Accordingly, fshe will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

⁴Likewise, my brothers, gyou also have died hto the law ithrough the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, jin order that we may bear fruit for God. ⁵For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work kin our members lto bear fruit for death. ⁶But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the mnew way of nthe Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.3

The Law and Sin

⁷What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, oI would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if pthe law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸But sin, qseizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. rFor apart from the law, sin lies dead. ⁹I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. ¹⁰The very commandment sthat promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹For sin, tseizing an opportunity through the commandment, udeceived me and through it killed me. ¹²So vthe law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, wsold under sin. ¹⁵For I do not understand my own actions. For xI do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with ythe law, that it is good. ¹⁷So now zit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells ain me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹bFor I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, cit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For dI delight in the law of God, ein my inner being, ²³but I see in my members fanother law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from gthis body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.