(Genesis) Genesis 37:7-12

I'm reading verse 7 now. He says, For behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, And lo, my sheaf rose, and also stood upright, And behold, your sheaf stood round about, And made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more For his dreams and for his words.

They asked probably in a sneering, cynical way, You really think that you're going to reign over us? And they hated him though because he had this dream. But that doesn't end the dreams. He has another one.

He dreamed yet another dream and told it his brethren and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream, Moab. And behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars. Made obeisance to me.

And he told it to his father and to his brethren. And his father rebuked him and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother, thy brethren, Indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee in the earth? And he told this dream. They understood what he was talking about then.

Those who study the book of Revelation today don't seem to know. When they find a woman mentioned in the 12th chapter of Revelation with the sun, moon, and stars under her feet, that that means the nation Israel. These brethren understood that it's the sons of Israel that we're talking about.

And it's the nation Israel as it was there at the beginning. You see, what's given in Genesis is like a bud to a flower. And that opens up as you go through Scripture.

Now, here's one that's not going to open up till you get to the book of Revelation. It's a late bloomer, by the way. But it's going to open up there.

And we ought to understand what is being said there and not attempt to guess. Don't need to guess when it's made this clear here. Old Jacob understood it exactly.

He says, What does this mean that your father, your mother, your brethren are going to bow down to you? Well, this boy, all he could say, Well, this is what I dreamed, and this is it. Verse 11, And his brethren envied him, but his father observed the same. Brethren just dismissed it.

They paid no attention to it. They thought this was certainly in the realm of impossibility. And far as those ten brethren were concerned, not one of them was going to bow down to him.

And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. Now, you see, Jacob is moved way down around Hebron, and these boys are keeping the sheep. Now, they've gone way north.

They're up about as far north of Jerusalem as they lived at Hebron, south of Jerusalem. I don't know how far it'd be, 30 or 40 miles each way, so that you've got about 80 miles. And they probably got as far as 100 miles from home.

So you can see that they grazed their sheep over that entire area, and they took the flock way up to Shechem.